Just thought y'all (PGMusic) would be interested in knowing that your current ad efforts seem to be working...

I am seeing targeted ads on my local "news site" (where I go to get local news) here in Tampa. I get other such ads there when I have been looking for stuff or "shopping" - from Sweetwater, Home Depot, Amazon, etc.

Edit... just hit it again, the 2nd picture is what it looks like when it is in the banner...

I got the ads for the first time this morning when I was reading the Washington Post.

I have been seeing them also recently.

Thank for the reports. Yes. We started that yesterday. Those types of ads are via google service called Adsense. You can identify those ads (from anyone) by the triangle in the top right of the ad.

Currently, you'd be a candidate for seeing one of you've visited our pgmusic.com site. If anyone here is an expert on Adsense and how it works, please chime in, as any tips are welcome!

// Rant //

I don't know about AdSense specifically, but one of the things that drives me crazy with the targeted ads (and I'm not against them) is that most of them pop up to sell me exactly the same thing that I just bought.

So, if I just dropped, say $200, on a new Keurig Coffee maker from Amazon, then an ad pops up offering me the same coffee maker from Amazon. What am I supposed to do with that? I don't need another one (maybe they think I do); what I need are water filters, coffee pods, version 1 clips, etc. Not the coffee maker itself.

I also see it with software products. As soon as I bought Sonar from Cakewalk, there were multiple ads trying to sell me Sonar again. But I already have it and don't need another copy; what I need is perhaps sound libraries or plugins to use with it.

// Rant over //

Yes good points John . In fact these are the same as I was bringing up in our staff meeting this morning. The audience of people who have visited our website obviously includes people who have already bought the program so in that sense we are "preaching to the converted".
Maybe there's someway for us to distinguish this and I hope this is something we learn as it goes along.

If I have visited a website, and moused around looking at stuff I can buy, I don't mind the targeted ads showing up elsewhere. I suppose the intention is to remind people that they looked up something and that it's still available. I don't mind that.

But as jford indicated, if I've already bought that "something", it would be helpful if the targeted ad showed me something different, maybe related, instead of what I already bought.

If there was a way for the PGMusic add to figure out (say), "this guy bought our recent basic upgrade, I would like to show him that there are Xtra Paks available". That wouldn't be intrusive or "pushy" to me, only useful information.

In any case, I've never found any of the targeted ads to be offensive.

LLOYD S

I don't know how adsense identifies your target audience... but I still think whatever keywords or algorithm you use should include people who have also looked at animation software, video editors, story board software, script writing software etc.

I did an informal poll on the Muvizu forum and just about all of the forum members are also musicians

I use AdBlock on Chrome so I don't see ads anyway.

My main browser is FireFox and saw an ad this evening.

Search for anything on google or visit a website and you will be deluged with ads for similar or that same thing.

Big Brother is watching. And he knows what you're looking at.

ditto!

I use Adblock for Firefox so I don't see the ads, except from Amazon. They have my interests nailed so I read them.

Donny

I think PG is referring to AdWords more than AdSense.

Adwords puts your company ads out there on these sites.
AdSense distributes revenue to the sites that display the ads.

The tracking part is pretty simple; you visit the site and get a cookie that AdWords reads and then knows you showed interest in this site.

If you have that cookie, AdWords is more biased to occasionally show you an ad from this site; it is called remarketing, and for PG it should a be very cost effective and efficient tool.
In my eyes it's no big deal; I showed interest by visiting the site so it makes sense. No personal info is in the cookies. Some countries have laws that you must let the user know you are giving them a cookie that says they visited this site .. if you're that worried about it use Private Window or something so you don't store any cookies to begin with.

personal input:
To me, the key for remarketing is in how long you set the cookie for.
60 days is my personal 'base' bias, but some industries show longer/shorter is more efficient.
(no sense continuing to show my ad to 'User A' after 50 days since there is pretty much a 0% conversion chance at that point).

The other aspect of the cookie duration is that your remarketing list (people with an active cookie) must contain 'X' number of users or your ad priority drops fast because so few people are ever requesting it from the list. So you want a decent size list, but not to the point that it becomes inefficient and Google sees less users click the ad (the click-thru rate drops). When the click-thru drops your placement drops .. so it's all a balance and trade-off decision affecting cost.

Hopefully PG has a marketing team that is on top of this kind of stuff .. if not by all means give us a call! (or PM/email me)
Our marketing division is here -
http://www.rccwebmedia.com/
Google Partner for AdWords - https://www.google.com/partners/#a_profile;idtf=5755682898;qury=rcc%20web%20media
other company certifications (IT related) here http://www.rccbusinessit.com/Partners.aspx

Yes, it's a shameless plug but also a perfect opportunity.

FWIW, I decided to check my PGMusic cookies and most looked fine to me, but this one stood out. Why would I need a cookie until mid-2019? The _ga implies it is Google related, FWIW.

Bob,
Thanks for the info, that is very helpful. From the sound of things, we are currently only using the google-display-ads to be delivered to people that have visited pgmusic.com (remarketing).

But we could also target different groups such as groups accessed by keywords ( music software, DAW etc.) That would likely get us a broader audience and more prospective customers (than existing remarketing customers).

Hi Peter,

Targeted keywords work with google searches, but the point to remember is that the most common combinations of words attract the most advertisers. Google has a system whereby you bid a certain amount on a keyword and this determines how high up the search your advert appears. The more specific you can be with your choice of words, the more chance you have of appearing at the top of the list, without the cost being prohibitive.

For example, "DAW" would not be as effective as say "Professional DAW" or maybe "Inexpensive DAW".

The system works in much the same way for display ads. You can bid to target certain sites which you know your prospective customers are likely to visit, in addition to the cookie-based method which Bob has covered already.

Hope this helps and as Bob said, feel free to PM me if we can be of any help.

ROG.