
How Ad Retargeting Ruined Christmas - adamcarson
http://marketingland.com/how-ad-retargeting-ruined-christmas-68708?
======
brandnewlow
I run a retargeting company and this annoys me too!

The reason this stuff happens is because many players in the space soak up
advertiser spend by not immediately opting users out of product retargeting
campaigns after a purchase is made. The advertisers don't always know to ask
for this and the retargeting companies make more money if they don't suggest
it.

These personalized campaigns are so profitable for the advertisers that they
don't notice the extra spend being bled out on people who they shouldn't be
retargeting.

This tends to happen among the big "enterprise" retargeting companies that
serve large online retailers like Macy's. There's so many people involved in
the deals and operations of the campaigns that no one person is there to say,
hey, let's make sure this doesn't happen.

The takeaway: Only work with retargeting vendors that give you control and
visibility into who you're targeting and why! We do this, but so do others.
Not everyone is this lame.

------
crazygringo
Wow... so the publicly-advertised use of Incognito Mode of shopping for
Christmas presents...

...turns out to be true. It's not just for porn after all.

~~~
chasebank
Incognito mode doesn't escape retargeting, at least for adwords / doubleclick.
I work in the space and it's truly a pain to see the 'natural' ads.

~~~
dunham
What about multiple "users" in Chrome? If you go to the settings page, you can
add additional "users" and then open a window as another "user" using the icon
in the upper right corner.

Each user gets their own profile: cache, cookies, history, saved data,
extensions, etc. The only thing shared should be IP address and user agent.
(Unless the user infects the profile with a url that identifies them.)

I use this for testing, isolating my facebook profile, and isolating all of my
banking sessions from my main browsing window. (Just in case they have a CSRF
issue.)

~~~
brokenparser
You can do the same thing with Firefox if you pass the -ProfileManager
argument. This functionality goes back all the way to Netscape:
[http://www.netfaqs.com/macintosh/mail/Classic/Netscape/4/pro...](http://www.netfaqs.com/macintosh/mail/Classic/Netscape/4/profiles/index.asp)

It's just been hidden (and there's no need to set up email).

------
PhasmaFelis
So, retargeting is the process of focusing all advertising efforts on selling
you something that you've already bought?

Marketing people are like aliens.

~~~
indspenceable
No - it focuses advertising efforts on people who have visited your website.
So, you look at a jacket, but then aren't sure you want to buy it, retargeting
makes you see that jacket again and again until you change your mind. Then you
keep seeing it anyway.

~~~
derefr
You know, I'd almost be willing to give ad companies access to my credit card
statements, so they'd _know_ when I bought something and _stop_ telling me to
buy it.

And I bet ad companies realize this. This privacy-invasion paradigm is only
getting started.

~~~
TylerE
Netflix is a big offender here.

------
jeza
I find retargeting creepy to the point that I installed an adblocker. The
first time I noticed it, was when I booked a holiday to New Zealand and paid a
deposit to hire a camper van online. Suddenly started noticing ads for that
company everywhere online, where as previously I hadn't noticed any. Even
after I came back they persisted for a while but eventually ceased. When in
reality I'm unlikely to repurchase something like that for another 1-5 years.

~~~
woud420
It will usually last 30 days.

------
ben1040
I didn't know retargeting existed until a few years ago when a family member
died. I had pulled up the website for a cremation service provider to look up
their number, so I could pass it along to the person in the family who was
making arrangements.

For the following week, more than half of the Google ad banners I saw all over
the web were for the cremation company. Even on things that were _completely_
unrelated, like an Android developer blog. I could reload over and over again
and I kept seeing ads for that company. I cleared cookies and it went away,
and that's when I realized they were specifically sending me that ad because
of an original visit to that website.

To me it really seemed insensitive on the part of the cremation company for
them to have bought retargeted ads. You'd have to think that more often than
not, people visiting your site have just lost of a loved one. Is it really the
best thing to remind them of it on every subsequent website they visit?

------
henryw
More reason to justify the use of the AdBlock browser extension.

~~~
aspensmonster
I can't wait for the day Firefox bakes it into the browser.

~~~
colmvp
Serious question: What's stopping them from doing so?

~~~
jeorgun
I'd imagine he only reason adblocking is still as effective as it is is
because it's used by so small a number of users. If it would ship by default,
advertisers would have a much greater incentive to work around it, and ruin it
even for the small minority of people using it now.

------
bsirkia
Interesting, I never considered how that could spoil the surprise. I guess the
most straightforward solution is to do private browsing when shopping for
gifts. Pretty annoying since it won't have any of your saved data (logins,
saved forms, etc.) but you don't have to worry about the ads.

~~~
shurcooL
Isn't gift shopping one of the first reasons given for the use of incognito
mode?

~~~
calbear81
That ones gonna go over well.

"Honey, why is your browser on incognito mode?" "Uh, yeah I was shopping for
gifts. That's it. "

~~~
shurcooL
A browser can't be in incognito mode; only a browser window can. You're
supposed to close it when you're done.

~~~
pseut
For mobile safari, the browser goes into incognito mode.

------
Groxx
Seriously, why would you click _inside_ an ad to _turn it off_? That's the
kind of behavior that gets you _even more_ "one weird trick" and flashing
"millionth visitor this second" ads that follow you around everywhere. I
probably would've gone another year or more without knowing what that stupid
triangle was for.

~~~
gohrt
What do you mean "even more"?

If you turn off targeted ads, then you get more untargeted ads. Is that what
you were saying?

~~~
Groxx
I mean that if you click on an ad, you tend to get more of that kind of ad.
And since ads routinely have misleading UI, I wouldn't expect clicking on an
ad to let me turn it off / make it less annoying.

------
mattmcknight
Seeing an ad for something doesn't make me assume someone else bought one for
me.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
But if you see lots of ads for that thing [on a shared internet connection]
then it might now?

~~~
mattmcknight
No, probably not. Even then, do I remember or notice what ads I am seeing? I
think this is more of a fear in the mind of the buyer that will almost never
be realized.

------
brc
The crazy thing for me is that i keep getting advertised with my own products.
Just a bit of bug-finding on the company site, and voila! that's all I see, no
matter where I go.

The funny thing is when people with no clue about how internet advertising
works, and they rage at a site for advertising something. Something like 'I
cannot believe your site has ads for XYZ! That is outrageous and
hypocritical!'. When there is a good chance they have been shopping for XYZ
themselves, and that's why the ad popped up.

~~~
andygates
That's not how advertising _works_ , it's how advertising is insane and
_broken_.

------
vinkelhake
An easy solution is just to use different profiles. Chrome supports having
different users on the same browser. I use this feature at work to keep corp
and private profiles separate.

------
theandrewbailey
I recently bought some underwear. A day or so later, I noticed men's underwear
ads on Youtube, and declared "damn you, Google!" I eventually had to search
for and watch other topics, like Call of Duty, to make them go away faster.

------
dschiptsov
"This holiday season is one more reason to cry")

