dan76 - 5:10 pm on Jan 19, 2012 (gmt 0)

Just a quick follow-up...Google definitely appears to be using your retargeting list data for their own purposes. If it's true, this really is a no-no.

To further exemplify my reasoning for questions this, just take a look at the update they made to the "audience" feature. If you create an "audience" in Adwords, there is now the ability to create a remarketing list based on a global "Interest Category" (not sure when this feature was added). And how do they determine which sites belong in each Interest Category, you ask? Are they using YOUR retargeting data as part of building their "interest category" audiences? And if so, wouldn't this now give competitors with higher budgets the opportunity to capitalize on your audience in the event you have a lower budget?

Well, Google definitely does have their own algorithms to determine which sites best belong in these "interest groups" so it really is hard to prove they are stealing your retargeting data as part of the interest categories. However, from our previous experiences as outline in the original post, it seems extremely likely they are.

But I could be wrong. Afterall, Google does no evil because they say they don't. Right?