by Monica Mejia Pocasangre — Team Lead Marketing & Creative Solutions at adlicious
Whether on the subway, on the way to work, on the street corner, on TV or on the Internet — there is hardly a situation in which advertisers are not vying for the favor of potential customers. This inevitably raises the question: What do we even remember at the end of the day? Our brain is constantly busy collecting, processing, and filtering information. Some information is stored for a long time, so we remember it. However, the majority of the information that reaches us every day is blurred in a huge mess and is quickly forgotten — often just seconds after we have absorbed it. So how do you design advertising that our brain thinks is so relevant that it remembers it? For the competitive online advertising market, a personalization approach is recommended to create the necessary attention.
“Hello you” — standing out through personalization
Personalization influences our everyday lives with various factors. The following three are particularly important:
1. Relevance: The most important factor of personalization is the increased relevance of content for the respective user. Instead of irrelevant advertising for topics in which the user is not interested, for example, Dynamic Ads displays products and services as advertising in which he is actually interested. In this way, advertising can offer real added value to the user experience. This added value is having an effect: More and more consumers are actively opting for personalized advertising. According to a study by Periscope by McKinsey, in 2019, 45 percent of consumers said they were consciously disclosing data in order to get more relevant advertising. In the 30 to 39 age group, the proportion was even almost 60 percent.
2. Appreciation: E-commerce and retail have one thing in common — appreciation for customers stimulates business. However, what is easy to implement in retail, for example with friendly and competent employees, is already more difficult for online shops. Personalization is a good way to transfer appreciation from the service sector to the digital world. A study by IDC and RichRelevance proves this — over 20 percent of customers feel more valued through personalization. In contrast to retail, however, this type of appreciation is not limited to the shop itself. Personalization must not just mean greeting you by name or presenting suitable offers on the homepage of an online shop, but also accompany the entire customer journey, for example through personalized emails or dynamic display ads. This creates a basic sympathy for the advertiser on the part of the customer and can thus contribute to long-term commitment.
3. Sense of control In addition to the two more obvious factors, personalization also brings something else for the user: A sense of control. Many things happen on the Internet at the same time every minute, so that no user can notice and understand everything. This necessarily results in a feeling of loss of control, as you are less and less able to influence what happens around you on the Internet. However, when you encounter personalized content, you have the feeling that you are influencing something on this infinitely wide Internet and therefore prefer to interact with this content. And in a certain way, this feeling also becomes reality — after all, the personalization experience depends largely on your own behavior and thus gives you back control indirectly.
Effect and effect — the psychological background
But why does personalization have such a big impact on our perception and actions? The answer lies, unsurprisingly, in our brain. More specifically, the so-called Reticular Activating System (RAS) is responsible for this. This part of our brain ensures that we select when absorbing all types of information and thus better absorb things to which we have a certain connection. The best way to explain this is the so-called “cocktail party effect.” Imagine you're at a party in a big room with lots of people. There are many small groups around you and have conversations about a wide variety of topics. It is not even possible for you to follow everyone at the same time, so your brain switches off something and you only perceive the conversations as background noise. However, if your name comes up in a conversation, or if a topic is being talked about that you are ardently interested in, the brain switches back to “On” and focuses on exactly this conversation, in which the corresponding keywords have been used. There are various ways to use this peculiarity of our brain for advertising purposes.
The practice — dynamic display advertising
We are now used to personalized promotional emails with individualized offers; they are now part of the standard marketing repertoire. But personalization can now also score points with other advertising formats. In this way, large-format and wide-ranging display banners can be personalized through dynamization. However, anyone who thinks that the banners will also address you by name is mistaken. Instead, personalization is data-based and concerns products, interests or even environmental data. Dynamic ads therefore display products that people are interested in based on their surfing behavior and interactions. The user does not necessarily have to have viewed a product on the retailer's website in order to then be targeted with the or similar products. This is because Dynamic Ads can be used particularly effectively by new customers, i.e. users who have not yet had any contact with the brand or the products. In both cases, the way advertising materials work is almost identical; only the data (sources) used change. The basis for each is a creative in an attractive and CI-compliant design, in which various dynamic elements are defined, such as prices, product names, or images. These elements are then fed with information from a data feed, such as that used for online shops. As soon as the banner is then displayed to a user, they are shown the appropriate products and information within the banner, depending on their interests. For example, if a sporting goods manufacturer places a dynamic advertisement, the target group would be divided as follows: “Women — 25-35 years — interested in fitness” and “Man — 40 to 50 years — recreational tennis athletes.” The woman would then be shown training shoes in the banner, for example, and the man tennis racquets. Data is necessary for the success of dynamic ads. Reasonable target group segmentation can only be carried out with an appropriate basis. Although a superficial division into man or woman would also be considered a personalized campaign, in many cases this would not be sufficient for good results. Although the amount of manual segmentation required for this is high, it pays off, as wastage losses are reduced to a minimum
.Dynamic personalization — use new technologies
The fact that users are influenced by personalized content is not a new finding. It is not for nothing that this approach has long been established in marketing, for example by addressing you by name in shops or emails. However, technological progress also brings with it further possible applications here. For example, data-based personalization to address new and existing customers was the dream of every marketer 10 years ago. With the possibilities of Dynamic Ads, this dream is now being fulfilled. These are an effective way of personalization and provide users with relevant content, a feeling of increased appreciation and control and therefore a better customer experience.
This post first appeared on marketing exchange.
