Can you get too personal with your online advertising?

This study for a global media agency explored how far brands should go with ad personalisation on digital platforms. We wanted to find out at what point consumers were creeped out by an online ad that seemed to know them just a bit too well.

The study design was special. The quant survey was carried out in two stages with stage 1 taking place several weeks before stage 2. At this first stage we found out lots of information about a respondent. At stage 2 we told these same respondents they were being invited to test a new website. On this website we placed regular ads; we also placed some highly personal ads which used info we’d found out about them at stage 1 to tailor the ad message. It meant the respondent didn’t pay undue attention to the ads and interacted with them in a normal way – although at the end of the survey we did come clean!

The findings? Younger people aren’t freaked out by seeing personal messages referencing their pets, their inability to pay bills on time or their interest in travel. Their general attitude is that they expect advertisers to know this stuff about them anyway, as a lot of it is already on social media. From an advertiser’s point of view there’s licence to be personal and reasons to do so in terms of stronger ad performance – although overly personalised messages don’t necessarily perform better than those which feel personally relevant.