The Complete Guide to Building Intent-Driven Marketing Funnels with Native Ads

If you’ve implemented the strategies from our previous post, congratulations—you’re already ahead of most marketers. Now it’s time to take your marketing funnel to the next level.

The Problem with Traditional Marketing Funnel Advice

You’ve probably read countless articles about marketing funnels. Industry experts like Neil Patel explain the theory brilliantly—but theory alone won’t grow your business.

Most content teaches you what native ads are, but fails to show you how to actually implement them profitably. That gap between theory and practice is where most marketers get stuck.

What You’ll Learn in This Guide

This post provides a complete, actionable playbook for building a powerful marketing funnel that combines Native Ads with Google Remarketing. You’ll discover how to create complete transparency across every funnel step, target users across multiple ad networks, and deliver the right message at precisely the right moment.

Fair warning: While this marketing flow is sophisticated, AnyTrack automates most of the heavy lifting. The only thing we can’t automate is your marketing creativity.

Core Principle: Selling successfully online isn’t inherently difficult. The real challenge lies in accessing good data and knowing how to leverage it effectively.

The Three Pillars of Online Sales Success

Every successful online business masters these fundamentals:

1. Compelling Offer – A product or service people actually want
2. Powerful Marketing Funnel – Strategic copy and user experience design
3. Precise Targeting – Right audience, right time, right message

Assuming you’ve nailed your offer, let’s focus on building a marketing funnel that converts.

Understanding User Intent: The Foundation of Profitable Funnels

Marketing funnels are more art than science, but one principle remains constant: you must understand where potential customers are in their journey, meet them there, and guide them to the next stage.

Here’s a simple example of intent-based marketing in action:

1. Top of Funnel: Buy Google Ads traffic to your landing page
2. Middle of Funnel: Retarget visitors with special Facebook offers for products they viewed

This approach works because you’re targeting users who’ve demonstrated intent through their actions. When someone clicks an offer on your site, they’re telling you what interests them.

The key insight: Your audience reveals their intentions in two ways:

• Overtly through search queries and keywords
• Covertly through their behavior on your website

Why Google Alone Isn’t Enough

Google’s advertising platform excels at capturing overt intent. When someone searches “Best Golf Club Delivery Companies,” they’re practically raising their hand saying “I’m interested in golf clubs.”

But here’s the challenge: everyone else knows this too. High-intent keywords are becoming more expensive and competitive every day, squeezing your profit margins.

This is where the magic happens—instead of just matching existing intent, what if you could create intent?

The Intent Creation Strategy: Next-Level Marketing

Creating buyer intent is like marketing wizardry. When executed properly, you’re no longer dependent solely on expensive Google keywords or competing with the entire world for the same high-intent searches.

The snowball effect: When you create intent at every funnel stage, users naturally progress toward purchasing. Done right, they’ll practically beg to buy from you.

The Strategy in a Nutshell

Source large volumes of traffic interested in your topic, then retarget based on their specific actions. As users move deeper into your funnel, show them increasingly relevant content. This approach dramatically improves conversion rates at each stage.

The secret sauce? Track the entire journey seamlessly. AnyTrack handles this automatically, so you can focus on the creative and strategic elements.

Choosing Your Traffic Source: Why Native Ads Win

Think of traffic sources like ingredients for baking. You could source your “dough” from:

• Google (The Mega Bakery): High quality but expensive—easily $10,000+ for a decent-sized audience
• Facebook (The Social Hub): Great for social engagement, but users aren’t in “content consumption” mode
• Native Advertising (The Content Specialists): Perfect for editorial content and reaching users actively consuming information

Native advertising platforms like Taboola and Outbrain excel at reaching users who are already engaged with content, making them ideal for the top of your funnel.

Understanding Native Advertising

Native ads offer significantly more creative freedom than traditional PPC channels. Since these platforms focus on editorial content, visitors typically spend more time engaging with your material.

The Native Advertising Institute defines native advertising as:

“Paid advertising where the ad matches the form, feel and function of the content of the media on which it appears.”

The best native ads blend so seamlessly with the surrounding content that they feel like natural recommendations rather than advertisements.

Two Primary Types of Native Ads

1. In-Feed/In-Content Native Ads These appear between content pieces on a page, allowing you to promote sponsored content within the publisher’s environment naturally.

2. Content Recommendation Native Ads Typically displayed below articles as “recommended reading,” these ads catch users when they’re most engaged with content.

Leading Native Advertising Platforms

The native advertising industry continues evolving rapidly, with companies like Taboola and Outbrain leading the charge. These platforms enable advertisers to reach users on premium publishing sites across the web.

The real power comes when you combine native advertising with Google remarketing—imagine retargeting native ad visitors when they’re actively searching for topics you introduced them to. That’s next-level strategy.

