Why shouldn't I use Google Adwords for Retargeting?

Hello!   (Full disclosure: I'm the director of marketing at ReTargeter)   I actually have a few posts on our blog that explains what ReTargeter can offer over Google AdWords Remarketing:  http://www.retargeter.com/general/the-incredible-network-why-network-reach-is-important-for-retargeting and http://www.retargeter.com/case-studies/case-study-network-reach In short (the longer stuff is below), the core idea of retargeting is to serve ads to your audience after they leave your site. The problem with Google AdWords Remarketing is that it only has access to Google inventory. What this means: if you're using AdWords Remarketing and your audience generally visits sites that aren't on Google's Network, they will not see your ads. ReTargeter has access to all of Google's inventory, as well as dozens of other networks, including Yahoo!'s Right Media, Fox Audience Network, and Microsoft's AdECN (to name a few) The network reach is the main thing that you're missing when using Adwords Remarketing. But there are a few other key points: ReTargeter has an awesome account management team - you will have your own account manager who will help you set up and optimize your campaign. They will actively monitor your campaign's performance, and will go over any opportunities that you may be missing out on. Google's support is a bit tough to get a hold of. By default, we work on a 24-hour view-through window to make sure your view through conversions are creditable. We can change this window for you, but Adwords remarketing is defaulted and (I believe) permanently set to 30 days. We offer a bunch of other targeting options as well: Demo, Geo, Contextual, Social Influencers, and some pretty nifty interactive ad units. Google Remarketing is a great product - it has done a lot to help legitimize the retargeting technology, and it is a great place to start dipping your toes in the technology. But to really get the most out of your retargeting campaign - being able to stay in front of your audience in more places and understanding how your campaign can be improved - then ReTargeter is here to help.

You should definitely use Google AdWords because its another channel that is effective - great interface and can be ROI positive. There is no real reason NOT to fish in a pond with fish when you want to catch fish. AdWords has different forms of remarketing, like text ads (not available on man other remarketing channels) and it also allows you to leverage all the other data in the AdWords interface like time on site and conversion attribution as well as dynamic remarketing ads. Because AdWords has many exclusive feature and usability advantages I would recommend to use is in addition to other channels Below is a more descriptive answer to this below:

There is nothing wrong with using Google AdWords. It is a great product that has provided a lot of success for a lot of people.  However, there are limitations: 1. REACH - AdWords only gives you so much reach.  2. LIMITATIONS - AdWords limits the types of campaigns and the keywords you can use on a campaign. Google especially doesn't like keywords being used that are competitive or tangential to the product. They use a quality score to scale down your traffic. You can read about it here () 3. TRANSPARENCY -  AdWords is not transparent. It does not show you how much Google paid for the impression, how much money they made, the markups involved.

If you're primarily focused on clickthrough acquisitions, I would highly suggest focusing most of your time on making it work with Google AdWords, then applying any of that knowledge to other third party retargeting platforms or DSPs.  Generally speaking, you can get about 2x more volume when running on other networks, but in my experience, these placement often don't drive as much value, plus its much more difficult to optimize campaigns, because you will be running on 'black box' networks, and its hard to apply filters for certain types of context, time-of-day, or day-of-week. Also, in my experience, context has a huge effect on driving viewthrough and clickthrough conversions with retargeting campaigns, so you don't just want to think about reach, you want to also be thinking about where your ads will actually be running. If you just want volume, I'd recommend looking at more of the third party retargeting networks and DSPs.  If you're only going to be retargeting to a pool of less than a couple hundred thousand IPs, you won't hit the minimum buy thresholds with the majority of networks, so you'll probably need to stick with either retargeter or adroll.  You can also check out running directly with Yahoo Display or check out Triggit.

There are a lot of other companies offering various types of retargeting services. I like Perfect Audience personally, but I've also used AdRoll in the past and have heard good things about Retargeter, so feel free to give that a shot as well. Most of these companies - and especially AdRoll - really took off when Facebook allowed retargeting via FBX. Advertisers couldn't buy placements from Facebook directly, you had to buy through a retargeting tool - like PA, AdRoll or Retargeter. Now you can retarget directly through Facebook. Even so, I'd still recommend using one retargeting solution, otherwise it's too difficult trying to unravel the analytics and  manage the ads. Here's the long and short of it: Remarketing through AdWords only gives you access to the Google Display Network - not Facebook, not non-GDN sites. Using a 3rd party retargeting solution gives you access to a wider network, and thus more volume. Also, for some reason I've always found 3rd party retargeting solutions convert a lot better than AdWords remarketing.

One aspect that no one has touched upon is "de-duping of conversions". if you are small or medium sized advertiser using two different platforms will not give you a transparent picture. Consider this scenario: You use adwords for SEM and a different tool for retargeting. Now if someone clicks on a Search Ad and then a display ad from retargeting both the platforms are going to attribute conversions to themselves. You will see 2 conversions whereas it really is only one conversion However, if you are using adwords for both search and retargeting conversions will get de-duped across both the networks thereby giving you a much more transparent report on real conversions

I used both AdRoll and Google Adwords for retargeting. However, for Google I choose "Search Network Only" (no banners) because I don't want to overlap with the ads that are running in AdRoll. The combination of these two platform has proven to be very powerful for me for recapturing part of the traffic that bounces away from the website.

I'm running several campaigns in AdRoll, and while I do like their product, I am confused with their billing practices.  Like Brad Slavin said above, I also like AdRoll because for some of our customers, they won't have high enough traffic to generate the pool.  However, it seems as though the lowest I can bid, or "forecast" on a weekly basis for any campaign is $25, and so AdRoll will bill you the $25 weekly, weather you've used up your budget - or not.  This has created quite a surplus in our account, and I don't see a way to have them use the surplus instead of continuing to rack up charges.  I would say this is the one drawback I see so far.

I would say the quality and reach of the Google network is not as great as you could get by using a DSP that has access to many more exchanges. Cost is another major item, this tends to be higher for adwords due to competition and margins. Lastly, most of these DSPs are just more flexible when it comes to RTB. Which platform is right for you will depend on a lot of factors, try a few before making up your mind.