Saving ad budget: how to set up remarketing
Remarketing is a type of advertising that targets users who have previously visited a seller’s website. This tool helps bring visitors back and encourages them to complete the desired action – whether it’s a purchase, filling in order details, providing contact information, or subscribing to the company’s newsletter.
By setting up remarketing, you can solve various marketing challenges: improve visitor conversion rates, boost product reviews and recommendations, encourage repeat purchases, offer complementary products, remind users about your brand, and promote participation in your campaigns.
How remarketing works
When a visitor lands on your website, cookies – small data files stored on their computer – collect information about their activity: what pages they viewed, what products interested them, and what actions they took. This data allows the advertising system to serve relevant ads tailored to each user’s behaviour.
Remarketing ads generally come in two formats – visual banners and text ads. Google Ads and Yandex Direct are the most common platforms for this, working on similar principles. Your choice should depend on regional usage: for example, Yandex is preferred in Russia, while Google is the dominant search engine in Ukraine.
In Google Ads, payment is based on clicks – meaning you only pay when a user takes an action. This can help stretch your budget further. In Yandex, banner ads are paid per 1,000 impressions (CPM), while text ads are charged per click (CPC). One major difference: in Google, you can run both banner and text remarketing campaigns within a single AdWords account, whereas Yandex requires separate accounts for each format.
How to set up remarketing
1. Build audience
Start by identifying your remarketing audience – users who have visited your website or specific pages. The easiest way to do this is through analytics platforms like Google Analytics or Yandex Metrica. This allows you to quickly define a custom audience for your campaigns.
You’ll need to add the remarketing code to the relevant web pages – ideally at least 48 hours before the campaign starts. Then, in Google Ads, you can create a campaign using either a traditional image banner or a text ad. If your website is new and lacks sufficient traffic for remarketing, you can target users based on interests initially, which is often more cost-effective than running full contextual ads.
2. Set up campaign
This stage may seem simple, but it’s easy to make mistakes – especially on large websites with thousands of products.
Limit how many times a user sees your banner. For e-commerce, no more than three impressions per day is optimal. Overexposure can lead to ad fatigue or even annoyance.
Next, define demographic and geographic settings – gender, age, country, region, or even city district. This is especially important for local businesses like salons, shops, or restaurants, which benefit from showing ads only in their service area, saving budget and improving conversion.
Test different ad schedules. For example, if your online shop’s active hours are 9am–6pm, you might get better results during that time. Alternatively, users may browse in the evenings after work. Use analytics to identify your site’s traffic peaks and adjust accordingly.
3. Add UTM tags to links
Add UTM parameters to your remarketing ad links – these help track the source of the user in your analytics. Google Ads offers automatic tagging, but it’s good practice to add UTM tags manually as well – especially if you’re using Yandex Metrica, which may not recognise Google’s auto-tagging.
4. Measure performance
Most importantly, you must track conversions and measure performance continuously. Add a conversion tag to your goal page (e.g., the “Thank you for your order” page) in Google Ads, or set up an event in your analytics system.
Google Ads provides real-time conversion tracking, which is very useful for quick optimisation decisions.
Common mistakes in remarketing
Remarketing setup is fairly straightforward – but on a website with 20,000 product categories, errors are easy to make.
Most common mistakes include:
Showing irrelevant content (e.g. advertising doors to someone interested in window fittings),
Overexposing users to ads (causing ad fatigue),
Setting inappropriate audience durations (e.g., too long or too short for the product type).
For example, in real estate, a user may take weeks or months to decide – in this case, showing an ad once every 1–2 weeks is enough. For baby products, one month is usually sufficient, as the parent’s needs will change quickly.
How users react to remarketing
Remarketing can be helpful – reminding a user of a product they forgot to buy – or irritating if done poorly. A well-timed ad might nudge a busy user to complete a purchase, especially when combined with a special offer or discount.
However, too frequent ads can make users feel followed and may lead to brand avoidance. Careful campaign setup and thoughtful messaging help avoid this.
What business gains
Remarketing can significantly boost conversions at a lower cost than traditional contextual ads. According to Allbiz, large websites experience up to 65% lower cost per conversion with remarketing and up to 50% higher conversion rates compared to standard advertising.
For niche sites with a few targeted keywords, conversion rates can reach 100% – rare, but possible.
A few more tips
Use banners for product ads – they allow for more visual appeal.
Try text ads if your banner ads have low performance – they might stand out more due to ‘banner blindness’.
Don’t forget negative keywords – just like in regular PPC, excluding irrelevant search terms prevents wasted ad spend.
Written by Oksana Tymchuk, Web Analyst at the International Centre for B2B E-Commerce Allbiz.
Originally published on UBR.UA