Yesterday I was looking at Lakeland’s website and browsed to a particular product by searching for “banana”. Lakeland sell several products that will help you to care for and transport bananas, and their search tool made these very easy to find.
Later, I went to Cineworld’s website, to look up when the new Terminator film is on. Cineworld’s site displays advertising for other companies, and I was surprised to see an ad for Lakeland, which included the very product I’d been browsing for earlier. The surprise effect was strong.
Lakeland banner driven by Criteo
I realised what had happened was that I’d been served a banner ad by a company called Criteo. Basically, they track what you do on their clients’ websites, and then run ads across the Internet which become very personalised if you’ve looked at a product on a client site. So the fact that I’d looked at a banana bag at Lakeland made me the lucky recipient of an add for said product when I went to Cineworld.
Some people might be uncomfortable with the intrusive aspects of this advertising, but I was impressed that it’s working, and the results would be very interesting to see. Showing people ads that we know are relevant to them has to increase effectiveness, and when the average banner gets a click through less than 1 time in 100, these must surely be star performers.
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