I was browsing around this morning, and frankly don’t even remember what site I was on, but I noticed that the ads were showing camera stuff I had looked at recently.  I wasn’t even on a photography site but I was getting a widget ad showing view cameras, and the Rollei TLR.

I was curious about how this was being done and clicked on the link to the ad supplier:  Criteo.

They re-target visitors that have been on one site and use that info to display stuff they looked at on other sites they visit.  Now from a marketing point-of-view, wow – what a great idea.  One of my hats is, after all, sales person for Dave Beckerman.

Considering that most viewers leave your site without buying anything, in fact the average for sites is about 90% leave without a buy.  My site is probably about 99% leave without a buy (and I kid you not).  So imagine that you came to my site.  Looked at all the pictures (which a lot of people do).  Caught up on the  blog.  And then went on to your next morning activity.  And sure enough, you are reading your newspaper of choice, when images of my prints appear in the panel.  Not only images, but the very images you’ve looked at.

Would you wonder how that happened?  Would it be a good thing, or a bad thing?

Eeks.

For me, as your friendly sales person, it would be great.

For me, as your average consumer, I don’t know that I like this too much.

B&H is giving my viewing information to a third company that is feeding my own browsing habits back at me.

Eeks.

But is there anything new about this?  I run my supermarket card through to get bonus points, and they know that I’ve been buying Indian food lately; and have given up on the frozen White Castle Cheeseburgers.

Has this guy gone vegetarian?  Is it a trend?

Google doesn’t know my name, but they know just about everything I’m doing, not as an individual, but as part of a group of some sort.  Or as a data point.  If your suspicious, you might think that they’re even reading your mail, personally – though if this ever got out – it’d be such a scandal that they’d lose billions.  But as a part of a group, their machines are reading your mail (assuming you are using gmail, like I am) and feeding you back ads that are context related, i.e. related to what you write and read about.

Is that really so bad?  It just not the same as having the exact products that I just viewed, show up on another site that doesn’t even have anything to do with photography.

True.  I can opt out of this.  I can get rid of the cookie that’s been set (probably by B&H).

But guess is that most people are simply not going to notice this recycling of viewing habits, and it is going to really do the job.

Sales guy Dave wonders if he has enough money (it’s mostly pay-per-click) to wage such a campaign.

Browser Dave, wants to make sure that he opts out of this program so that his viewing habits aren’t passed along to a third entity, though he’s not entirely sure why.