I'm almost entirely ignorant of what "retargeting" is and how it works. My impression is that the ad network serves me a cookie when I visit the client page (acme.com). Then, on Facebook, I am shown an ad (from Acme? Or from anyone), placed by the ad network, who has identified me as an acme.com visitor.
Is that roughly correct, or could someone explain it to me like I'm simple? Also, does this technique still work if my browser blocks 3rd-party cookies?
So if you've got a web app that sells widgets you work hard to get visitors to come to your app and sign up.
If your web app is really awesome, maybe 10% of the people who visit on any given day will sign up. For most of us, that sign up rate will look more like 5 or maybe 3%.
So that leaves 97% of your visitors leaving.
With retargeting, you add a code snippet to your source. It places an anonymous cookie in the web browser of people who visit with a unique ID.
You then create ad campaigns with the ad network hosting the code snippet. They have what's called a "real time bidding" platform that is plugged into various ad networks. it might be Google's network. It might be Facebook's network. And that real-time bidding platform can be given very specific instructions like "show these ads only to people with this specific cookie ID".
So then when you, the person who visited the web app and left without signing up, visit a web site with ads connected to the retargeting platform, your cookie signature is "spotted" and the retargeting platform bids aggressively in a 50milisecond auction to win that specific ad impression. That's retargeting.
So when you load web pages online, thousands of bidder robots are analyzing the information available about you through the browser, and deciding whether to try to buy that ad impression. It's like high frequency trading for ads.
Is that roughly correct, or could someone explain it to me like I'm simple? Also, does this technique still work if my browser blocks 3rd-party cookies?