There are quite a few metrics to consider when planning a display remarketing campaign. In the Display Remarketing Planner (download below) I put together all of the relevant metrics that need to be considered when setting up and planning a successful remarketing campaign. The bold boxes in the top row are the ones you need to adjust to fit your site including budget, click-through-rate, conversion rate, view-through conversion rate, average order value and the amount of attribution you will give to view-through conversions.

It’s hard to say what click through rate, conversion rate and view-through conversion rate will be for your site if you’ve never ran display before.

A lot also depends on how you have the tagging set up on your site. If you’re only serving ads to shopping cart abandoners, chances are your conversion rate will be higher since those people have already shown they are very interested in buying, on the other hand your view-through attribution should be lower since it’s likely that people who have added items to their cart were planning on buying anyway, regardless of seeing any display ads. That view-through attribution % is a pretty subjective metric unless you’ve got some kind of test and control methodology to really measure incrementality.

Another thing to consider is the creative you are using in the display ads themselves – if it’s heavy in promotion, like “get 25% off,” expect higher click through and conversion rates.

Download Online Display Remarketing Planner (.xlsx)

#1 is when you talk directly to people who want to hear you.
#2 is taking #1 to scale by paying someone to carry your message for you, like advertising. Expensive, not always effective, but easy to scale.
#3 is when magazines and news outlets pick up your story because they think it matters. This is unpredictable but worth more because it comes off as unbiased.
#4 Is when, thanks to new technology and the democratization of distribution, people can pass your message to others, free, through blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Its costs little, very effective and scalable.
The tricky thing about #4 is that you can’t buy it like #2. And because it’s the most effective, companies try to make it work like #2, but it intrinsically doesn’t work like that, you can’t buy genuine desire to share. The only companies that are successful with #4 are the ones that make stuff worth talking about. If you really want to be successful in #4, don’t spend more money trying to turn it into #2, spend more money to change the product or service instead.