Remarketing. Why Do Ads Follow Us Around?
Everyone praises this commercial trick. They say it is effective, that it increases sales, brings in more customers, and so on. Some even go as far as to claim that this approach helps indecisive people make a decision, implying that it is somehow ethical.
When people talk about remarketing, they usually present it from the seller's perspective, focusing on its effectiveness and on the various tricks that can be used to sell more products. This article is about remarketing too, but not from the merchant's point of view. It looks at it from the point of view of ordinary people.
What is remarketing?
Remarketing is a mechanism through which online stores and service providers, once they know that a particular person is interested in their product, start following that person all over the internet by showing ads until that person finally buys the product or service.
Video by Ketut SubiyantoFor example, you look at a product on a shopping website, let's say a bag, and then close the page because you do not want to buy it. A few minutes later you open another app, for example Facebook, and the exact same bag appears there as an ad.
In practice, people are mainly targeted in three ways:
For some people this can feel surprising, for others disgusting, and some may not even understand what is happening at all. Still, regardless of those reactions, the fact remains that remarketing is a very effective tool for businesses, and one that can be used to "convince" people to buy their products.
How remarketing works technically
Technically, remarketing is implemented through well-known advertising networks, the most famous being Google Ads and Meta Ads.
Video by PressmasterBy integrating those tools into their websites or applications, online businesses gain the ability to implement remarketing.
Those tools, in turn, use the browser's cookie storage to keep and exchange data.
The simplified flow looks like this:
In other words, through cookie storage, websites and applications exchange data about a person for advertising purposes. Such data, when stored in the browser, is referred to as third-party cookies, and there are laws that restrict their use.
One of the purposes of the cookie consent banner is precisely to stop this kind of data sharing for advertising purposes.
Modern browsers also limit the storage of such data. For example, Safari, Firefox, and Brave block this kind of storage by default, while Chrome gives users the option to turn it off.
Why remarketing is effective for business
First of all, it is cost-effective. With ordinary advertising, a business targets a broad audience and shows ads to all of them. Here, they target specific people and therefore pay only for showing ads to those specific people.
Video by Mikael BlomkvistAnother advantage remarketing gives merchants is the ability to remind customers about unfinished actions. According to some studies, about 97% of visitors to e-commerce websites do not make a purchase on their first visit. People need time to examine the product, ask around, read reviews, and make a sensible decision. By showing the same product everywhere, businesses can pull people back to their sites and persuade them to continue the purchase.
Personalization also plays a major role here. Remarketing makes it possible to treat each customer individually. Businesses can and do use many psychological tricks: reminding people about unfinished actions, strengthening shaky decisions through repeated exposure, building trust by associating the product with well-known brands such as Google and Meta, and so on.
The dishonest side of remarketing
Given how quickly information technologies are developing today, I think it is unrealistic for most people to keep up with all of it.
Most people, especially older adults, cannot easily understand technologies that change and evolve every day. That means that some dishonest individuals or companies can easily deceive or manipulate them by using modern technical and psychological tricks.
Video by Tima MiroshnichenkoFor example, when remarketing is used, it is not only about showing us ads in that moment. Our data is also stored in advertising networks for later use.
That lets advertising networks infer our preferences and interests and, when needed, target us with all kinds of ads.
As a result, many of us eventually give in to the pressure and make the purchase. Then the situation looks like this:
The merchant is happy because the product was sold.
The advertising network is satisfied because the merchant paid for the ad.
We are happy for now, because we still have not realized that we just bought yet another thing we did not actually need.
The psychological pressure matters too. When we hesitate to buy something and our inner voice tells us that it is not sensible to buy it right now, remarketing can still be used to pressure us. For example, they may show the ad for the product we are interested in and add a line saying "only one left in stock." That pushes us to decide faster, and rushed decisions are usually bad ones.
Conclusion
Although this article mainly focused on the negative side of remarketing, it does have some benefits too. Still, in my opinion, from an ethical point of view, those benefits are much smaller than the downsides.
By using remarketing and similar techniques, businesses influence our decisions, and therefore our finances, in a dishonest way.
There is, however, some good news. In one survey, 55% of participants said they do not buy a product when they notice they are being targeted with ads for it. Some of them also said that, when possible, they report the ad to the advertising network for showing it to them.