Apr 27, 2016 By Kyle Graden

Highly Targeted, Seamless Advertising Experiences are the Future

in Advertising, Marketing, Marketing Cloud

We are in the age of the customer, where consumers want their data protected while expecting digital advertising to be relevant to them. Marketers are connecting with their customers in a whole new way activating CRM to deliver personalized advertising at scale. Data shows that CRM-targeted ads work better than traditional targeting methods, native ads are on the rise in Europe, and online reviews are are the new normal.

Consumers want personalized advertising that is tailored to them as unique individuals. Marketers can leverage first-party data to create these personalized experiences, which makes advertising more effective. According to Signal, 86% of Australian brands that use people-based advertising report that it outperforms standard campaigns on similar media channels. This is very comparable to brands in North America, 83% of which indicated that people-based advertising campaigns perform better, also reported by Signal.

In addition to CRM powered advertising, another emerging trend is native advertising, such as Facebook and Twitter ads that are integrated in the newsfeed. Why not blend the efficiency of CRM powered ads with this less intrusive creative execution? Spend on native ads will see huge growth in Europe over the next five years. The chart below by eMarketer shows European advertisers will spend €6.7 billion ($8.9 billion) on native ads in 2016, growing 97% to €8.3 billion ($11.0 billion) in 2020. You should adapt your creative in more ways than just altering the specifications for a given platform; you also need to match the essence of the app, website, or social network where your ad will appear.

As you focus on personalizing ads to your diverse audience, remember that peer reviews also influence purchase decisions. GlobalWebIndex reports that nearly half of internet users review a product or brand online each month. Don’t miss out on these conversations! You can build brand advocates by using your first party data to find your best and/or most influential customers. Use native ads to ask them to review your product or brand online and then use social listening to promote these new reviews in an ad targeted to people having conversations about products and services you offer.