Google Adwords Remarketing: Behavioral Targeting

This week Google Adwords announced that it is rolling out a feature called "Remarketing". This feature is essentially "Retargeting" which I described in my blog post Retargeting 101

How does it work?

You visit a site, look at some products, maybe add some of the products to the shopping cart but then decide not to buy them because you need some more time to think about it. You close your browser and are done with that site. Few minutes later you go back to your computer and browse to another site, say a news site. As the page of that site loads so does an Ad that is from the site that you visited yesterday (where you looked at some products but did not buy). For Google Remarketing to work, the news site will need to be a part of Google content network.

So far Google used to show Adsense ads based on the content of the page but now it will start showing ads that match the interest of the person viewing the page (as identified by a cookie and retargeted by a marketer).

Example

Neel visited Netflix. He looked at the site but decided that he is not going to become a member at that time. He went back to his work and completely forgot about Netflix, maybe because he got a movie from Redbox.

Few minutes later he gets back on his computer and browses to a site to read about Indian Food Recipe. This site happens to be a part of Google content network. Even though the content that Neel is reading has nothing to do with the movies, Google’s remarketing shows him a Netflix ad.

What is happening behind the scene?

Note: This is a hypothetical example and I am not sure if Netflix is really participating in the Google Adwords Remarketing.

Netflix, which participates (let's assume) in Google Adwords decides to remarket to people who had visited Netflix in past but did not sign up for the service. Netflix decides to use Google Adwords new "Remarketing" feature for this remarketing.

Netflix sets up a remarketing campaign in Google Adwords. Netflix puts a JavaScript from Google Adwords on its pages to identify those people (audience) whom it wants to remarket i.e. people who came to the site but did not sign up for the service. This JavaScript lets Google know which cookies belong to the audience segment that Netflix wants to target. When Google comes across a person (cookie), who belongs to the audience segment that Netflix wants to remarket, on its content network, it will show them a Netflix ad (remarketing ad) instead of an ad that matches the content of the page the person is on.

I speculated this in 2007

In 2007, I speculated that Google will roll out something along these lines. I highly encourage you to read the following blog post as I think there is more to come from Google on Remarketing and Behavioral Targeting.

• Google and Behavioral Targeting
• Google and Behavioral Targeting Part II
• Google Analytics Data Sharing

And some more Google related posts: All about Google

Comment? Questions?

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Google Officially Begins Behavioral Targeting

In March of 2007 I wrote that Google should enter behavioral targeting and I even predicted that it will. Guess what? On Wednesday (March 11, 2009) Google officially announced that it will start “Interest Based Advertising” (which is also called “Behavioral Targeting”). Google has tried Behavioral Targeting in past and started talking about ad personalization, but this is the first time it officially announced that it will start Behavioral Targeting.

In my post titled Google and Behavioral Targeting I wrote:

“I think it is a matter of time when Google start connecting the dots and announce it’s entry into Behavioral Targeting. They might call it something else but at the core it will be leveraging the visitors’ behavior all across the web to better target ad on its network.”

At this point I am not clear on where Google will collect this data from. I encourage you to read my blog post to see what sort of data Google can potentially use for Behavioral targeting.
Google’s large footprint (e.g. Google Search, Google Analytics, Adsense, Adwords, AdManager, Google Checkout, Blogger and list goes on) will surely draw privacy concerns with this announcement.

According to Informationweek.com:

“To counter potential criticism, Google has taken steps to offer some transparency into how it delivers ads and to give consumers some measure of choice, and control. It has, however, made one important choice for its users by forcing them to opt out of behavioral ads rather than inviting them to opt in.

Google provides information about how it serves ads through the Ads By Google link that accompanies Google ads. It also created a tool called the Ads Preference Manager, which allows users to "view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you." And it provides users with the option to opt out from the receiving the AdSense/DoubleClick cookies used to track user interests. “

The thing that really bugs me is that by default all the visitors (who visit any site that uses Google products such as adsense and maybe Google Analytics) and all the sites (publishers using Google products) are automatically opted-in to share their data with Google for targeting.
Visitors (like you and me) and publisher (like me - I use Google Analytics and Adsense and this blog is on blogger) will have to take an extra step to opt out. For visitors this opt-out will work via cookie and if they delete the cookie they will be opted back in. (See my post on How to Opt out of Behavioral Targeting Networks).

As I say in all my presentations on Behavioral Targeting - "It's a Targeted Targeted Targeted Targeted World". You will be Targeted.

Other blog post on this topic that you might be interested in:

• Google and Behavioral Targeting Part II


• Google and Behavioral Targeting Part III – Google Buys Doubleclick

Comments? Questions?

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