A convergence of priorities for consumers and marketers in the age of Big Data and data privacy rules will see relevancy become the critical metric for the effectiveness of advertising.
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Phocuswright Europe: Relevancy is the answer to data privacy, mobile and consumer behaviour challenges
A convergence of priorities for consumers and marketers in the age of Big Data and data privacy rules will see relevancy become the critical metric for the effectiveness of advertising.
Daniele Beccari, head of travel products at global performance marketing platform Criteo, told last week’s Phocsuswright conference that personalised ads are six time more effective than generic ads.
He said data has shown that personalised banners can improve click through rate and conversion so that six times as many bookings can be generated by paying for the same number of impressions.
“The question we try to answer is what does the user want right now? You will never serve the same ad twice because every ad you serve will be different from the previous one.
“The world is seeing an explosion of data. Each of us will have one or more device and all are producing data. What we are living through today is only the beginning.
“We [consumers] are going to start being information blind. Attention spans are going to be reducing more and more.
“The problem in marketing is we want to be heard. We want message to get out to the consumer. The answer is pretty easy: relevance.
“We will pay attention only to what’s extremely relevant to us at that moment. Whether that’s an ad or not, it does not really matter.
“Relevancy helps both users and marketers achieve something. Everything not relevant is noise or spam.
“For a marketer relevancy means I’m going to produce something, everything else is a waste of budget. This is the common ground between consumers and marketers.”
Beccari said there were three components to relevancy: segmentation, personalisation and contextualisation.
He said segmentation was a bit old hat, relying on stereotypes and approximations, but is a start while true personalisation renders segmentation irrelevant.
To be successful marketing to consumers individually, firms will need to organise themselves around four key pillars in the future, Beccari said.
These are privacy, data analytics, the ability to generate dynamic ad creatives to deliver personalised messages and reach.
“The more touch points you have with the user the more accurate you can be to get back to the user at the right time with the right message,” Beccari said.
The growth of mobile has introduced a critical problem for all firms associated with the challenge of tracking users across multiple devices.
Beccari said: “The problem with most tools today in analytics is they are device centric and tend to see all profiles as a different user whereas in many cases these are the same user.”
Data on UK consumers analysed by Criteo shows the longer the buying process the more devices are used. A travel purchase that takes eight or more sessions involves an average of 2.33 devices.
Conventional analytics that don’t take account of cross-device behaviour over-state the number of “magic” bookings completed in just one session and first time visits, said Beccari.
Criteo says 50% of bookings are influenced by a session on a different device to the one the eventual booking is made on.
Beccari warned data privacy regulations will get stricter and the financial penalties for breaches harsher and this will make it even more important to be relevant to the consumer.
“Most markets are expanding their definition of personally identifiable information,” he said.
