Creepy Advertising

New York Times gets the measure in this article of the latest trend in online advertising: retargeting. Criteo, a French company, are leading the charge in the UK and have been working with well-known retailers such as John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Watches.com, Asus and many more. Because they are the leaders in the field (at the moment) their dominance of retargeting in the 'remnant' space (ie when publisher cannot sell all their websites' advertising space at a premium price) means that the user experience is like feeling stalked by a rather creepy-like persistent salesman. I'm directly involved in this area of the online ad business day-to-day and even I don't like the current experience. There is certain reactive (and proactive) control given to consumers, but the amount of ads across many, many sites can be simply overwhelming, even creating a negative effect for the brands involved.