Hi all, I'm new to the 'remarketing' thing in Google Adwords and I think I'm now a little confused about the basic 'what it is' & 'how it works' question. Someone told me that with 'remarketing', my ads will be present prior to others with a lower CPC. But I cannot find any proof of this in the help center. Is this true?
The basics: someone comes to your site. If you have the remarketing code installed, this will place a cookie on their computer that basically tags the visitor as having come to your site. They leave and go about their surfing on other sites. They happen to visit a site which displays Adwords ads (display network aka content network). You therefore have an opportunity to show them your ad to get them back to your site and hopefully make a purchase this time or buy something else. Your ad will show to them only if the following conditions are met: a) they have visited your site before and have the remarketing code installed, b) obviously, you are advertising on the content network, c) your ad's quality and bid would place it above competitors. That last condition is however not straight forward as it is on the search network. Remarketing ads are given some kind of boost over non-remarketing ads. How and how much, I don't know. But this boost may be enough to show your ad. Take three ads with qualities and bids of 9 x $1, 7 x $1.25 and 7 x $.80. These would show in that order according to the ad ranking formula. If your own quality is 6, you'd have to bid $1.50 to get the top spot. But if you get a boost of 25% just by being a remarketing ad (note: just a number I made up), you'd only have to bid $1.20 to get the top spot, same as if your quality was 7.5. If your quality was already 7, you'd have to bid only $1.03. It's still important to get your ad's quality up as you can see. More on Adwords remarketing.
the only way to know for sure is to test. put yourself on the remarketing list, visit some content network sites and see if your ads are appearing. then you can adjust from there.
It also depends upon your business type. What kind of product you are selling. If you are neither changing the product nor changing its price then will you get again any conversion from returning visitor?