• Business 2.0 Magazine, Thursday, September 6, 2007 10:45 AM

If you thought that 50% of your ad budget wasn't wasted if you were spending on the Internet, you'd be wrong. Thank goodness most of it is cheap, though. If you're in the biz, you know that low CTRs (click-through rates) are the norm, especially for display, but a new startup called Fetchbook has "a slightly creepy solution to the problem."

It suggests sticking like glue to consumers and bothering them until they click on your ad. The tactic, called retargeting, works like this: a consumer comes to your site, checks it out and leaves. Fetchbook remembers that he or she was there, and shows an ad hawking one of your products, a discount or a promotion, when that consumer goes elsewhere. When that doesn't work, Fetchbook comes back with an even more aggressive promotional message. All publisher parties need to be within Fetchbook's network; certainly not all publishers would agree to this, because if consumers got wind of it, they might be angry.

"We're enabling companies to reconnect with a lost customer," says Chad Little, CEO of Fetchback. "You're much more likely to convert customers if you're consistently in front of them." Little says the first 30 days after window-shopping are the key to converting. He adds that the company caps retargeting at five times per month, and only charges per click.

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