View Full Version : internet: retargeting / remarketing
Seems some advertising systems are going a little overboard on targeting you online based on prior behavior.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/technology/30adstalk.html
Coincidentally, the NYTimes seems to support this type of system itself, though the article does not disclose that.
On my iPad, I had been to Brownells earlier in the day yesterday in order to get a phone number to tell a customer on the phone who was looking for some factory shotgun parts.
Later I was reading news and went to an article on the NYTimes. This is the screen I was on.
http://www.eguns.com/NYTBrownells.PNG
At first what struck me about this was the "gun" ad from Brownells on the NY Times. Imagine that!!! Then today when I read the retargeting article I understood better what had happened. This was a soft case of retargeting.
You've never heard of GoogleSense? That's all it does. Tracks your cookies and places those ads in the ad boxes on pages that use their ad trackers. Been going on for years.
You've never heard of GoogleSense? That's all it does. Tracks your cookies and places those ads in the ad boxes on pages that use their ad trackers. Been going on for years.
You mean AdSense from Google? That is something else. That puts up ads based on the content you are looking at. Ie, if you are on a page about surfing (like I was), it would put up surfing related ads, or ads about North Carolina (in this case).
Retargeting is taking something you were looking at on a different page, in my example, Brownells, and having Brownells ads follow you around the internet. Did you read the article link? They had some more extreme examples.
Sorry, meant Google AdSense, and I've seen computer related ads follow me to news sites or online shopping sites for (what seems like) years, being I build and shop for computer parts all the time. It's all related to cookies. It is a bit more intrusive now, which kinda blows my mind being I've usually already bought what they're putting in ad spots. Seems kinda dumb to re-advertise something someones already bought.
You can turn off cookies, but many sites do not function without the acceptance of their cookies.
This is nothing new and is entirely avoidable if you're internet savvy.
It also only works within advertising rings, meaning the site you go to after leaving the advertiser's site has to have a marketing agreement with the site you left.
This stuff has been around for years.
FromMyColdDeadHand
09-02-10, 13:59
Chad- Uhm, you read the NYT???
Should I worry about all the e-harmony ads that come up on my wife's laptop when I use it?
This is nothing new and is entirely avoidable if you're internet savvy.
Actually what they were talking about in the linked article is pretty new. Last year or two or so mainly. The TECHNOLOGY and abstract methods behind it are not new. People have been using cookies and third party cookies to track interests across websites and put up general ads that coincide to your interests, as they have figured them to be at least based on what you visit on the web, for a long time. But to target specific things, the detail of the retargeting, is new. To be able to come back and keep putting up an ad for the same pair of shoes or same pair of pants that you put in a shopping cart but never checked out on, across multiple websites. That is new and what this article was about.
It also only works within advertising rings, meaning the site you go to after leaving the advertiser's site has to have a marketing agreement with the site you left.
Most of the display ad stuff on the web is controlled by a few large companies. You are right, it only works across websites that use the same ad providers. There are not that many ad providers out there at the core (in terms of infrastructure)
This stuff has been around for years.
See above.
Chad- Uhm, you read the NYT???
Only when a link shows up in news.google.com that looks interesting. I don't go to the times website to browse or anything. They long ago became uninteresting as a provider of news since most of it is tainted by propaganda.
Should I worry about all the e-harmony ads that come up on my wife's laptop when I use it?
don't ask
Actually what they were talking about in the linked article is pretty new. Last year or two or so mainly. The TECHNOLOGY and abstract methods behind it are not new. People have been using cookies and third party cookies to track interests across websites and put up general ads that coincide to your interests, as they have figured them to be at least based on what you visit on the web, for a long time. But to target specific things, the detail of the retargeting, is new. To be able to come back and keep putting up an ad for the same pair of shoes or same pair of pants that you put in a shopping cart but never checked out on, across multiple websites. That is new and what this article was about.
Again, this technology has been around for quite some time, maybe not as a commercial service, but I've been writing scripts that do this for our networks for going on 5 years now. This new "re-targetting" only differs in that it's a commercial service that's streamlined with 3rd party apps so your average Joe can buy into these "network rings" with nothing more than a credit card and a sidebar banner. We had a meeting with an outside party about 6 months ago in which they offered to provide this service for us and, at it's core, it's the same technology that we use.
Any coder that could write Javascript and had access to server-side scripting methods could and did use targetting. The only thing functionally different is the evolvement of the networks of sites that work together. Well, that and the fact that it was previously limited only to developers who were smart enough to know how to do this (which cost a pretty penny back before 2006-2007 or so); now anyone can. That's the only difference.
Again, this technology has been around for quite some time, maybe not as a commercial service, but I've been writing scripts that do this for our networks for going on 5 years now. This new "re-targetting" only differs in that it's a commercial service that's streamlined with 3rd party apps so your average Joe can buy into these "network rings" with nothing more than a credit card and a sidebar banner.
Previously it was limited only to developers who were smart enough to know how to do this (which cost a pretty penny); now anyone can. That's the only difference.
Never mind. You are missing the point.
The fact is that this level of "retargeting" is pretty new. Your scripts I bet did not do this sort of thing (target to the detail that they are now), though if you had had the data available you could of figured it out I am sure.
What has been done for a long time is to do multi site cookies that track you, and if you visited some car sites, start putting car ads up in front of you as you visited different sites. The difference is that now they are tracking that you were looking at the BMW 325i or whatever and are putting up specific BMW 325i ads in front of you. Or that pair of VERTX pants that you looked at and did not buy -- now those same pair of pants are following you around the web. IN the old days, you would be getting 511 or whatever ads -- same genre, but generic genre ads. Now they are putting the exact same item up in front of you. That is new (last year or two). I don't argue that the cookie technology and following people from site to site has been around a long while. It is the detailed implementations that they are starting to use now that is new.
And I am not some dumb non computer guy. And I have been involved with the internet for a long time (saw my first web browser back around 93 at a university lab where a bunch of us from WordPerfect had been invited to come see the latest technology). I have been a SW engineer working since 1988 (though the last several years only for my own projects as I was doing eguns.com) and have run a small hosting company since 1997. I have been involved in various website development and hosting at all levels many times and even hosted a web analytics company for a short while as they got started.
Any coder that could write Javascript and had access to server-side scripting methods could and did use targetting. The only thing functionally different is the evolvement of the networks of sites that work together. Well, that and the fact that it was previously limited only to developers who were smart enough to know how to do this (which cost a pretty penny back before 2006-2007 or so); now anyone can. That's the only difference.
Implementation is everything. Be able to and actually doing it.
I have always known that this was done, but I will say in the past few weeks the ad relevance has increased big time.
Ad networks have more data on the general public than the feds. Hell they could probably tell you where OBL is hiding :blink:
I know of a few companies I can purchase information such as your ex-gf, favorite sports teams, places you've eaten in the last week, friends & relatives, sites you visit, where you live, what kind of car you drive, etc etc. And they have detailed information on 100,000,000's of users. It's big money, and the reason google offers so much free shit.
Also the shit you do offline is becoming part of your online presence, look at the stupid shit like foursquare. People just don't give two shits about privacy any longer.
Preferred User
09-02-10, 18:46
Mostly made possible by "super cookies". Check out THIS (http://www.fightidentitytheft.com/blog/new-breed-super-cookie-defies-removal-almost) article from just over a year ago. An explanation from Adobe HERE (http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/articles/lso/). If you use Firefox you can control LSOs with THIS (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/) Add-on.
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