Effective or CREEPY?

[turboguy]

In the thread about houses Howard said

"Interesting. Is it any creepier than when ads follow you around the internet based on something you've searched for?"

A few months ago I had a company trying to sell me a service that did exactly that. Basically if someone searched for my product and visited my website it would post ads that followed them around to other sites they visited.

So, my question is how do you see something like that. Is it an effective way to keep your product in front of qualified prospects and could be an effective use of my advertising money or is it something that people would think was creepy and might just upset them enough that you would never sell them anything.

Just for the record I didn't sign up for it but I am sure they will call back.

[TonyPayat]

Its all based on browser cookies. Everytime you visit a website, it stores a "cookie" on your computer. Other websites can read those "cookies" on present ads to you based on other sites you visit.

For example, go to Amazon.com and look at some products.
Now log into Facebook and you'll notice ads for some of those products you were looking at.

It might be effective, but a lot of people have programmed their brains to ignore sidebar ads.

[Freelancier]

I use adblock, so I rarely see any ads. But my test site here for one of my clients is unblocked so I can make sure that I can see how things are going to look in real time. What's funny is that when I look at this site, the ads that get brought up are for ANOTHER of my clients. They're both in a similar market, so not that big a stretch, but what are the odds that I'll see one client's ads on a test server for the other client's site?

Or are they just following me when I work on both of their live sites? And how is this different from stalking?

[vangogh]

I don't pay much attention to ads online in general. I tend to find retargeted ads on the creepy side, though don't go by me. I think they generally work well. Someone is thinking about buying something and they get reminders all day or however long the ad follows them. It can be creepy when you land on a site you didn't intend to visit or was about something you weren't expecting. Then it's weird to have those ads follow you around.

From what I've heard they seem to work well enough and I don't think it's creepy to the point where people would stay away from your business.

[billbenson]

I kind of look at them as just being targeted ads. Annoying, but that's what we all try to do.

[Business Attorney]

I wouldn't mind so much if the targeting wasn't so aggressive. I've gone to a site or looked at product or service and it seems that half the ads I see for the next several days are pushing that product or service. They are usually Google Ads so I imagine that the real culprit is Google AdSense's algorithm pushing the ads that are most likely to get clicked. If the ads popped up maybe 1 in 20 times, I wouldn't be so bothered but there have been times when I am on a page and all three banner ads from Google are showing ads from the same advertiser of a product or service I recently considered.

[Douglas F. Farrell]

I'm using remarketing in the marketing campaigns for my business, but at the same time, I use AdBlock :) I don't see anything wrong in remarketing if it's used properly and not annoyingly, but such approach requires experience and some sense of tact

[Harold Mansfield]

I understand it. Sometimes even marvel at it. It doesn't actually bother me as much as it used to.
These days I use a VPN to block my IP address so that I can't be tracked. It has pretty much stopped the ads from following me around.

[KristineS]

We tried it with our business once. No one complained, or seemed annoyed by it, but it didn't really seem to generate any additional business either.

Truthfully, I think most people don't know what retargeting is or how it works, so they probably don't connect seeing a lot of ads from a particular company as something that particular company has deliberately done. If they think anything, they probably just think the company in question must be spending a lot of money to be seen everywhere like that.

[billbenson]

Amazon is always doing it. In some aspects it's a convenience. I might be searching for something but not buy it. Different websites may give me product suggestions that are helpful.

[vangogh]

they probably don't connect seeing a lot of ads from a particular company as something that particular company has deliberately done

I think that's why they might be seen as creepy. If you don't make the connection you might wonder what's going on and why some ad is following you around. I suspect once people notice they figure it's some company following them and they'll likely assume it's the company in the ad.

I don't think it's a huge issue. Personally, I don't care to be tracked that way. As a business owner I understand why it's done. I don't see it going away, when you consider it drives the business model of some very large companies. Besides the generations behind mine grew up with this stuff more than I did and consider it a normal part of life online. Many prefer targeted and retargeted ads to random ones.

[Brian Altenhofel]

Retargeting is definitely an effective strategy, though it really needs to be improved. For example, a few minutes before coming here today I logged into my PagerDuty account. Right now, I'm looking at an ad above this box trying to get me to sign up for PagerDuty. Ideally, I should not see that ad. If I do see an ad, I should see something trying to entice me to upgrade accounts.

Content surfacing, especially on e-commerce sites, works in a similar manner. However, the recommendation engines behind those seem to be more advanced than the engines behind ad retargeting, or perhaps it's because they readily have access to better data. Don't you love it when you go to an online retailer's website and the item you were shopping for just happens to be front and center?

[CardSSmile]

preatty creppy.. must say :)

[shawn.griggs]

This is current marketing. It's not creepy at all (to marketers). To the customers it is a little bit, but think back to your last purchase if you were advertised to on Facebook through someone say Zappos, it had exactly what you wanted and even gave you recommendations. As Marketers, there are so many tools available to us nowadays and this is one of them. This is an effective way of advertising, and this is something any smart marketer should do.

[rcalie]

I actually thought this would be about the Burger King or the new Col. Sanders.

[99social]

I don't pay much attention to ads online in general. I tend to find retargeted ads on the creepy side, though don't go by me. I think they generally work well. Someone is thinking about buying something and they get reminders all day or however long the ad follows them. It can be creepy when you land on a site you didn't intend to visit or was about something you weren't expecting. Then it's weird to have those ads follow you around.

From what I've heard they seem to work well enough and I don't think it's creepy to the point where people would stay away from your business.

I do think they are effective, and while some people might find them a little creepy - like vangogh said, I don't think it would steer people away. It's nice to have targeted ads, because you're that much more likely to have that consumer purchase something that you know they at least sought out once.