Building and Managing Your Cookie Pool

through Meta Search Re-Targeting

A technique I have used to great affect in the past is to bucket users by their exhibited behaviours on
respected sites and portals. One way I have been doing this is to use a dynamic adserving platform
combined with a SERP media buy. This has been particularly effective on travel clients and works
something like this.

Step One – Identify a relevant user

By planning my activity to run on the SERP’s of a travel site or portal such as TripAdvisor, Kayak,
Trivago etc., and using a dynamic adserver, we are able to serve a relevant ad to a user who is searching
for a product. In the below example, the user is searching for things to do to New York, so it is  likely that
this person could be in the market to buy a flight. We can now serve them an ad relevant to their search
instantly through the technology we have at our disposal. Hopefully, the user will click on our add and
make a booking with us, however this is only the first chance we will give this user to snap up a relevant
bargain with us

An example of an dynamic ad showing an offer to New York on a page served to a user who is searching
for activities in New York
Step Two – Rediscovering the user on the web or
“Pre-Targeting”
By showing the relevant ad to the user, we have now cookied them, which gives us multiple chances in
the future to target that user again. By using some clever technology and, working in partnership with ad
exchanges such as The Exchange Lab, Mexad, The Fourth Wall etc., we can now bid to buy ad space
when the user visits a site in the future. We know that user was interested in flights to New York, so we
show them a new ad with a relevant offer. We could also choose to cross sell similar products like hotels,
currency deals and travel insurance if we so wished.

Pre-Targeted dynamic banner served to a user on a news site who has recently made a similar search on a
travel portal

Step Three – Re-targeting a site visitor

Step One or Two may well have led to a click on the banner and the user visiting our site. This click may
lead to a purchase, and if it does we don’t want to be showing them this offer again as it will only serve to
annoy them and cost us money we don’t need to be spending. Alternatively, the user may not purchase
the New York flight. In this instance we could choose a variety of options including serving them that
offer again, serving an offer to an alternative destination they may have found on our site, serve them
complimentary offers or product ads or indeed choose not to buy ad space against this user in future if we
don’t think they will convert at a cost effective level.

Re-targeted banner served to a user who has visited the target site promotion a relevant complimentary
product