• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer, January 16, 2009

Just because I am paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't following me.

But just try to prove it. One of the perennial issues with behavioral targeting is that it is virtually invisible both to users and to clients. A splashy run-of-site campaign is as apparent as a two-pager in a magazine. You can point your client to the site and they can see what their money just bought. In BT, more often than not, the only tangible evidence the campaign even exists out there in the digital ethos is a spreadsheet and chart. And even if you can point to the ad unit itself somewhere, the real impact of a BT ad is situational, not contextual. The ad only has meaning because of what that targeted user had done prior to hitting the page.

For those of us covering the behavioral world, the sheer weirdness of behavioral ad serving is even more frustrating, because it is hard to find good examples of our subject out there in the wild. I have cookies from most of the major BT networks in my browser, but I will be damned if I can recognize when my travels have properly segmented me into one of their buckets and activated an ad somewhere.

Ironic, isn't it? Privacy advocates complain about the insidious nature of tagging and tracking users, but as a user I have trouble finding, seeing or feeling its effect even when I look for it. In this industry, voices pro and con like to describe the potential "creepiness" of BT ads following us around the Web, but we do so in the abstract. Few of us ever recognize the experience as it is occurring.

Until this week. The first time an ad for retargeting company FetchBack appeared on a general tech news page, I was struck by the counter-contextuality of it. I chalked up the banner sighting as a retargeting company casting its net particularly wide. Maybe they had a deal with another network and dumped their ad into a batch of penny inventory. Who knows? But then a FetchBack ad popped up on a NYPost.com story, and it seemed to me I had encountered this banner more than a few times recently.

That is when the BT paranoia set in. Mousing over the ad, I tried to determine its source, but the target URL was Fetchback itself. Recalling that I had in fact visited FetchBack's home page recently I suspected that the retargeting company was in fact re-argeting me. Company CEO Chad Little and his staff confirmed this likely was the case. They practice what they preach. Coming to their site would have planted a cookie in my browser that would cure their ad when I hit someplace else on their network.

Hallelujah! I finally had been tagged and followed by a BT technique in a way I could detect. So, playing the role of both reporter and subject, I asked myself, how does it feel to be segmented and tracked? Well, not creepy, exactly -- but not entirely comfortable, either. The contextual dissonance was most striking. In addition to its large size and loud orange coloring, I really noticed the FetchBack banner above the news item for two reasons: I know the company and I also know it has no natural place in this context. This is a B2B ad in a consumer-oriented environment. On the other hand, this counter-contextuality only stuck me because I recognized the company.

To be sure, the BT effect was exaggerated in this case largely because of the way retargeting works. In other forms of behavioral targeting, a car ad might occur out of context after I read an auto section three days ago. In this case, however, the effect is likely to be innocuous. I might mistake this brand play as just another run-of-site campaign that happens to match my current interests. How fortuitous. But with retargeting, you are being revisited by a brand you knowingly encountered. This is a bit like bumping into a good hometown New York friend on the streets of Paris during a vacation. You'll both say "freaky," and wonder at the coincidence.

Does that wonderment create irritation? Well, maybe. Again, following my impressionistic take on the experience, my impulsive response to recognizing I was being followed was to shake off the tail. Where could I opt-out? I can do it at the FetchBack site, of course. There is an invitation tucked at the bottom right of the home page inviting me to bail from the network. The company is also a member of the NAI, so you can stop further ads by going there as well. But I will save the opt-out tale for another time.

To be sure, I am not the ideal consumer/observer in this accidental test of retargeting's effect. With my heightened awareness of the industry itself, I found the contextual dissonance all the more apparent.

But the whole thing does underscore the subtle complexity of retargeting or standard BT and how it is supposed to work on consumers. The experience needs to be both invisible and visible. The object of the ad needs to recognize the unexpected relevance of this out-of-context promotion without getting suspicious or irritated.

In a future world where ads follow users more than context, I don't know how the creative or the targeting, the frequency and the placement of behaviorally targeted ads will manage this, but it is a conversation I expect we will have to have at some point. Just as the art of behaviorally targeted advertising is a new paradigm for media buyers and publishers, we have to recognize that it is a new experience for users as well.