Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey David!

I manage all of our retargeting and online marketing efforts here at Moz. We actually use AdRoll so we might be a little biased.

With that said, I've had nothing but great experiences with AdRoll. As John mentioned above, in order to run retargeting ads through the Facebook Exchange, you have to go through one of the ad partner networks. So, that's one major advantage right there of running with AdRoll over Google Remarketing.

We've seen amazing results with CTR's of 3-10% on Facebook retargeting ads (especially newsfeed ads) so I highly recommend at least testing it.

I also agree with John that AdRoll's customer service is fantastic. We have a dedicated account team there who is super responsive and all around great folks to partner with.

Hope that helps!

-Justin

Yeah I've never heard of this. The other thing they might be doing is just optimizing the accounts they manage to spend less money after they take over the management of them. Optimizing bids, using negatives, and going after only highly profitable keywords could help them reduce costs and then they just keep the savings over the 5% they are guaranteeing you?

If they are still leaving the account and billing in your control, you'd be able to verify this. Did they say how the billing is handled? Either way, this sounds highly suspicious.

Hey. When I've had this situation in the past I've used this method: http://www.pitstopmedia.com/sem/how-to-track-clicks-as-conversions-in-adwords

Hope that helps!

-Justin

Hey Eugene! Yeah that is a common problem with Retargeting campaigns...it can be tricky to set them up properly so that you are removing people from your cookie pool once they convert. I'd say only about half of all advertisers do this correctly so that is why you continue to see ads even after you convert.

With keeping that in mind, I still believe that the benefits of retargeting far outweigh the negatives. I can tell you that the majority of the people who sign up for free trials with us every week have at least been exposed to one of our retargeting banners. Not all of them will directly convert off of the banner but the brand impression has a value that shouldn't be underestimated.

-Justin

I agree with most of John's points. I always hesitate to start thinking in absolutes when dealing with PPC campaigns since they really should be something that you are constantly managing and tweaking. Remember that searchers can experience fatigue if you are no longer testing ads and may ignore your ads over time if they just see the same thing over and over. I like to constantly be testing to make sure that you are running the best possible ads.

One other thought...are you doing any retargeting/remarketing? If not, I would definitely recommend it. A retargeting campaign that is set up properly will be a great compliment to a PPC campaign. It gives you a chance to get your display ads in front of non-converting clicks from your PPC campaign.

Hope that helps!

-Justin

Hey Jurgen, AdWords reports the number of times your ad has been clicked. Analytics visits are not clicks, but unique visitors. If the same person clicks on your ad 11 times within a certain somewhat short period of time, AdWords will show 11 clicks and Analytics will show 1 visit. If you inspect your server logs, you should find a record of the 11 clicks along with the ip address, date and time of the click.

I'm not sure if this results in the large discrepancy you are seeing but it could be responsible for some of it. Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.

Justin

Hey Jurgen, AdWords reports the number of times your ad has been clicked. Analytics visits are not clicks, but unique visitors. If the same person clicks on your ad 11 times within a certain somewhat short period of time, AdWords will show 11 clicks and Analytics will show 1 visit. If you inspect your server logs, you should find a record of the 11 clicks along with the ip address, date and time of the click.

I'm not sure if this results in the large discrepancy you are seeing but it could be responsible for some of it. Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.

Justin

Yeah I've never heard of this. The other thing they might be doing is just optimizing the accounts they manage to spend less money after they take over the management of them. Optimizing bids, using negatives, and going after only highly profitable keywords could help them reduce costs and then they just keep the savings over the 5% they are guaranteeing you?

If they are still leaving the account and billing in your control, you'd be able to verify this. Did they say how the billing is handled? Either way, this sounds highly suspicious.