Repixeling

Repixeling is a form of digital marketing in which an advertiser retargets someone else’s website.
On most major ad platforms such as Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, etc., users have the ability to tag visitors to their website so they can serve customized ads later. For example, if an online visitor is shopping for hiking boots and puts a pair in his or her shopping cart but doesn’t check out, they’re likely to see that pair of hiking shoes all of the web for a period of time. That’s traditional retargeting. With repixeling, a non-competitive company that shares the same audience as the hiking shoe company, for example, a hiking pole company, might request to retarget those same visitors that put shoes in their shopping cart to serve ads to them. That type of targeting is repixeling.
History
Since the introduction of tracking cookies in 1994, advertisers have been tagging visitors who have visited their site for display advertising and analytics. But with traditional retargeting, finding scale became difficult as advertisers were limited to the number of people who visited their website.
Next came Facebook Ads “lookalike audiences” & Google Ads “similar audiences,” which allowed advertisers to feed their retargeting list into machine learning algorithms which would generate audiences that “look like” their retargeting audiences. While this added scale, it was at the expense of customer acquisition costs (CAC) & ROI. With the introduction of repixeling, advertisers didn’t have to loosen their targeting to millions of people or rely on an algorithm that didn’t necessarily have all of the context on their customer base -- they could easily pick the exact websites they wanted to retarget which added scale, and not at the expense of efficiency.
On the other side of the marketplace, site owners (those who sell ads), have historically been limited in scale as there are only so many ad units you can put on your website without getting “spammy”. In addition, click-through rates were down as ad blockers became more prominent, making it more and more difficult to monetize a website or blog. Because repixeling works in the background, it quickly garnered interest as there was no limit to the number of advertisers a site owner could work with, and instead of only getting paid by clicks from an ad, site owners could get paid for each pageview.
How it Works
On all platforms besides Facebook Ads, advertisers can repixel another website by sending their tracking pixel to the site owner and having it placed on the page(s) they wish to tag. The advertiser then builds a retargeting audience using “URL Contains site www.TargetSite.com” in the ad network's audience manager. When the audience gets large enough, it will be targetable in the exact same as an ordinary retargeting audience.
As mentioned above, with Facebook Ads, it is required that you to stay within the Facebook ecosystem and leverage the “share pixel” functionality as opposed to copy/pasting your tracking pixel onto another website.
Examples
* The Boston Bruins hockey team might have success repixeling an online hockey store to boost ticket sales.
* A nail salon might have success repixeling a “health & wellness” blog to get more foot traffic to their storefront.
* A wine subscription business might have success repixeling a “review website” that posts reviews about the best wine & wine subscription businesses available.
* X-Box might have success repixeling online gaming platforms to drive incremental sales.
Pricing
In most repixeling marketplaces, pricing is set on a CPM (cost per mille / cost per thousand pageviews) basis. A website owner will set a price where they are willing to let an advertiser repixel their visitors, and an advertiser will set a “bid”. As long as the advertiser’s bid exceeds the site owners price, the pixel remains on the page and data is piped into the advertiser ad account(s).
Rules & Regulations
From a technical perspective, you are able to repixel on any ad network that has a tracking pixel & retargeting functionality, and while repixeling is legal in all respects on all ad networks, each ad network has their own internal rules which are important to be cognizant of.
* Google & LinkedIn: Repixeling is expressly forbidden in the terms & conditions in all respects. Any attempt is grounds for an account suspension.
* Twitter, Pinterest, & Yahoo: Terms & conditions are ambiguous and could be interpreted in either direction. Leverage repixeling with caution.
* Content Recommendation Widgets & DSPs: Repixeling is allowed and in many cases facilitated by large integration partners such as LiveRamp.
* Facebook Ads: Repixeling is allowed, but with restrictions. You are permitted to leverage Facebook’s built-in “share pixel” functionality, but you are not allowed to copy/paste your tracking pixel onto someone else’s website outside of their ecosystem.

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