Big brother is watching, especially when it comes to online browsing.

Although this might not come as a shock to most people these days, it may catch you off guard when a pair of shoes you were looking at yesterday shows up in an ad on your Yahoo homepage today.

Zappos.com uses this exact retargeting strategy, but looks to approach it without giving off a creepy, stalker vibe, which no customer wants.

Anyone familiar with Zappos.com knows that the company is all about customer service. What better way to service your customer than to give them full transparency of what exactly you’re trying to do, while you’re doing it?

Lisa Archambault, Display Marketing Manager from Zappos.com showed the eTail West 2013 audience what she is doing over at Zappos to make sure the company is servicing their customers without scaring them away.

By offering an easy opt out “X” in the top right corner of their ads; targeted individuals have a quick way to avoid future ads. For individuals with a little more curiosity, the “learn more” link after the, “Why am I seeing this ad?” brings them to a new page with more information about Zappos’ retargeting strategy and the company’s technology partner. It also gives viewers several opportunities to choose to opt out of the ads, as well as to give feedback and submit email address or additional comments.

By being transparent enough, Zappos is able to gain the customers’ trust and according to Archambault, the company sees a very low rate of people opting out of its ads.

Building on its retargeting strategies, Archambault discussed some new types of advertisements that Zappos is working on, which feature full ensembles and video that gives the target user suggested items along with the original product they had viewed.

Although there are potential roadblocks ahead with the release of Firefox 22 and its blocking of third-party cookies, it seems retargeting will still stay on the list of effective marketing strategies for firms like Zappos.