Web Contact Targeting Guide

What is Contact Targeting

Contact-based retargeting is a tactic that combines prospecting to a specific list of known contacts from your CRM after they have visited your website.

Use this tactic to display ads to known contacts in your CRM that have visited your site, specifying pages or the number of page views.

This approach boosts engagement by re-engaging potential buyers from your contact lists who know your brand but haven't converted. Create tailored middle or bottom-of-funnel creatives for best results. Learn more in our creative best practices.

To launch this tactic, you will use the Accelerate Existing Pipeline feature combined with a Composite Audience that tracks your contact list page views.

Essentials before you start

• Install the Pixel to track visitors.
• Create at least one set of Static Web ads.
• A Contact List with a minimum of 100 unique emails. For optimal performance, we recommend at least 1000 emails per campaign.

Launch a Contact-Based Targeting Campaign

To launch this tactic, you will use the following building blocks to define your audience:

• Bring your Contact List.
• Create a Website Audience based on visitors who viewed at least 1 page.
• Create a Composite Audience combining your Contact List plus the 1-page-view website audience.
• Launch a Retargeting Campaign targeting the Composite Audience.
• Optionally, if you have a sizable list, create multiple AdGroups to deliver sequential messaging:
  • AdGroup 1: Contact list + 1 page. Use top-of-funnel creatives.
  • Ad Group 2: Contact list + 2 pages. Use bottom-of-funnel creatives.

Step 1: Bring a contact list over to the AdRoll ABM platform

The first step is to bring over a list of contact emails. You can use one of the following methods:

Step 2: Create a Website Audience to track page views

• Log in to AdRoll ABM and navigate to Audiences > Website Audiences.
• Select Create Website Audience.

• Select Audience Type = Pages Viewed.
• Enter the minimum number of pages your audience must view to qualify.
• Enter your desired Audience Name.
• Enter your desired audience duration (in days) under 'How long to keep a person in this audience'. If you aren't sure, learn more here.
• Click Create Audience.
• Please note that your new pages-viewed Website Audience may take up to 48 hours to start tracking visitors.

Step 3: Combine both audiences using a Composite Audience

In this step, you will overlay the Contact List in Step 1 with the Page-Viewed Website Audience in Step 2.

• Go to Audiences > Website Audiences.
• Click Create Website Audience > New Composite Audience.
• Select CRM in the first dropdown and find the contact list created in Step 1.
• Select Pages Viewed in the second drop-down and find the audience created in Step 2.
• Name the Composite Audience and click Create Audience.

Step 4: Launch Contact Targeting for Web

• Navigate to Advertising > Campaigns & Playbooks.
• Click Create and select Ad Campaigns in the dropdown.

• Select Accelerate Existing Pipeline as your Campaign Objective and Click Next. 

Campaign Name

Click Edit Name at the top of your campaign and choose a name that will be easy to identify across AdRoll ABM reports and platform features. We recommend following a consistent naming convention for all your campaigns.

Campaign Channel

Scroll down to the section called Channel to select the channel where you wish to run your ads:

• Web: Your ads will be served on the Web (Desktop and Mobile) and Apps.
• Connected TV: Your CTV video ads will be delivered through streaming apps, either built into smart TVs or through devices like Roku, Apple TV, and gaming consoles connected to a TV.

If you want to run the same campaign both in Web and CTV you will need to launch two separate campaigns, one for each channel.

Please note that this article will guide you through launching a Web Channel campaign.

Campaign Schedule

Scroll down to the section called Schedule. The schedule you select will be applied to all AdGroups within your campaign, unless you set up Custom Schedules for specific AdGroups.

• Specify your Start Date:
  • Here you can specify if you want to launch your campaign Immediately or on a specific date.
  • Please note that all campaigns will go through a 48-hour review period before they are approved and go live.
• Specify your End Date:
  • For evergreen campaigns, select No end date.
  • For time bound campaigns, set up a specific end date.

Please note that all dates and times you set are expressed in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), this default time zone cannot be changed.

Default Start and End Dates	Specific Start and End Dates

Advanced Options: Day Parting

Adjusting this advanced setting is not recommended. If you want to limit specific days of the week and times to serve ads, read this article for more information.

Day parting is automatically adjusted by BidIQ®, our proprietary real-time bidding algorithm processing hundreds of variables for each and every user, to determine whether or not to bid, and how much, at the time of each potential impression.

Web Bid Settings and Advanced Options

Here you will be able to choose how your campaign optimizes its Bid Strategy by adjusting the algorithm to prioritize Conversions. This section also offers you advanced bidding settings to control Frequency Capping and Exclusions. 

Choose Bid Strategy as Conversion to move mid- to late-stage buyers towards conversion, increase sales velocity and deal progression, and support active opportunities with sales-aligned engagement.

Leaving the Target CPA values blank will let us automatically maximize clicks within your budget. If you set a specific CPA, BidIQ will optimize to reach your target; however, the actual CPA may vary.

If you need help choosing a Bid Strategy, read this article. Please note that Bid Strategy options differ by channel.

Advanced Options: Frequency Capping

Adjusting this advanced setting is not recommended. If you want to limit the number of impressions per user per day, read this article for more information.

