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Comment by jasonlynes | Hacker News Reader

in theory i don't have a problem with these minority report scenarios. i do think at some point advertisers need to stop thinking with their proverbial dicks and start thinking about dinner and chocolates. there's a reason i didn't get that leather jacket, just like there's a reason you're not getting laid on the first date. continuing to ask me won't help.

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"Fetchback, a retargeting ad platform claims that 2010 Valentines Day advertisers received a 600% or higher return on investment. They also claim that, in general, retargeting can perform 74% better than a standard pay-per-click campaign."

Seems like it works better. I agree that the probability of you buying a jacket given that you visited the website and didn't buy is lower than the probability of you buying a jacket given that you visited the website (sorry that's a mouthful). But the probability of you buying the jacket given that you visited the website and didn't buy is higher than the probability of you buying the jacket given that you didn't visit the website.

TL;DR: P(buying|visited the website and didn't buy) > P(buying)

haha, yes, agreed. no doubt the % return is higher than pitching me a product i've never seen.

my point is more along the lines of, i'd like to see ads serve me a little better rather than serve the advertiser. the priorities are advertiser > site > buyer. should be opposite.

I think most if not all of the time they are serving you the best possible ad they can come up with.

re-targeting probably works better in the scenario where you have an impending date for purchase (Valentine's Day gift/card)... so knowing holidays and the SO's bday, wedding date, etc, would be extremely powerful for re-targeting.

There's an old advertising maxim that a potential customer needs to see an ad 7 times (or 3 times) before acting on it, but it seems to be only weakly supported by statistics. Maybe it's just something they say to get you to buy more advertising, but it does seem to make sense that repetition would increase the effectiveness of your advertising (remember the Head-On commercials? apply directly to the forehead!).

ad network guy here...

Yes, with retargeting you hit a lot of people that aren't interested in the product, but you also hit a lot of people that are lukewarm to warm leads. We're talking about the difference between, say, .05% CTR running ads in a content category versus .1%+ with retargeting across ad exchanges.

Specifics vary between advertisers: try visiting Shopify and you're going to see their ads 10x+ per day every day for a month... but less aggressive retargeting frequency (1-3x/day) is used all the time.

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