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When asked about paid marketing. Starts around 74:30 "Holy crazy crap does retargeting work." "If you do great inbound, the first money you should spend shou

When asked about paid marketing. Starts around 74:30 "Holy crazy crap does retargeting work." "If you do great inbound, the first money you should spend should be on retargeting... people that were sort of interested but left" "...uses a company called has offers in Seattle - they've been very effective for us". "would not recommend raw display. It will perform poorly for you."

secret_target 15y ago
<Shameless plug> I'm part of a stealth startup that's handling retargeting for about 30 startups now and I can confirm that it is indeed a brutally effective method for acquiring users. We're seeing that on average, retargeted ads perform about 350% better than any other kind of targeted ad. It seems a little crazy until you recalibrate your understanding of what's happening. Instead of trying to push new information on a user (which no one likes), with retargeting, you're _pulling_ people back to something they've already expressed an interest in. It works marvelously. Example: We're running retargeting for an SaaS startup that gets a lot of airtime on HN, and they're snagging new users at less than $2/head. Once these folks get on board, they spend on average $40/year on the service. Our little team had a "f___ yeah" moment after the 4th day or so when we saw how well it was working. We're now hustling to hire folks to meet the demand coming from word of mouth. If any HNers on here want to ad retargeting to their startup, web app, side project, mobile app landing page, or whatever the heck you're building, hit me up at the e-mail address in my profile. We're still building out our actual product so startups and technical people make for the best customers. Less explaining, more appreciation for results, more understanding when we goof up. </shameless plug>
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- scrollbar 15y ago
  I'll throw a plug in too- I was hoping Rand would that answer as such :) I'm with a larger ad network startup RadiumOne, and I've been thinking about doing a sort of Retargeting 101 session for H&F sometime soon. Shoot me an email if it's something you're interested in knapierkowski@gmail.com
- chargrilled 15y ago
  Do you offer anything over Google's boomerang retargeting? We've already had decent success with that.
  - secret_target 15y ago
    Massively wider reach for your ads. My understanding of Google's program is that it runs your ad across its DoubleClick exchange. We run our clients ads across DoubleClick just like them... as well as the rest of the ad networks... plus our publisher partner inventory. Google's DoubleClick inventory is a part of our overall inventory.
    - chargrilled 15y ago
      I was under the impression that Doubleclick was the largest exchange by some distance. How much wider reach do you get from going to multiple exchanges? It's maybe time I did some research on moving away from boomerang!
      - secret_target 15y ago
        DoubleClick is very much the largest and awesomest exchange. But there's A LOT of display ads on the web. The data we have suggests that DoubleClick offers up about 4b daily impressions to retarget against. The overall retargeting ecosphere that folks like us and a few others are retargeting against is in the 10-14b impressions/day range. DoubleClick's massive and have a lot of the best inventory, but it's still just a part of the whole. NOTE: I'm sure there's other display-heads on HN who might have different data. Either way, Google's exchange is no more than 30-50% of the total exchange inventory out there.
scrollbar 15y ago
FYI- HasOffers does affiliate marketing for them
- scottkrager 15y ago
  HasOffers is actually a self-service platform that handles the affiliate tracking aspect of running an affiliate program vs. a "full-service" firm like Commission Junction, LinkShare or Google Affiliate Network which will take a 20-30% cut on all sales. Just wanted to clarify that it's really SEOMoz that does their own affiliate program essentially in-house using the HasOffers platform. (correct me if I'm wrong on this anyone from SEOMoz!)
  - randfish 15y ago
    +1 - that's pretty much spot on. HasOffers gives us the ability to manage our own affiliate system.
- forcer 15y ago
  We use HasOffers as well and its a great system. After trying lots of other affiliate systems including trying to build one in-house we are finally happy :)
aaaron 15y ago
SEOMoz uses AdRoll (disclosure: i'm founder) for retargeting. It's been a pleasure working closely with the Moz team shaping their campaign... We help thousands of brands with retargeting and, yes, the results range from "holy crazy crap" to "hot diggity dangermouse." We offer an easy-to-use platform, great ROI, and powerful personalized advertising (eg, LiquidAds.) Like secret_target says, partnering with a retargeting platform gets you much wider reach and better results than working exclusively with a single inventory pool like Google. (Google has the monopoly in search, but not display...)
- secret_target 15y ago
  Great to hear I had that right, Thanks, aaron. FYI: The AdRoll folks are indeed great. We've interviewed a handful of their customers as well as customers from many other retargeting platforms and have heard great things. We see retargeting as a huge space with plenty of room for several players.