The AnyTrack Advantage: Seamless Integration

AnyTrack’s full integration with platforms like Taboola unlocks every available feature and capability. Here’s how it works:

According to the Taboola integration guide:

“When you enable Taboola conversion tracking, AnyTrack automatically sends engagements and affiliate conversion events to your Taboola pixel via the Taboola Server to Server integration. Once Taboola receives this data, you can create custom audiences and conversions, then use this audience data for retargeting campaigns, excluding converters, or upselling to suitable audiences.”

Key Integration Benefits

• Comprehensive Event Tracking: AnyTrack sends both onsite events (clicks, form submissions) and server-side events (affiliate conversions, ecommerce sales) to Taboola
• Universal Attribution: Conversions are tracked regardless of originating source—Taboola campaigns, other ad networks, or even organic traffic
• Smart Audience Building: All conversion data populates your Taboola audiences automatically, enabling sophisticated targeting and exclusion strategies
• Cross-Platform Insights: See which campaigns drive real results, not just clicks

Step-by-Step Implementation Guide

Step 1: Create Your Taboola Campaign

Content Strategy Develop one high-quality piece of content for Taboola promotion. Think backwards from your buyer’s journey to identify top-of-funnel topics.

Example: If you’re selling premium gold golf clubs, create an article titled “Want a Better Swing? Think Gold!” This primes readers to eventually search for high-end golf equipment.

Campaign Setup Follow Taboola’s campaign creation guide to launch your content promotion.

Pro Tips for Success:

• Know Your Audience Inside Out: Study forums, product reviews, and customer feedback to understand their language and pain points
• Leverage Curiosity: Create headlines that make your audience need to know more
• Master Persuasive Copywriting: Study proven headline formulas that drive clicks

Step 2: Build Custom Audiences in Google Analytics

While you could create remarketing lists directly in Google Ads, Google Analytics offers more sophisticated audience-building capabilities that sync seamlessly with your ad accounts.

Audience Configuration Example:

1. Traffic Source: All visitors from “utm_source=taboola”
2. Content Engagement: Users who visited pages containing your target keyword (e.g., “golf”)
3. Conversion Status: Exclude users who’ve already converted (no need to retarget existing customers)
4. Advanced Segmentation: Include specific event categories like product interest or engagement level

Important Note: Audience creation requires experimentation. Test different rule combinations to understand how they affect audience size and quality.

Once configured, publish your audience to Google Ads. While population may take time, you’ll eventually see your custom audience in Google Ads Audience Manager.

Step 3: Launch Google Retargeting Campaigns

You have two primary options for retargeting:

Display Network: Visual ads across Google’s partner sites Search Network: Text ads triggered by relevant search queries

Recommendation: Start with Search Network campaigns. You’re reaching people actively searching for topics related to your native ad content—the perfect combination of created intent and active research behavior.

Campaign Setup: Create Google Ads campaigns targeting exclusively your custom Taboola audience. This ensures you’re only spending money on users who’ve already shown interest through your content.

Results: What You’ve Accomplished

By following this process, you’ve achieved something most marketers struggle with:

• Created Intent: Used engaging content to generate interest in your topic area
• Captured Behavior: Tracked user actions to build qualified audiences
• Strategic Retargeting: Reached interested users when they’re actively searching for solutions

This represents a fundamental shift from hoping to find interested users to actively creating and nurturing interest.

Advanced Optimization Strategies

Content Iteration: Test different article topics and formats to see what resonates most with your audience. Track not just clicks, but time on page and scroll depth to gauge true engagement.

Audience Refinement: Create multiple audience segments based on specific behaviors (e.g., users who spent 2+ minutes reading vs. quick scanners) for more targeted messaging.

Cross-Platform Synergy: Expand beyond Google to retarget your native traffic on Facebook, LinkedIn, or other platforms where your audience spends time.

The Bigger Picture: From Campaign-Centric to Customer-Centric

This strategy represents more than just a new campaign type—it’s a fundamental shift in how you approach digital marketing.

Traditional “campaign-centric” tracking focuses on individual campaign performance in isolation. This customer-centric approach follows users across their entire journey, enabling sophisticated multi-touch attribution and truly integrated marketing funnels.

The transformation: Instead of running disconnected campaigns across different platforms, you’re orchestrating a cohesive experience that guides prospects from initial interest to final purchase.

Getting Started: Your Next Steps

This marketing flow demonstrates what becomes possible when you control your data instead of being limited by platform silos. With proper tracking and integration, you gain access to marketing capabilities that seemed impossible just a few years ago.

Remember: While powerful, this approach requires experimentation and optimization. Start with one funnel, measure everything, and gradually expand your cross-platform strategy as you identify what works best for your specific audience and offer.

The key is thinking holistically about your customer journey rather than optimizing individual campaigns in isolation. When you connect the dots between platforms, the compound effect can be extraordinary.

Ready to implement? Start by setting up your tracking infrastructure, then create your first piece of intent-generating content. The sooner you begin building these integrated funnels, the sooner you’ll see the compounding benefits of truly customer-centric marketing.