For the past year or so, Adam and I have been focusing on TheBigFork.com, a site that allows you to find nearby restaurants.  While we have many new products in the works, the current source of revenue is advertising.  And as the site has been growing, the ad network best suited for us has been Google Adsense.

There are a lot of good features of Google Adsense, but lately one feature has been bothering me, and depressing our revenue.

Google offers a feature known as remarketing.  As an advertiser on Google’s Adwords platform, you can select if you want your ads retargeted to site visitors.  Here is the basics of how it works:

1.  I visit a local news site and see an ad for a Disneyland vacation

2.  I click on the add and price out a vacation for my family and me

3.  I decide its too expensive

4.  I see Disneyland ads on half the sites I visit for the next 6 months

Google’s perspective is that as I have expressed interest in a particular advertiser, I will continue to have that interest, so the ads are well targeted.  They even have some data to back up why this is great for advertisers.  I am going to go out on a limb and say that since ads are based on a CPC model, it probably IS good for advertisers.  Their CTR may go down do to so many impressions, but I am guessing their conversion rate goes up.

But is it good for others?

As a user, I see ad after ad for services I no longer have an interest in. I am not a privacy nut that wants to block the Google cookie, or thinks they shouldn’t be collecting that info, but I don’t see it providing me with any value.  How about an ad for a San Diego vacation, or a Disney cruise?  That might provide me with something that I am interested in clicking on.  Showing the same Disneyland ad does nothing for me- I already know what they have to offer. So is remarketing good for users?  I say no.

As a publisher its even worse.  My users are in the situation described above.  Rather than using on-page content, or other interest based profiling of my users, Google is pushing them the same ad over and over and over again.  While advertisers enjoy the occasional click from thousands of impressions, it is killing my revenue.  Rather than showing new ads my users may click on, they see the same stale messages.

What can be done?

For now, I have the option to block advertisers that opt-in to remarketing campaigns.  That might be an option when we are bigger, but right now I can’t afford to take the time to evaluate, or to eliminate advertisers on a wholesale level.

Google-  How about giving publishers the option to opt out of remarketing, but still enjoy the occasional ad by those advertisers, in line with your normal ad serving process?   Don’t squeeze your marginal revenue out of my surplus impression inventory just because no one is knocking down my door to advertise exclusively on my site.

Another great opinion can be found here

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