Have you recently spent any time researching a product online that you’ve contemplating purchasing (say digital camera or an airline flight) but just haven’t mustered up enough courage or conviction to click the “buy now” button for it? Or, better yet, find yourself at the cusp of punching in your credit card information to make the buy but, at the last minute, abandon the object of your imminent consumption in the digital shopping cart due to an unexpected distraction or bit of dissonance? Now, has this product subsequently, and somewhat ominously, started to “follow you around” on the Internet? Does it mysteriously, or even annoyingly, begin to appear in display and rich media ads again and again on different websites you’re visiting, some of which you are visiting for the first time and some having nothing to do with the object your were considering buying in the first place? If so, you’re not alone. Welcome to the new age of remarketing.
The New York Times recently ran an exploratory piece on the increasingly common practice of personalized retargeting or remarketing whereby online retailers are attempting to push the envelope towards the holy grail of marketing: showing the right customer the right advertisement at the right time. The practice, which actually entails some legacy Internet technology that has been around for years, involves online websites and retailers placing small text files, or cookies as they’re commonly known, into visitors’ Web browsers. That unique identifier then allows ad networks to associate that Web surfer to the very specific product or type of content he or she was visiting previously and serve up an ad or timely offer that directly leverages that latent intent to buy.
Understandably, this approach, when coupled with additional targeting technologies and approaches such as real-time ad assembly, location-based targeting and price discrimination, promises to boost the efficacy of the sometimes-maligned world of display advertising. In the case of the time-sensitive purchase, such as an airline or concert ticket, the technique can even bring about true utility to the consumer who may need a reminder about the purchase that he or she inevitably has to make. However, this era also marks heightened scrutiny around rising personal information giants such as Facebook and approaches that may abuse personal privacy constructs.
As a result, remarketing as a technique is inevitably drawing the ire of privacy advocates who may call for legislation to regulate and even stem such practices altogether. For as many consumers who may find benefit from remarketing, many others, who are in the dark on why and how certain ads follow them around in the first place, may reasonably denounce the growing practice (and let their congressmen know about it). Marketers and players in the remarketing value chain should take heed, because if the industry does not successfully self-regulate by placing a premium on relevancy (vs. annoyance), educate consumers on how they are being targeted and provide the fundamental option to opt-out of the process altogether, governmental regulation will inevitably follow.
It happened with telemarketing. It happened with e-mail marketing.
All in all, it’s simply the next chapter in the never ending search to strike the right balance between consumers and marketers in the digital world so that consumers “willingly” and, ideally, frictionlessly, give up enough (personal information and preferences to allow for sound targeting and evaluation of demand) to marketers so that marketers can give consumers what they truly want and need only when they need it, to close the loop.
The saga continues.