Frequency capping is dynamically adjusted by BidIQ®, our proprietary real-time bidding algorithm processing hundreds of variables for each and every user, to optimize how many times your ads appear to the same person.

Advanced Options: General Exclusions 

To find Campaign-specific exclusions, scroll down to the section Bid Settings and Advanced Options and click Advanced Options.

Check this box to choose whether to target your existing customers in this campaign, as defined in your account General Exclusion Settings.

Please note that we will automatically exclude competitors and coworkers from your campaigns.

To make changes to your existing account General Exclusions, exit your campaign and navigate to Settings > General Exclusions and follow the instructions in this article.

Advanced Options: Campaign-specific Exclusions

To find Campaign-specific exclusions, scroll down to the section Bid Settings and Advanced Options and click Advanced Options.

Web Campaign-specific exclusions allow you to configure Domain and App exclusions at the campaign level to control the placements where your ads are served. Campaign-specific exclusions are applied in addition to your existing General Exclusions.

Learn more about Campaign-specific exclusions in this article.

Step 5. Configure your AdGroup Settings

An AdGroup is a fundamental organizational unit within a campaign. Creating multiple AdGroups within one campaign lets you select specific ads for a specific audience, environments, locations, and custom schedules.

• At a minimum, a campaign will have one AdGroup; you can add more as needed.
• You can measure performance for each individual AdGroup.
• Your Campaign budget is automatically allocated across all the AdGroups in your campaign; you can't set specific budget allocations by AdGroup.

AdGroup Name

Choose a naming convention that is easy to recognize in AdRoll ABM reports and dashboards.

AdGroup Schedule

If you want this AdGroup to run on a different schedule than your main campaign schedule, toggle on Use Custom AdGroup Schedule and select your start and end dates.

AdGroup Audience Target Options

• Under Targeting, open the Audience section and select Contacts Targeting to target known email addresses sourced from a CRM, a marketing automation tool, or a static list.
• You can only select one audience type per ad group. If you need to run more than one, add a separate ad group for each. 

• Under Audience > Include, choose the Composite Audience from Step 3.
  
• Exclude conversion audiences to avoid serving ads to users who’ve already converted.
• Complete the rest of retargeting campaign settings.

AdGroup Audience Location

By default, our AI-powered BidIQ algorithm will choose the best locations for you to optimize campaign performance based on where the users in your target audience are. We recommend using the automatically targeting the best locations to cover 100% of users in your audience, regardless of where they are located at the moment. This is especially crucial in today's remote work environment.

Adjusting geo targeting limits the locations of users seeing your ads. If you want to select specific audience locations, read this article to learn more.

Please note that this is an AdGroup setting, and you can have multiple AdGroups within one campaign targeting different user locations with different ads.

Target by Categories

Categories let you target whole types of content rather than individual page text. Select the kinds of sites and content your ads should appear alongside, and we place your ads across content that matches.

Open Target by Categories and use any of the following:

1. Search - Type in the search field to find a category by name.
2. Browse - Scroll the alphabetical list of top-level categories.
3. Expand - Select the arrow beside a category to see the more specific categories inside it. The number beside each category tells you how many it contains.
4. Suggestions - Select Suggestions in the top right of the card for AI Assistant-recommended categories.

Select the checkbox beside a category to add it. You can select as many as you like, at any level of the list.

Target/Exclude by Keywords

Your ads are displayed on websites and apps that align with the content you've specified through targeted keywords, ensuring they appear in contexts that are relevant to your audience and complement your brand message.

Target keywords to ensure your ads appear next to relevant content, and exclude keywords to avoid placements that don’t align with your brand. AdRoll Contextual Keywords support multilingual targeting. English keywords automatically trigger translations in 53 other languages. For more details, see Contextual Keyword Targeting.

Environments

By default, we will automatically serve ads to your audience users in Desktop, Mobile Web, and Mobile Apps. We recommend using the Automatic Environments default setting to cover 100% of users in your audience, regardless of the type of environment.

While not advised, you can exclude Desktop, Mobile Web, and Mobile App by turning off each specific Environment. Learn more about how to exclude Environments here. 

Please note that this is an AdGroup setting, and you can have multiple AdGroups within one campaign targeting different environments with different ads.

AdGroup creatives

At a minimum, select the following ad types and sizes:

• Image Web Ads: 160x600, 300x250, 300x600, 320x50, 728x90, 970x250, 600x500, 600x315
• Native Web Ads: 600x600, 600x315, 600x500

You can create additional AdGroups with different ad creative variations to let BidIQ optimize towards the best-performing ads automatically.

Create more AdGroups if needed

Add additional AdGroups to your campaign as needed by clicking New AdGroup and repeating the prior steps to define: AdGroup Name, Custom Schedule, Audience Inclusions/Exclusions, Environments, Location, and Ad sets.

Step 6. Finish later or launch

Once you have completed all the steps in this guide, you can:

• Click Finish Later to save a draft. This allows you to save your work in progress and return later to finalize and submit for launch.
• Click Submit if you are ready to confirm the campaign should launch on the Start Date. Launch date is subject to our ~48-hour ad policy review period. 

Campaign Troubleshooting

If you are experiencing issues after launching your campaign, find tips to troubleshoot your campaign in this article.