Customized displays increase efficiency and acceptance
A guest post by Oliver Hülse, Managing Director of Rocket Fuel Germany, on the personalization of ads and moving away from the “scattergun” approach—or, in other words, counterproductive retargeting.
It's time to leave the ad generation of boring or annoying online advertising behind. With the innovative methods that personalized marketing provides today, advertisers can build much more individualized relationships with their customers. In our digital advertising age, advertisers have the opportunity to work with advertising technology companies to improve their targeting and increasingly personalize advertising messages. By evaluating online user behavior, relevant and personalized marketing messages can be delivered that speak to the user individually. However, many advertisers still follow the watering can principle, which means that users often find the advertising messages uninteresting or feel annoyed by them.
Counterproductive retargeting
Almost every online user knows the feeling of being followed across the web by a product ad. This is poorly implemented retargeting. Of course, the consumer has shown interest in this product at some point. But instead of repeatedly showing them ads for exactly this product, the user can be won back more effectively by reminding them of the online store or the brand. Bestselling products in the same category or useful additions to the item originally searched for can also more easily arouse buying interest instead of weariness.
By working with a technology provider that works with predictive modeling, more relevant and personalized ads can be displayed. The technology evaluates data and insights about the online behavior of existing buyers to determine how to reach potential new users and which products, offers or advertising material should ideally be displayed. With this data-based approach, advertisements can be personalized much better than would be possible manually. To this end, the media channels in which users are online and the various devices they use for this as well as the times when they are active are evaluated. Not only the usage behavior is relevant, but also the right context in which the advertising is then displayed.
Beware of arbitrary frequency capping
It makes little sense to expose the user to an "overdose" of ads. It has been shown that there is a frequency curve for each campaign, which can be used to determine the ideal frequency for advertising placement for each individual user. If the peak of the curve is exceeded, further ad impressions reduce the probability of a purchase. Frequency capping, which treats every user equally, is therefore not a solution. Although the frequency curves for most users have a similar average, they are different for each individual. Today, the shape of these curves and the optimal ad frequency for each individual user can be determined by analyzing large amounts of data.
Increased efficiency through individual approach
Dynamic, personalized ads offer an almost unlimited number of individual ad variations that are created automatically. Previous ways of personalizing ads have relied on manual methods and simple rules. An artificially intelligent and data-driven platform can learn from past response data on products and ad texts using specially developed, self-learning algorithms. This includes surfing behavior on the Internet, previous purchases and the user's location. Dynamic, personalized ads combine ad elements such as title, image, price and call to action. They also offer personalized product recommendations and ad texts for the individual user. This individual selection of the optimal products and advertising messages enables advertisers to significantly increase their sales.
Oliver Hülse is responsible for Rocket Fuel's business activities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He is responsible for customer relations with leading advertisers and agencies. He is also building up the Hamburg team and is currently recruiting for the areas of sales and account management. Oliver Hülse comes from the Adconion Media Group, where he was most recently Managing Director of the German GmbH. The 41-year-old from Hamburg began his career in digital media sales thirteen years ago at the Milchstrasse publishing group and Tomorrow Internet AG, before working for several years as VP International Operations at Interactive Media CCSP.
