Now a week out from the major IPO that serves as proof positive that the retargeting category is ‘all grown up’,let’s take some inventory on how far we’ve come. I, as most of you reading this, remember the early days. The first time we saw display advertising that crossed the 1% CTR mark. Holy crap. This stuff works. See product, add product to cart, abandon cart, see product in ad. See ad. See ad (x10).

If that seemed too good to be true, time proved it wasn’t. Now, retargeting has become an ‘always on’ channel nary a serious e-commerce player can ignore. Further, innovations in media buying platforms continue at a steady pace, and leaps in liquidity (programmatic is suddenly 53% of all media, at least claimed by some) have enabled advertisers to have more control than ever over the who, what, where, why, and how of their marketing, without sacrificing a thing. This is especially true in relation to their retargeting strategies (full disclosure: I work at a company that enables dynamic retargeting on programmatic buying platforms).

...and yet, and yet...

Retargeting too often remains a silo in the hands of a third-party vendor that pulls the levers behind the curtain in order to deliver you that 1% of clickers or ‘x’% of converters that you pay for. In fairness, for many, this remains the best way: trade a little headache and risk for the thing you actually want, be it CPA, CPC or some modified CPM arrangement — and of course, as vendors, we’re more than happy to take that risk from you as it allows us to capture more margin. We all have our KPIs, but let’s explore for a moment the trade-offs you make when you ask others to run your retargeting (or any other aspect of your marketing) this way.

First, there’s that risk thing. By agreeing to a set price per action (all of which are really just a set of proxies for the thing you really care about: sales), you’re limiting your downside. You’ll simply never be on the hook for paying more than what you’ve agreed to for each ‘proxy’ action. Let that vendor take all that risk, phew. Of course, they’ve done the math themselves and realise that the lower they can drive down the media cost on their end, the more money they can make, so they’re going to do everything they can to deliver you the cheapest clicks, conversions, et cetera. Has the customer already converted? That’s nice, but your ads won’t stop following that customer because there are still cheap clicks to be had, regardless.

That’s where the bigger compromise comes in: “we only care about the 1% of our customers who click our ads,” is not something I’ve ever heard from a brand. What you’re sacrificing when you allow certain third parties to opaquely manage a marketing channel that impacts 100% of your audience is, essentially, everything. You’re developing incentives for them to do whatever it takes to get 1% of them to take an action, even if it means completely alienating or annoying the 99% for whom this message simply doesn’t resonate. This is why retargeting is annoying to people.

Admittedly, I know that in many cases the repetitiveness works. I’m not suggesting that in those cases you don’t retarget ad infinitum. I’m suggesting that with transparency and control, you can learn in which cases it’s working, or not, to then either dial it up, or reduce the frequency on the users who simply aren’t going to respond. You can then have an intelligent, adaptive conversation with each and every one of your customers (not just 1% of them). For most, features like this are already plugged in to your favorite buying platform. No big deal.

Hey, this is why there is chocolate and vanilla, strawberry too. Not everyone wants the same level of access, insight and deep involvement. There are now choices along the continuum of control for marketing professionals to choose the modality that best works for them and their goals. For those who prefer to keep with the no-effort IO model, there are lots of solutions. Also, for those who choose transparency and control by bringing the stack of programmatic tools in-house, they now have their menu of options. Even for those who are still on the fence, looking to leverage the benefits of programmatic buying in their retargeting, but not yet ready for ‘hands on keyboard,’ there are many solid agencies that can help get them there. Whichever you choose, just make sure you know your ‘true cost.’