Most visitors to your flooring store’s website leave without taking action. Studies show that roughly 97% of first-time visitors won’t convert. That’s where AdRoll retargeting comes in, a platform designed to bring those browsers back with targeted display and social ads across the web.
For flooring retailers trying to maximize their advertising spend, understanding how retargeting works is essential. AdRoll has built its reputation on helping businesses reconnect with potential customers who’ve already shown interest, keeping your store top of mind during the often lengthy flooring purchase journey. When someone researches hardwood options on your site but doesn’t call or visit, retargeting offers a second chance at that conversion.
This guide breaks down how AdRoll’s retargeting platform works, walks you through a step-by-step setup process, and covers optimization strategies to improve your results. At IFDA, we specialize in AI-powered advertising built specifically for flooring retailers, and we’ve evaluated dozens of platforms to understand where they fit in a broader digital strategy. Whether you’re considering AdRoll or comparing it against industry-specific solutions, you’ll find the information you need to make an informed decision.
Why AdRoll retargeting matters
Your advertising budget can’t afford to ignore the 97% of visitors who leave your website without converting. For flooring retailers, this represents a significant loss of potential customers who have already demonstrated interest in your products. These visitors researched styles, compared prices, or browsed your showroom gallery before disappearing. AdRoll retargeting gives you a systematic way to re-engage these warm leads rather than starting from scratch with cold traffic every time.
The flooring purchase timeline challenge
Flooring is a high-consideration purchase with a naturally long decision cycle. Your customers typically spend weeks or months planning, researching options, visiting multiple showrooms, and comparing quotes before making a final choice. This extended timeline creates a problem: people who visit your site today may not be ready to buy until next month or next quarter. Without retargeting, you lose contact with them during this critical decision-making period.
AdRoll retargeting solves this by keeping your flooring store visible throughout the entire purchase journey. When someone browses your hardwood selection on Tuesday, they’ll see your ads as they scroll through Facebook on Wednesday and read news articles on Friday. This consistent presence builds brand recognition and increases the likelihood they’ll remember your store when they’re ready to request quotes or schedule a showroom visit.
Retargeting works because it focuses your advertising spend on people who have already shown genuine interest in your business, not strangers who may never need flooring.
ROI advantages for flooring retailers
The financial argument for retargeting is straightforward. New customer acquisition through search ads or display campaigns typically costs more per conversion than re-engaging past visitors. You’ve already paid to get someone to your website once. Retargeting represents a lower-cost second chance at converting that same visitor without starting the awareness process from zero.
Budget flexibility matters too. You can allocate specific dollar amounts to different audience segments, such as people who viewed specific product pages versus those who abandoned a quote request form. This granular control lets you prioritize the warmest leads and adjust spending based on performance data. For independent flooring retailers working with limited marketing budgets, this efficiency can make the difference between profitable advertising and wasted spend.
How AdRoll retargeting works
AdRoll retargeting operates through a tracking pixel (a small piece of code) that you install on your flooring store’s website. This pixel records visitor behavior, allowing AdRoll to build audiences of people who’ve interacted with specific pages or taken certain actions. When someone visits your site, the pixel drops a cookie in their browser, marking them as part of your retargeting audience. AdRoll then serves your display ads to these cookied visitors as they browse other websites and social media platforms.
The tracking pixel foundation
You place the AdRoll pixel across your website’s pages, typically in the header or footer code. When a potential customer visits your site to browse vinyl plank flooring or check installation pricing, the pixel fires and records that visit in AdRoll’s system. You can set up different pixel rules for different pages, creating audience segments like "viewed product pages" or "started quote form but didn’t finish."
The pixel doesn’t collect personally identifiable information like names or email addresses. Instead, it assigns anonymous identifiers that let AdRoll recognize the same browser across different websites. This approach respects privacy regulations while giving you the ability to re-engage visitors who showed interest in your flooring products.
Cross-platform ad delivery
After the pixel builds your audience, AdRoll’s ad server starts displaying your creative assets (banner ads, animated graphics, or product images) to those cookied visitors across its network. This network includes millions of websites, apps, and social media platforms where AdRoll has advertising partnerships. Your retargeting ads appear in standard display ad slots, blending into the browsing experience rather than disrupting it.
The power of AdRoll retargeting lies in its ability to follow your potential customers wherever they spend time online, keeping your flooring store visible during their entire decision process.
You control which ads show to which audiences, how often people see your ads (frequency capping), and how long someone stays in your retargeting pool after visiting your site.
Core AdRoll retargeting features to know
AdRoll retargeting includes several features that directly impact how effectively you reach potential flooring customers. Understanding these capabilities helps you decide which tools to activate and how to structure your campaigns. Each feature addresses a specific challenge in the flooring purchase journey, from showing the right product to the right person to tracking conversions across multiple devices.
Dynamic product ads
Dynamic ads automatically pull product information from your website to create personalized retargeting messages. When someone views your luxury vinyl plank page, AdRoll can generate ads featuring that exact product category rather than generic store promotions. You upload a product catalog with images, names, and prices, then AdRoll builds ads on the fly based on what each visitor viewed. This automation saves time compared to manually creating dozens of static ads for different product lines.
