Have you come across those ads which seem to appear on siets you visit and often relate to sites you visit. Well, I have and I thought I’d share one of them with you. I was on the EasyJet website yesterday looking for flights to Madrid (for those who know me, where else would I be going!).
A little while later I picked up a Tweet from someone on my Twitter stream which linked to a mobile photo they had uploaded on yfrog. On arriving on the yfrog site I found that they were displaying flights to Madrid for the same period that I was thinking of going.
If I’m right these ads were being delivered through Google’s Advertising network.
Spooky? Yes and no. Welcome to the world of behavioural targeting or retargeting. Here’s the wikipedia definition of it:
Retargeting helps companies advertise to website visitors who leave without a conversion — about 98% of all web traffic. This is done by displaying ads to the prospect as they surf the internet via various ad networks that the agency buys media from on behalf of their Business Customers. Retargeting is only serving banner ads to people who have shown at least some amount of engagement in your brand.
I’m not sure how all of this sits with the new EU legislation which was supposed to come into effect in May of this year which required companies (5 EU countries have implemented it including the UK).
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