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Is Remarketing a ‘Nuisance’ or ‘Intrusive’? What Do You Think?

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By Helen Brown

Advertising your products and services is the definitive way of getting your message out there, ‘shouting loud’ about unique selling points and offers is what makes sellers stand out from the competition after all. But exactly at what point does this all become a nuisance to consumers? How do people feel about all of the ads that are pushed into their lives every day? and do our consumers understand how sophisticated online advertising has become?

When the ability to remarket ads to audiences became available a few years ago, there were a considerable number of large companies who jumped in to road test the new feature. Many companies reported that they had found the method effective and were receiving a higher number of conversions and view through conversions than before they had implemented the technique. Independent studies, such as the Network Advertising Initiative’s also revealed that behaviorally-targeted ads are “more than twice as valuable, twice as effective as non-targeted online ads”*.

* source: http://www.networkadvertising.org/pdfs/NAI_Beales_Release.pdf

Remarketing – The ‘For’ opinion

This past weekend I was having coffee with a friend, we were also online browsing various clothing sites. My friend was puzzled when, after an earlier conversation on how I had been browsing holidays in an attempt to make my mind up on a destination, she could see ads about lots of holidays. She commented on the coincidence and I demonstrated the point by navigating away from the particular clothing site to a popular auction site where, again she was amazed to see ads at the top of the page showing the outfit we had previously viewed on the clothing site. She was completely unaware that this type of advertising existed and was amazed, she was not at all bothered or offended by it.

Remarketing – The ‘Against’ Opinion

However, I recently read a comment on an online forum from a user who thought that remarketing was ‘creepy’ and invasive. The forum user found it offensive that a marketer could ‘push’ their ads upon him after he had left the site he was previously browsing. I can also kind of understand a person having this opinion too, and I know that this feeling is widespread amongst other internet users. I also happened to touch on the subject with another tech orientated friend who, as it turned out, was rather irritated about remarketing in general. He got very fired up about the whole subject of tracking cookies etc in general (a quick change of subject was needed there!)

It would seem that opinions vary widely on this matter. When you consider it from a users perspective, it must seem a little strange to be blasted with ads relevant to a specific site after visiting it and navigating away. I also understand that users could feel that some sites are not very upfront about this. After all, the law relating to this states that any website using this kind of technique must clearly state so in their privacy policy. How many of us actually stop and read the privacy policy? There is a lot of information on the web about this, and I’m not just talking about remarketing campaign information written for advertisers to incorporate the technique into their strategy, but also information for the general internet browser/shopper. Sites like  http://www.allaboutcookies.org, http://www.networkadvertising.org and http://www.worldprivacyforum.org give lots of general information and perspective about how all of this works and also offer information into opting out of this kind of tracking if a user wants to.

Advertisers would argue the point that they use frequency capping and remarketing lists to control how ‘persistent’ their ads are. I personally don’t see any harm in remarketing when advertisers control the duration and frequency of their ads in a sensible fashion, I think what people find annoying is when they see the ads for months on end. Admittedly, I have an understanding of how it all works and I do find it interesting, but I have personally clicked a few remarketing ads myself and ended up buying after I had originally navigated away from the site. The ads did what they were supposed to do which was to get me to buy, I don’t object to that or feel harassed by it.
I think the debate really starts when people become alarmed at the thought of someone tracking their ‘personal preferences’ and how this could allow advertisers to ‘build up a profile’ over time.

I’ve recently read a piece on The World Privacy Forum about ‘unhealthy cookies’, that is, how ‘persistent’ and ‘profiling’ cookies can be an issue over time.  The article states that these types of cookies can last years on an unaware users browser and can allow big companies to build up quite a personal profile of a user, if the user does not clear the cookies from their browser once every now and then. That in my opinion is quite a scary thought, we all like our privacy and like to know who knows all about us. We are entitled to restrict what information others can collect about us. The page detailed ways that a user can use ‘opt out’ cookies, or ways to prevent such cookies being installed on their browsers.

So, Is remarketing a nuisance or intrusive, what do you think?


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