Cross-device tracking
Your potential customers research flooring on their phones during lunch breaks, then continue browsing on their home computers in the evening. AdRoll’s cross-device tracking connects these sessions to the same anonymous user, ensuring your retargeting ads follow them across all their devices. You avoid the waste of showing duplicate ads to the same person on multiple screens, and you maintain consistent messaging throughout their shopping journey. This feature requires device graph technology that matches browsing patterns to individual users without collecting personal data.
Audience segmentation tools
AdRoll lets you create specific audience segments based on visitor behavior and page interactions. You can build separate lists for people who viewed installation guides versus those who browsed product galleries, then serve different ad messages to each group. Segmentation also includes time-based rules, like targeting visitors from the past 30 days differently than those from the past 7 days.
The more specific your audience segments, the more relevant your retargeting ads become, which directly improves your conversion rates and reduces wasted ad spend.
Step-by-step AdRoll retargeting setup guide
Setting up AdRoll retargeting requires several distinct actions that build on each other. You start with account creation, move to pixel installation, configure your audiences, and then launch your first campaign. The entire process takes one to two hours if you have website access and basic advertising creative ready. Following these steps in order prevents configuration errors that can delay your campaigns or produce inaccurate tracking data.
Create your AdRoll account and install the pixel
You begin by signing up at AdRoll’s website and providing your business information, including your flooring store’s website URL and billing details. After account creation, AdRoll generates a unique tracking pixel code that you need to add to your website. You can install this pixel manually by pasting it into your site’s header code, or use a tag management system like Google Tag Manager if your web developer prefers that method. Test the pixel using AdRoll’s verification tool to confirm it fires correctly on your product pages, contact forms, and homepage.
Build your first audience segment
Navigate to AdRoll’s audience builder and create your first retargeting list. You define audience rules based on URL patterns that match specific page visits. For example, you might target everyone who viewed pages containing "/hardwood-flooring/" in the URL but didn’t reach your thank-you page. Set the membership duration (how long visitors stay in your audience after their visit), typically 30 to 90 days for flooring purchases. Start with a broad audience of all site visitors to build initial data, then add more specific segments as your campaign matures.
Your audience needs at least 100 cookied visitors before AdRoll retargeting campaigns can launch effectively, so give the pixel time to collect data before expecting results.
Design and launch your retargeting campaign
Upload your ad creative in AdRoll’s standard display sizes (300×250, 728×90, 160×600). Write clear headlines that reference your flooring products and include a direct call to action like "Schedule Your Free Estimate." Set your daily budget, choose which audience segments receive which ads, and establish frequency caps to avoid overwhelming the same person with your ads multiple times per day.
How to optimize performance and avoid pitfalls
Your AdRoll retargeting campaigns need ongoing adjustments to maintain performance over time. You can’t simply launch ads and expect consistent results without monitoring key metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and cost per acquisition. Most flooring retailers make the same optimization mistakes, which leads to wasted spend and diminishing returns. Understanding these common pitfalls and how to address them helps you maintain profitability throughout your campaign lifecycle.
Monitor frequency caps to prevent ad fatigue
Ad fatigue happens when your audience sees the same retargeting ads too many times, causing them to ignore or actively avoid your messages. You should limit ad exposure to three to five impressions per person per week to maintain effectiveness without becoming annoying. AdRoll’s frequency cap settings let you control this exposure, but you need to actively monitor your campaign reports for declining click-through rates, which signal that your creative has grown stale. When performance drops, refresh your ad designs with new product images, different headlines, or updated promotional offers to re-engage your audience.
Test multiple creative variations
Running a single ad design limits your ability to identify what messaging resonates with potential flooring customers. You should test at least three different ad variations simultaneously, changing one element at a time like the headline, product image, or call-to-action button. AdRoll’s A/B testing tools show you which versions generate more clicks and conversions, letting you shift budget toward your best performers.
Testing different offers, such as "Free Installation Quote" versus "10% Off Premium Hardwood," reveals which value propositions actually motivate your audience to take action.
Avoid retargeting too broadly or too narrowly
Your audience size directly impacts campaign effectiveness. Targeting everyone who visited your site for any reason creates a diluted audience that includes casual browsers with no purchase intent. Instead, focus on visitors who viewed multiple product pages or spent significant time researching flooring options. Conversely, creating hyper-specific segments with fewer than 100 people prevents your ads from achieving sufficient delivery volume to generate meaningful results.
Where to go from here
AdRoll retargeting provides a proven framework for re-engaging website visitors through display and social ads across multiple platforms. You now understand how the tracking pixel works, which features matter most for flooring retailers, and how to avoid common optimization mistakes that waste advertising budgets. The setup process requires minimal technical knowledge, and you can launch your first campaign within a few hours of account creation.
However, generic retargeting platforms face a fundamental challenge in the flooring industry: they react to visitors who already found your site rather than proactively identifying active flooring buyers in your market. IFDA’s AI-powered targeting goes beyond standard retargeting by identifying consumers during the planning, research, and shopping phases of their flooring purchase journey. Learn how our technology targets flooring buyers before they visit competitor websites, giving your store first-mover advantage in capturing qualified leads.
