Tis' the Season of RLSAs

During the last the last two Holiday seasons, Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) captured the attention of performance marketers. Retailers adopted the ad type as though it were the latest fashion trend. And while we don’t see the use of Google Shopping campaigns and PLAs slowing down this season – we expect retailers to devote upwards of 50% of their search budgets to the image-based ads – Google RLSAs (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads) are this year’s shiny new toy.

If your retargeting program doesn’t include RLSAs, then frankly, you’re missing out. The point of retargeting is to re-engage with people that have visited your site as they continue perusing the Internet. As the top site on the Internet, it’s almost certain your site visitors will be stopping by www.google.com.

In a recent survey of digital marketers, 88% of respondents indicated retargeting is currently a part of their marketing mix and of those digital marketers running retargeting campaigns, 65% said they leverage RLSAs. It should be 100%.

If we think about a consumer’s online shopping/researching experience, a browsing session often starts at a search engine, which more than likely is Google. A consumer clicks on a search result, browses the site to see if it fulfill what they are looking for, and then likely returns back to the search engine. Being able to then retarget that visitor on search is extremely powerful.

In looking at the performance of Google RLSAs, we found the click-through rate (CTR) of RLSAs to be 234% higher than non-RLSA ads in the second quarter, 2014. The cost-per-click (CPC) of RLSAs was 24% cheaper than non-RLSAs.

Better performance at a cheaper price sounds like a win-win.