Nick EnnoMarketing 3000November 11, 2013Extra 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 andCatherine 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 thatillustrates their product preferences have evolved, dynamic retargeting ads are more effective. Dynamic retargeting being less effective surprised the authors because previousmarketing 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. Theauthors 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. Ifa 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.11.0503ANJA 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 nolonger 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: [email protected]). Catherine Tucker isthe 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: [email protected]). 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 atCass Business School, European School of Management and Technology, ESSEC Busi- ness School, London Business School, and theNational University of Sin- gapore. Ron Shachar served as associate editor for this article. © 2013, American Marketing AssociationISSN: 0022-2437 (print), 1547-7193 (electronic) 561 Innovations in the parsing and