In Defense of Remarketing

Well, that's constructive

Seen tonight in my feed: a "Green Eggs and Ham" style illustration sequence, from a UK content provider, of how everyone hates remarketing.

Sigh. Well, once more into the fray, dear friends.

First off, the linguist in me hates the laziness. If you make universal generalizations about people in any grouping, you are on the express train to Idiot Town, and that train is making no stops. Doing the same thing with a business practice is no better. Be more exact in your ranting.

Secondly, the sentiment it fails on the metrics. If people hated remarketing more than untargeted advertising, it would not be a business, let alone a multiplier on performance metrics. Feel free to slip in the old adage of the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. Higher performance is not consistent with hate, especially in a maturing market.

Next, the statement assumes that all remarketing is executed the same, or that the practice is such a universal commodity that it can be summed up without any kind of qualifier in regards to creative execution, publisher mix, dynamic recs, and so on. I would argue that if you are remarketing the same for 0 to 3 day as you might 3 to 7, 7 to 14, 14 to 30 and 30+... well, that's remarketing that everyone should hate. Because no one should like to see money left on the table, let alone a sledgehammer approach to brand and offer awareness. (Small aside: why is it OK to see a million replays of the same ad offline, but not online? Ah, right, branding.) If you can honor where your prospect is in the buying cycle, you should. Any competent remarketer should let you do that.

And finally... well, this is something of a good news moment, because it avoids a problem that has been plaguing display ads, especially in RTB platforms, but to hate remarketing, you have to see it. Which means the ads are not appearing below the fold, on bot sites, or to hacked machines where it all adds up to Not Seen By A Human Traffic.

Nevertheless, let us take away the core of the complaint, and edit it to something that is more accurate. Many people are annoyed by remarketing. That's something we can all agree on, right? Well, actually, not me, because it falls back into the status quo issue. To wit... no one is bothered by untargeted ads with weak frequency, because no one notices those ads in the first place. And we're back to that indifference moment.

Remarketing ads, when they are noticed, work because they are graphically relevant to the user. If the advertiser is executing beyond a static and sad level (i.e., no variation on recency), they can easily deliver different offers and dynamic products, and potentially delight a user that was on the fence, or now finding a better deal. When they do not work, it is because the user is out of cycle for the advertiser, but the remarketing / RTB buyer does not know enough to turn off the frequency. (Also, that the industry has not done enough to publicize how Ghostery watermarks work to turn off a campaign. Top right logo mark, folks. Takes two clicks and five seconds. Compare that to getting off someone's telemarketing or direct mail list. Even an unsub from an email list is slow in comparison.)

Sure, there are issues. Having items show on shared screens, or in sensitive categories, can be inconvenient and embarrassing. There is a threat to profit margins for vendors when we teach price-shopper consumers to always abandon the cart and look for the remarketing ads with a discount. All of these concerns are valid and legitimate, and will eventually shake out as companies that are more efficient consolidate the industry. We are not in the final flower of remarketing, just as we are not in the final flower of online advertising.

Remarketing is progress from what marketers could do before. It is a step up in revenue for publishers. It is a step up in relevance for consumers. Progress is almost never smooth and perfect, but it is, well, an overall good thing.

And hating progress is, well, hateful.

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