…is a new adwords function which will allow you to target users by utilising information from their past visits to your website. By integrating a piece of code into pages of your website, you can identify users who have visited those pages, and then target them with specific ads matched to the content they’ve already viewed. These ads will be presented across the Google network, targeting users as they’re browsing.

People who’ve already viewed your website are more likely to be amenable to further advertising; Google is helping Google users see relevant ads, and is helping adwords users advertise more effectively. Google have this to say about it:

“Remarketing is a tool that can drive ROI for all types of advertisers, regardless of the focus of your campaigns (brand-orientated, performance-driven, etc.) or your ad formats.”

We can definitely see how content network remarketing could offer a greater degree of focus – and creativity – within ad creation. Users who visit pages on your websites will be added to a Google generated adwords list related to that page; ads will go only to the people on these lists. So you can focus on ads related to the content they’ve viewed – perhaps with small-scale special offers aimed only at people on that list.

All of this occurs within the traditional Google ad-auction set up, with CPM and CPC values optimisable through other targeting techniques – geographical, for example. So, Google is presenting adwords user with the opportunity to target people who’re further on in the buying cycle than other search users, and to further finesse the selection of users who see their ads. It’s the latest step in Google’s journey towards increasingly user-defined marketing platform functions; other functions are currently in beta, and we’ll be discussing them further as they appear.