The fine folks over at The New York Times caught on to a disturbing new e-marketing trend, that’s only about, oh, 5 years old at this point. Yep, they’ve got their sights set on all things retargeting, from generalized behavior tactics to single product strategies. Reporters Miguel Helft and Tanzania Vega at least admit that this headline is a bit outdated, but they don’t let this fact get in the way of their story.
They begin with the tale of a woman who felt as though she were being stalked by a pair of shoes from shopping mega-site Zappos.com. Surely everyone can relate to her experience. You’re scoping out a few items of interest online, or searching for a specific product on Google. You find what you’re looking for, but don’t end up buying it. You leave the site only to see ads for the website, subject matter, or particular thing…..everywhere.
As a short experiment, I mimicked the woman’s actions by going on Zappos and checking out their selection of women’s Vans, which pretty much sucked. Why not buy them from Vans.com like any sane person would do? Anyway, I clicked on a couple of pairs, and then left Zappos to peak at my work email account, personal gmail, Google, and the Huffington Post. I got bupkis. No ads, anywhere. Now I know this would have worked if I’d have tried it from my home computer. Apparently the IT guy has disabled tracking cookies on my office computer in an effort to sabotage today’s blog post.
A quick glance into my privacy settings confirms my suspicions. He’s definitely got it in for me.
*Update* I altered my privacy settings to low, which accepts any old cookie someone tosses at me. Repeated process; no dice. Today’s post qualifies as epic failage, although it serves to point out that retargeting can be blocked by changing your user settings. Let my fail be a lesson to you. Heck, you outta thank me for helping you stay one step ahead of the evil advertisers.
Never mind.
But I know the lady’s not exaggerating because this has happened to me countless times before. Nearly every shopping site employs tracking cookies for retargeting purposes these days, and even Congress is getting butt hurt over their prevalence. As the article explains, advertisers consider retargeting the greatest thing since Ronald Regan and it won’t go away without serious governmental action. In other words, get used to marketers invading your privacy because no one really gives a shit about consumer concerns. Tons of studies have revealed that consumers consider retargeting unquestionably sinister, and yet the practice is becoming more prevalent. For concrete proof that retargeting isn’t going anywhere, simply look to Google’s own AdSense network. They decided to utilize tracking technology last year. Since that time, the happy couple has married and moved to the suburbs. Rumor has it they’ve settled down to raise a family of creepy commercial crap.
According to The Times, the Senate is aghast over behavioral retargeting only. It’s difficult to measure which retargeting technique is the most frightening, but the behavioral variety tops privacy advocate’s lists. Nevertheless, the chances of the Senate instituting meaningful regulations on Google’s sweetheart are about as high as Ron Paul’s chances of wrestling the White House out from under Obama’s death grip. The phrase slim to none comes to mind….