Tesco’s mobile experience head, Luke  Viogradov, made some interesting points at a conference this week (reported by Marketing Week).

“There are some retailers that follow me around everywhere I go. I have since purchased the products they push at me they just didn’t pick that up. [Ad retargeters] do the brands they are serving a great disservice every time they bug me about something I already own,” he said.

I agree – and I also agree with him that this is an issue of relevancy. And the more irrelevant ads are, the more we start to lose trust in the brand.  For example, I bought a laptop from Currys (pity me, I’m not that bright, OK?)  Within days, I was receiving emails from them advertising, you guessed it, laptops.  How many did they think I was going to buy? Crucially, how likely am I to now trust Currys to offer me any sort of after-sales service if they haven’t worked out what I’ve bought?

The real issue with the retargeting of display ads to customers who have already purchased is one of inter-departmental budgets.  That ad space is bought and paid for by acquisition marketing so they’re going to make sure they use it.  Meanwhile, us second-class citizens in customer marketing, without a budget for ATL or anything close to it, could have used that space to reach the customer and to extend their lifetime value.

It’s time the two departments worked more closely together.