If you’ve noticed recently that the vast majority of the ads you’re seeing on sites that use Google’s Adsense programme for their advertising slots are for the same company? You’re probably being ‘retargeted‘ (remarketed in Google’s parlance) to.
What is retargeting?
Say you go to a website, in my case, Mydomain.com. You look around, but don’t buy anything on that visit (I was just checking my account). Shortly thereafter you’re browsing the web and you start to notice banner ads for that website. Everywhere. You’ve been retargeted. How this works, technically, is the advertiser (mydomain.com for example) has a bit of javascript code on their website that tells Google Adwords that they’d like to retarget you – putting you onto a list that forms a target-able audience in the Adwords interface. Subsequently whenever you’re on a Google ‘content network’ site (site with AdSense) you might see these ads.
Why am I seeing these same ads so often?
Simple – content network bids are often notoriously low, whereas a the retargeting advertiser figures that as a relatively warm prospect, you’re worth a fair bit to them if they can get you back and close the sale.
So what’s the problem?
I’m not that bothered about the behavioural tracking aspect of this particular instance, after all I did go to the mydomain.com website but say a jewellery store was doing this: you’re shopping around for an engagement ring to surprise your girlfriend, then suddenly almost everywhere you go on the web is plastered with jewellery ads. I’m pretty sure there are more acute examples too.
As a user, how do I make it stop?
You don’t (well you can, you can delete the relevant cookie, if you can find it, that is your retargeting identifier, or use your browser’s private browsing feature when going to websites you don’t ever want to see ads from). The little ‘i’ image that appears on the ad to tell you more is really just pitching Google’s Adwords and Adsense services to you. You can complain about a specific ad, but even that isn’t made easy, the feedback form doesn’t carry through the details of the ad or publisher site that you have an issue with.
As an advertiser should I get into retargeting?
I haven’t tried this for a client yet, and it’s a new Adwords feature just out of beta (late March 2010). My guess is that you can fairly cheaply reacquire visitors who may have forgotten to bookmark your site. Whether you can then get them to take the action you wanted is another matter. In the case of mydomain.com, I’m already a customer, I’ll go back them if I need. Maybe the problem is it isn’t easy for an advertiser to take people off a retargeting list once they get on there, or for a user to get themselves off that list.
Want to know more?
If you’re curious to learn more Google have some reasonably detailed information in their Adwords Help center.
