Online advertising

At Google there are a number of different ways to advertise online, but two of the most important are contextual targeting and remarketing (often called retargeting).  Contextual targeting is what happens when Google's servers scan some content on the site of one of our partners (NY Times, WebMD, etc), and pair that content with an ad that it deems thematically similar.  For example, if you're reading an article about the Mets you may be served ads for the Mets Store or Ticketmaster.  These are the same ads that you'll see on your Gmail, paired to the content of your email thread.

Remarketing, on the other hand, is a very different animal.  Remarketing occurs when an advertiser targets a user who has already visited their site somewhere else on the web.  An example of that might be me visiting the Mets store, browsing but not buying, and then being served an ad for the Mets store on WebMD or some other site with non-Mets related content.  Capiche?

I tell you this because of the email pictured above, which I sent to a couple of clients a couple of weeks ago (I'd normally feel icky about posting a work email, but it's about as bland as it gets).  Apologies for the typo/horrible sentence construction.  Anyway, read it (click on it to enlarge), then note the ads to the right: clearly not contextual targeting, which means that it must be... remarketing?