secret_target 15y ago

<Shameless plug> I'm part of a stealth startup that's handling retargeting for about 30 startups now and I can confirm that it is indeed a brutally effective method for acquiring users. We're seeing that on average, retargeted ads perform about 350% better than any other kind of targeted ad. It seems a little crazy until you recalibrate your understanding of what's happening. Instead of trying to push new information on a user (which no one likes), with retargeting, you're _pulling_ people back to something they've already expressed an interest in. It works marvelously. Example: We're running retargeting for an SaaS startup that gets a lot of airtime on HN, and they're snagging new users at less than $2/head. Once these folks get on board, they spend on average $40/year on the service. Our little team had a "f___ yeah" moment after the 4th day or so when we saw how well it was working. We're now hustling to hire folks to meet the demand coming from word of mouth. If any HNers on here want to ad retargeting to their startup, web app, side project, mobile app landing page, or whatever the heck you're building, hit me up at the e-mail address in my profile. We're still building out our actual product so startups and technical people make for the best customers. Less explaining, more appreciation for results, more understanding when we goof up. </shameless plug>

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
scrollbar 15y ago
I'll throw a plug in too- I was hoping Rand would that answer as such :) I'm with a larger ad network startup RadiumOne, and I've been thinking about doing a sort of Retargeting 101 session for H&F sometime soon. Shoot me an email if it's something you're interested in knapierkowski@gmail.com
chargrilled 15y ago
Do you offer anything over Google's boomerang retargeting? We've already had decent success with that.
- secret_target 15y ago
  Massively wider reach for your ads. My understanding of Google's program is that it runs your ad across its DoubleClick exchange. We run our clients ads across DoubleClick just like them... as well as the rest of the ad networks... plus our publisher partner inventory. Google's DoubleClick inventory is a part of our overall inventory.
  - chargrilled 15y ago
    I was under the impression that Doubleclick was the largest exchange by some distance. How much wider reach do you get from going to multiple exchanges? It's maybe time I did some research on moving away from boomerang!
    - secret_target 15y ago
      DoubleClick is very much the largest and awesomest exchange. But there's A LOT of display ads on the web. The data we have suggests that DoubleClick offers up about 4b daily impressions to retarget against. The overall retargeting ecosphere that folks like us and a few others are retargeting against is in the 10-14b impressions/day range. DoubleClick's massive and have a lot of the best inventory, but it's still just a part of the whole. NOTE: I'm sure there's other display-heads on HN who might have different data. Either way, Google's exchange is no more than 30-50% of the total exchange inventory out there.

scrollbar 15y ago

FYI- HasOffers does affiliate marketing for them

scottkrager 15y ago
HasOffers is actually a self-service platform that handles the affiliate tracking aspect of running an affiliate program vs. a "full-service" firm like Commission Junction, LinkShare or Google Affiliate Network which will take a 20-30% cut on all sales. Just wanted to clarify that it's really SEOMoz that does their own affiliate program essentially in-house using the HasOffers platform. (correct me if I'm wrong on this anyone from SEOMoz!)
- randfish 15y ago
  +1 - that's pretty much spot on. HasOffers gives us the ability to manage our own affiliate system.
forcer 15y ago
We use HasOffers as well and its a great system. After trying lots of other affiliate systems including trying to build one in-house we are finally happy :)

aaaron 15y ago

SEOMoz uses AdRoll (disclosure: i'm founder) for retargeting. It's been a pleasure working closely with the Moz team shaping their campaign... We help thousands of brands with retargeting and, yes, the results range from "holy crazy crap" to "hot diggity dangermouse." We offer an easy-to-use platform, great ROI, and powerful personalized advertising (eg, LiquidAds.) Like secret_target says, partnering with a retargeting platform gets you much wider reach and better results than working exclusively with a single inventory pool like Google. (Google has the monopoly in search, but not display...)

secret_target 15y ago
Great to hear I had that right, Thanks, aaron. FYI: The AdRoll folks are indeed great. We've interviewed a handful of their customers as well as customers from many other retargeting platforms and have heard great things. We see retargeting as a huge space with plenty of room for several players.