SAN FRANCISCO: Nearly three-quarters (71%) of US marketers spent 10% to 50% of their digital ad budgets on retargeting in 2014, a new industry survey has shown.

This is a significant rise since last year, when 53% invested in retargeting, and comes as the proportion of marketers now spending over half their digital ad budget on retargeting has doubled from 7% to 14% in 2014, Marketing Land reported.

These are among the key findings of a poll of 1,000 US marketers commissioned by AdRoll, the retargeting platform, which also analysed campaign data from 11,000 of its advertisers in the US, including 3.7bn ad impressions.

More than 90% of respondents said retargeting performed equal or better than search, email and other display campaigns, and they said they used the technique for a variety of reasons.

Retargeting was used by 70% for brand awareness, followed by social engagement (60%) and customer retention and driving sales (58%).

Over half (54%) of B2B marketers said insights into customer behaviour was their most important campaign success metric, while a similar proportion (57%) of B2C marketers thought total conversions was the number one campaign success metric.

High ROI and Return on Advertising Spending was an important consideration for both B2C marketers (44%) and their B2B colleagues (43%).

Over half (54%) of all marketers said social was "the hottest topic in retargeting", followed by mobile retargeting (20%) and data-driven marketing (11%).

Underlining the importance of mobile, AdRoll's analysis of its clients' campaign data found they acquired 1.05x more impressions, 1.23x more clicks and 1.08x more conversions when they added mobile to their Facebook and web retargeting mix.

Adam Berke, AdRoll president and CMO, summed up the report by saying: "Retargeting has become a must-have advertising channel for marketers with performance objectives. It solves a clear business problem by helping brands stay engaged with customers who demonstrate intent to purchase."

Data sourced from AdRoll, PR Newswire, Marketing Land; additional content by Warc staff