Nick Enno Marketing 3000 November 11 2013 Extra Credit The article that I reviewed is titled when does retargeting work Information specificity in online advertising The article is about how firms can now offer personalized recommendations to consumers who return to their website using consumers browsing history on that website The purpose of this article is to decide whether dynamic retargeting which is the use of information from browsing history on the firms website to improve advertising content on external websites is more effective than showing generic brands ads Basically dynamic retargeting is if an individual looks at a product online for instance video games and then later when that same individual gets on his or her Facebook they see ads on the side for other video games To test whether dynamic retargeting or generic brand ads are more effective Anja Lambrecht and Catherine Tucker the authors used data from a field experiment conducted by an online travel firm The test would show consumers who looked at hotels options on the travel company s website ad banners of hotels on other websites that the consumer would navigate to The results came back that dynamic retargeting ads on average are less effective than generic brand ads Although when consumers show browsing behavior that illustrates their product preferences have evolved dynamic retargeting ads are more effective Dynamic retargeting being less effective surprised the authors because previous marketing literature has identified that greater specificity of a firm interaction with consumers should increase relevance and consumer response However the Behavioral Targeting Blog states that personalized retargeting ads are six times more effective than standard banner ads and four times more effective than generic retargeting ads Despite excitement about dynamic retargeting advertisers do not know whether this technique is effective they also do not know what information they can use to determine when to show such ads The authors stated that the crucial question for advertisers and ad networks is when dynamic retargeting is effective in swaying consumers to purchase The authors suggested that the effectiveness of a retargeted ad depends on whether the message of the ad matches with how narrowly the consumers construe their preferences They found that only consumers with narrowly construed preferences are likely to respond positively to dynamic retargeting ads Consumers with narrow construed preferences have a detailed idea of the products they want to purchase The best way to decide if a consumer has a narrow preference is to look at browsing history to whether or not they visited a site that reviews that products that they were looking into purchasing If a consumer has viewed a review site then dynamic retargeting will be more effective to them The authors found that generic ads are most effective for consumers who haven t looked at a review site To summarize the results of the test show that consumer s reaction to ads varies as they progress to different stages in the decision process Thus dynamic retargeting is effective at encouraging consumers to buy when consumers have visited a review site and are vigorously browsing other websites in the category Article and website http journals ama org doi full 10 1509 jmr 11 0503 ANJA LAMBRECHT and CATHERINE TUCKER Firms can now offer personalized recommendations to consumers who return to their website using consumers previous browsing history on that website In addition online advertising has greatly improved in its use of external browsing data to target Internet ads Dynamic retargeting integrates these two advances by using information from the browsing history on the firm s website to improve advertising content on external websites When surfing the Internet consumers who previously viewed products on the firm s website are shown ads with images of those same products To examine whether this is more effective than simply showing generic brand ads the authors use data from a field experiment conducted by an online travel firm Surprisingly the data suggest that dynamic retargeted ads are on average less effective than their generic equivalents However when consumers exhibit browsing behavior that suggests their product preferences have evolved e g visiting review websites dynamic retargeted ads no longer underperform One explanation for this finding is that when consumers begin a product search their preferences are initially construed at a high level As a result they respond best to higher level product information Only when they have narrowly construed preferences do they respond positively to ads that display detailed product information This finding suggests that in evaluating how best to reach consumers through ads managers should be aware of the multistage nature of consumers decision processes and vary advertising content along these stages Keywords retargeting online advertising field decision process construal level theory experiments online Online Supplement http dx doi org 10 1509 jmr 11 0503 When Does Retargeting Work Information Specificity in Online Advertising Anja Lambrecht is Assistant Professor of Marketing London Business School e mail alambrecht london edu Catherine Tucker is the Mark Hyman Jr Career Development Professor and Associate Professor of Mar keting MIT Sloan School of Management Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Research Associate National Bureau of Economic Research e mail cetucker mit edu The authors thank Havas Digital particularly Katrin Ribant for access to data from Artemis and Marco Bertini for facilitating contact They gratefully acknowledge financial sup port from the National Science Foundation CAREER Award 1053398 They thank Kristin Diehl Anindya Ghose Avi Goldfarb Brett Gordon Duncan Simester Catalina Stefanescu Florian von Wangenheim and Ken Wilbur for their comments as well as participants at the 2011 Summer Institute in Competitive Strategy conference and seminar participants at Cass Business School European School of Management and Technology ESSEC Busi ness School London Business School and the National University of Sin gapore Ron Shachar served as associate editor for this article 2013 American Marketing Association ISSN 0022 2437 print 1547 7193 electronic 561 Innovations in the parsing and processing of individual level browsing data now enable firms to offer product rec ommendations in real time to consumers who