Retargeting allows you to target and track visitors across sites. The biggest problem is placing the single pixel.  Search Engine Watch has a post released two days ago that cover the announcements made today.

1. Search Re targeting for Display Ads — lets advertisers target display advertising based on a user’s search activity. So a user that searches on a term like “sandals” could be served a display ad for footwear elsewhere on Yahoo‘s network.
2. Enhanced Re targeting for Display Ads — allows advertisers to deliver dynamically generated display ads across the Yahoo network based on user activity on an advertiser’s site. Going beyond standard site re targeting, the new technology would allow an advertiser to target users who visit an airline website to check offers for flights from SFO-JFK, and serve them a personalized offer for that specific flight when they visit a page within the Yahoo Network.
3. Enhanced Targeting for Search Ads — adds capabilities for Sponsored Search and Content Match ads, including ad scheduling and demographic targeting within search. New features are designed to extend the advertiser’s control over where and when an ad is shown at both the campaign and ad group level, including what time of day and day of the week an advertiser would like campaigns to run (ad scheduling), and what age and gender they’d like to reach (demographic). Advertisers will be able to vary their bids for different segments in order to increase their ability to reach the desired audience.

Search Re Targeting, Enhanced Re targeting and Pixel Placement announcements.

If your running a paid ad on Yahoo! Search and use the Re targeting option, your banner will be served on other parts of their network, example: Dell.

If your using SmartAds, a dynamic generated ad will be generated across various parts of Yahoo! Example: Travelocity coversion up 651%.

Pixelless Targeting – you define the segments and it gets passed to Achami (forgive my spelling).
Example: Chrysler

Yahoo! Believes they are bringing innovation to market. Yahoo! Does have a minimum buy of 25K a month.

A question came up about Search Re Targeting, and then I asked ifSearch ReTargeting is in play for anyone running a paid search ad, it’s not ( you have to me a head or torso customer that is paying the 25k).

Pixel Free Workd question suggests the service serving the content can inject the pixel at the time the ad is served and you can build segments that way.

On the other hand Yahoo! Has 400 segments.

My take away is these improvements will enhance Yahoo! Advertising offerings, but it’s just for the clients who are spending over 25K a month – and I think, eventually, they ought to roll this out for everyone who advertises on Yahoo!, period.

I’m not entirely convinced the current trend of mixing up news and advertising, content and ads, is something I like; I mean, the New York Times does it well enough though:

I was working on a client’s project yesterday focusing on Google Video Ads and also read information on making ads and text integrate so visitors see the advertising as part of the story on the web page.

In the same vein, some TV / Cable broadcast commericals are almost indistinguishable from the regular programming they are placed around making it harder to filter the “noise” out.

Mixing it all up as other implications – since we’ve all experienced the hazy lines between work life and home life – between what you say in person and what you say or write on line, and what you say about yourself vs what others say about you.

The “Editorial” ad about “Stop Switching to Mac!”, while entertaining, is an example of an effective ad, but it lowers the quality of the news around it.  I can understand the economic pressures the New York Times, and other Newspapers, are experiencing at this time, though I question how much tolerance a person looking for news is going to have for a continual assault of  video advertising interfering with reading the news stories.

I don’t know, but do you think the New York Times will end up looking like your own personal MySpace.com page – but for everyone?

I’m sure all the best analytics is being used to figure out just what ads to show, and the best advertisers are lining up for an opportunity to run their ads on the home page of the New York Times, but this new development of making the ads become part of the news is probably going to make me visit the site less, not more.

While I would not call comScore software "SpyWare", exactly, the way that Sears and KMart decided to use it – and how they didn't inform visitors to their site they wre being tracked (by installing the comScore tracking software without realizing it) does constitute an invasion of privacy.  Big mistake.

According to Ars Technica's Jacqui Cheng – Sears: Come see the softer side of spyware:

 "…late last year, Sears.com and Kmart.com began asking users if they wanted to participate in a "community" online (presumably a community made up of Sears and Kmart aficionados). In late December, security researcher Benjamin Googins at Computer Associates noticed, however, that the "community" actually installed software from comScore, a market research firm, in order to track the web activities of the sites' visitors.

Googins stated on his company's blog that Sears had installed spyware which transmitted everything—"including banking logins, email, and all other forms of Internet usage"—to comScore for analysis. This was all allegedly done with no notice that anything was being installed, and it ran contrary to documentation about the community that said any data collected would stay within Sears' hands at all times.

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The funny thing is …. all of this would have OK if people opted in – if that, indeed, was what they chose to do (be tracked) – but that's not what they thought they were doing when the opted in to a online community (that apparently never really materialized… all they ended up opting into was comScore tracking their every move).

Someone at Sears / K-Mart ought to go to jail for this – it just takes a couple of bad apples to give the whole Web Measurement field a bad reputation – and that's what this situation does – make people even more reactive to getting rid of all cookies (they see cookies as spyware … it's not) – but given the way some sites like Sears and K-Mart are acting – I can almost agree that one can't be too careful, or make any assumptions that sites that collect information are doing it in a way that's non-harmful to you (that helps you).   Most of the time, I would think, the opposite – even though it's not true – most of the time, tracking is just to find out how to make the site better, give the customer what they want faster and better.

Too bad some people use measurement tools the wrong way.