Google was slated today to unveil the global launch of a targeted-advertising program — which it calls “remarketing” — and InterContinental Hotels Group and Hilton’s DoubleTree brand are among the early adopters in travel.
Participants outside the travel industry include Infiniti, Armani Cosmetics and Fragrance, and Samsung.
Using display, rich media or text ads, participating advertisers in Google remarketing can place code on their own website pages and then target consumers who visited their websites and didn’t book across the more than 1 million websites in the Google Content Network.
In addition, another aspect of the program is that advertisers who have a brand channel on YouTube or run ads on the YouTube homepage can remarket to those visitors on other websites in the Google Content Network, whether they be a competing hotel or a refrigerator manufacturer.
As Michael Menis, vice president of global interactive marketing for InterContinental puts it, “We really don’t care what site they are on.”
Google’s spin on the remarketing initiative is that this is big.
“We believe it is one of the most significant launches of the year for the Google Content Network,” says Google product manager Aitan Weinberg.
Asked whether Google plans to expand into search remarketing, which is likely high on some advertisers’ wish lists, as well, Weinberg was noncommital.
“We don’t do search remarketing today,” Weinberg says.
Behavioral targeting can be controversial and Google gives consumers the ability to opt out of the process through Google Ads Preferences, launched in March 2009 when remarketing went into beta in North America and Europe.
Weinberg says one of the reasons remarketing is effective is because Google can find 80% of targeted users — and find them frequently — due to the extensive roster of websites which are part of the Google Content Network.
A new Audiences tab in AdWords enables advertisers to remarket to nonbookers based on hotel type or the section of the website visited, providing a great “level of granularity,” Weinberg says.
The revenue model for remarketing is the same as it is for Google’s other advertising programs, Weinberg says, noting that this takes the program beyond the usual suspects — large advertisers — in behavioral targeting and makes it accessible to smaller companies.
The ability to remarket special offers to people who visited a website and then abandoned it makes remarketing “an extremely strong fit for travel advertisers,” he adds.
Some 500 advertisers participated in the beta test, Weinberg says, including a substantial number of travel firms.
Menis of InterContinental says the hotel chain began participating in Google remarketing in December 2009. Although Google launched remarketing well after AOL’s and Yahoo’s behavioral targeting programs, the Google initiative has become “one of the most successful” for the hotel chain and InterContinental is looking to expand its participation in Google remarketing beyond display and into text ads, among other areas, Menis says.
Here is one of the ads that InterContinental used in the Google remarketing beta.
One reason remarketing is valuable, Menis says, is because it provides a testing ground for different offers, messaging and creative so InterContinental can drive revenue through its various channels.
For example, InterContinental has used remarketing to test which types of messaging, including communicating advance-purchase rates, most influences consumer buying decisions.
The Google remarketing program also gives InterContinental the ability to retarget the chain’s website visitors based on their online behavior — such as which brand they were researching — in an effective manner.
Menis says remarketing is still “a small piece” of InterContinental’s online-marketing program, but it’s “one we are anticipating growing.”
This is certainly exciting news for both advertisers and consumers. Advertisers can place their ads in front of an audience who’s already interested. and, as you mentioned above, consumers can benefit from discounts and promotions.
Even though this strategy has been around for awhile, it’s still new to many.