Advertising · Large-scale randomized field experiment with retargeted banner advertising after website visits; treatment varied advertising exposure over time and outcomes were return visits, including time-since-visit and week-to-week complementarity.
When Does Retargeting Work? Information Specificity in Online Advertising
Journal of Marketing Research · 2013
Summary
Switching on retargeting caused 14.6% more users to return within four weeks; effects decayed with time since the initial visit, 33% of first-week effect occurred on day one, and week-two advertising worked better after week-one exposure.
For your marketing
Possible founder application
Use this study as a bounded example related to when does retargeting work? information specificity in online advertising; evaluate whether its customers, intervention and outcome match your own context.
Reported result
What the study found
Switching on retargeting caused 14.6% more users to return within four weeks; effects decayed with time since the initial visit, 33% of first-week effect occurred on day one, and week-two advertising worked better after week-one exposure.
Research question
What the authors investigated
What does when does retargeting work? information specificity in online advertising show about customer behavior or marketing outcomes?
Design
Large-scale randomized field experiment with retargeted banner advertising after website visits; treatment varied advertising exposure over time and outcomes were return visits, including time-since-visit and week-to-week complementarity.
Sample and setting
Users of an online home-improvement retailer’s website.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
Conservative inference: the evidence is from one home-improvement seller and return visits rather than a broad set of purchase outcomes, so generalization to other products and conversion metrics is uncertain. Full-text methods and correction history were not independently checked.
Research sources
Study metadata and reported results were cross-checked against a direct publisher-page retrieval; detailed full-text methods were not reviewed.