• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 4, 2009

FetchBack has unveiled a tool dubbed Keyword Retargeting that lets publishers and advertisers serve ads based on specific keywords related to user intent and preferences. 

Unlike typical retargeting that allows brands to display advertisements to visitors who leave the Web site without making a purchase, Keyword Retargeting displays ads that contain specific category or product information based on the site the visitor viewed while on the Web.

About 98% of site visitors fail to convert on advertisers' or retailers' Web sites, according to Chad Little, CEO at FetchBack, Tempe, Ariz. "If the site does 1,000 conversions in a month and the return conversion rate (is) 20%, then 200 of those conversions are from people who came to the site once, left to do some comparison shopping and came back and converted in a later date."

FetchBack claims the technology can help marketers and etailers coax people who have left back to the site at a much higher rate--nearly 50%.

The method relies on tying keywords on the brand's Web site to keywords in the brand's advertisements. For instance, the keywords "red roses" found on the Web site of the brand would also appear in the brand's display ads that would post to other sites across the Internet.

Stephan Paternot, general partner of venture capitalist Actarus Funds, and cofounder of the globe.com, called the technology "brilliant" after seeing their ads follow him everywhere on the Internet after visiting their site. "It was a little disconcerting at first, but then I thought they were spending a fortune on advertising until Chad explained to me that it's the technology behind FetchBack that keeps following you around," he said. "A lot of users are getting used to the concept of retargeting and they love the results."

Since first funding FetchBack in 2007, the technology has become a useful service for others companies in his investment portfolio, Paternot said. For example, Pingg, a rival to Evite, uses the technology.

Little explains that a pixel, typically inserted in the footer of a Web page, triggers a cookie to identify that someone had visited the site. FetchBack scans the page, similar to Google, to determine the content on the page and keyword target the display ad.

Little believes that brands will need to focus more on creating display ads that tie more closely to content on their Web sites. "The more targeted the ads become, the more pressure it puts on the creative," he said. "Display ads have a lot of room for improvement."