Retargeting
What is it
Only 2% of web traffic converts to sales from first-time visits. Retargeting can be a bridge to the other 98% of visitors.Conventional retargeting starts when a person visits your site causing a browser cookie to be dropped. This special cookie or "pixel" is a small piece of data that embeds itself in a user's browser; acting like a tracking beacon, making it possible to see what websites the user is visiting. After the pixel is dropped, it follows the user as they travel to other sites on the web. The pixel then implements your retargeting strategy by triggering Ads for your business on these other websites.
Retargeting campaigns use special Ad platforms (e.g. AdRoll, Perfect Audience, Chango, Google AdWords Retargeting, ReTargeter, Facebook Pixels, Twitter Pixels). The old way to implement is by adding pixels to your website html files. Since links can be used or shared in more ways than a website, they make a more flexible pixel delivery vehicle than static websites. Enter retargeting links. The same pixels can be added to your short links instead of website.
How it works
1) a potential customer clicks your normal looking short link ⇢ 2) they continue surfing the web ⇢ 3) your ad is displayed on other webpages as they browse ⇢ 4) the ad draws the potential customers to your site, where they then make a purchase. Or depending on your strategy, potential customers can just be added to your remarketing lists for future campaigns.Tech details
This requires a special type of redirect that uses JavaScript. Any valid HTML code can be injected into an intermediate redirect page. Making it usable for remarketing JavaScript or pixels. But JavaScript is only usable for browsers. Other types of HTTP clients will not be able to redirect properly e.g. web-crawlers, all types of automated scripts, RSS-readers or almost any software, that accepts URLs. There will also be some redirect limitations even for browser-clients. For example, with HTTP-redirect method, you can make short links for images, JS-files or downloadable binary files. But this can't be done with JavaScript redirects.Additional note: adding pixels to your links may affect the link's redirection speed.