My shopping is haunting me
I never really got to grips with Amazon probably because the first thing I bought was a Hornby train set computer game, as a present you understand. I didn’t buy much else, and years later I was still being compared to train nerds and sent train related recommendations.
However, I am still an advocate of behavioural marketing. Watching what people actually do online has to be more accurate then targeting them based on hard facts like age, gender and location – right? I thought so until the arrival of ad retargeting, now I am wondering. This ad system presents adverts for sites you have visited and shows the actual products you looked at. These ads are getting really good measurable results at the moment and ever more high street brands are flocking to use them, but they worry me a little for the longer term and their impact on how we feel about a brand. What about the much higher number of people who didn’t click the ad? Are they being reminded of a negative experience with the brand rather than a positive one?
I have had some mixed experiences with these ads so far myself, mainly because my laptop isn’t 100% personal. Firstly, my son and I at Christmas were presented with an ad that was totally loaded with his Santa list, which he noticed of course. Then there was the time I was showing one of our technology clients a topical news article at the end of a meeting and the ad next to it was for the knickers I had decided not to buy. Let’s hope for now that he doesn’t know about retargeted ads! Then there is the awful dress which isn’t giving me a good feeling about one of my favourite clothing brands. And, Habitat I really don’t want the bobbly bath mats you have been showing me on Hotmail for weeks thankyou, because I already bought one in store and if you are going to get this personal it feels like you should know that!
These ads are undoubtedly successful because they prompt those who genuinely abandoned their shopping process for some reason. But people are rounded and often a bit peculiar in their buying processes, picking up information from multiple sources and making decisions in complex ways that we can’t yet fully predict. I agree 100% that it makes sense to target ads towards people who have already recently visited a site, but I wonder if a softer version of the ads would be just as successful. Representing actual products viewed is very personal and maybe some people just aren’t ready for that.
… and one last point, these ads, whatever the brand, they all look pretty similar don’t they?