Remarketing…Useful Marketing Tool or Cyber Stalking?

Remarketing…What is it?

For those of you who are not familiar with the term, that’s about to change!

Remarketing (also known as Retargeting) allows Google AdWords/AdSense advertisers to target people who previously visited their website (most of which did not make a purchase) with additional and more specific ads as the visitor browses other sites.

So in reality when you are on Facebook, shopping online, doing a bit of research or whatever you like to do online you will notice an ad following you wherever you go, from one page to the next.

I first experienced this after I had been looking up holidays and accommodation on booking.com. Myself and my friend Orla spent a good hour delving into Greek holidays. We had a nose around at special offers and cool places to go. As soon as we discontinued the search we resorted back to Facebook to snoop around… as you do!
Within seconds advertisements for hotels in Greece started showing up on the page as well as suggested likes relating to holidays in Greece and so on and so forth. My instant reaction was “WOW! that’s the exact one we were looking at a minute ago!.. Oh, there’s the other one I forgot to click onto.” However, Orla’s reaction was not so pleasant. “That’s just creepy, we’re being stalked by booking.com!”. It is plain to see from both of our reactions that everyone feels differently about remarketing.

Agree to Disagree

Personally I think it is a useful tool. However, I do think it is slightly over used and tends to bombard customers. On initialisation with remarketing I found it very interesting , but when the same ads kept following me around I soon began to ignore them. This repetitiveness can cause remarketing to become less effective. I think remarketing should most definitely be used to target consumers but maybe in a more efficient way such as targeting consumers who visited the booking part of the website or added a shopping item to their trolley. Not always following the regular consumer who visits the page. Most people who visit websites are not frequent users  and you may turn them off returning! I think with a few adjustments, remarketing will be here to stay and most certainly continue to push sales! Another blog I read about remarketing had some very interesting points, have a read if you care to find out more.

For those of you who now understand remarketing, enjoy watching out for the ads that are about to pop up and follow your every move 😉

Thanks for popping bye 🙂