Nicely executed retargeting opt-out (for a change)

Retargeting (sometimes called remessaging or remarketing) has taken off in a big way, recently – Google introduced the feature into AdWords earlier this year, and a host of other players are in the game. Consequently, the interwebs now abound with commentary on the rather spooky nature of the technology, with people being “followed around” the Internet by ads for things they were either searching for, or were looking at on e-commerce websites.

It is true that most retargeting implementations are a bit clunky, and I have been on the receiving end of plenty of them myself. Their most irritating aspect seems to be that the time window for perceived relevance of the retargeted ads seem to be ridiculously long. It’s somehow almost more irritating to be deluged by ads for that miscellaneous widget site that you once visited a few weeks ago (even though you have since satisfied your need for widgets elsewhere) than it is to be served non-targeted (or more broadly targeted) ads.

Such ads are made more bearable by a robust opt-out capability; many ad networks have adopted the IAB’s self-regulatory program, which calls for the advertiser to make it possible to opt out of these kinds of ads, which is to say, stop receiving them; stopping the data collection is a more difficult matter.

So today I want to give a little love to TellApart, not because their retargeting implementation is especially subtle or innovative, but simply because they provide a nice opt-out implementation. Last week I spent a little time looking for a desk for my daughter (who currently occupies our dining table with her homework). So since then I have been served retargeted ads on behalf of the site I visited (www.childrensdesks.com) on various sites. Here’s one from Business Insider:

The nice thing about the ad is it has a little “x” icon in the top right (which actually makes a little more sense than the IAB’s suggested “Advertising Option Icon”, which is a bit cryptic). Clicking it gives me this:

The ability to opt out right in the ad unit is nice, and makes me feel more well-disposed to the advertiser and the site that the ad is running on. Clicking through the “Learn More About These Ads” link at the bottom takes me to TellApart’s website with a little more information and the same option to opt out – though no option to opt out of certain categories of ads, or groups of advertisers.If more retargeting networks provided simpler opt-out capabilities like these, it might help to make these ads seem like less of a scary proposition.