Creating Personalized Customer Experiences with Advertising Automation

The following is adapted from Basis Technologies’ guide, Meeting the Moment with Advertising Automation. To get even more advertising automation-related insights and statistics, download the guide today.

“Give consumers a thoughtful, tailored advertising experience and they will buy more, develop more loyalty, and share their positive engagement with others.” A simple concept in theory, yet one that’s extremely difficult to execute.

Delivering a great customer experience depends on a range of factors, including speed, convenience, consistency, and approachability. The big one, though, is the human touch—creating real connections by making technology feel more human and meeting people in their moment, where they are, and on an individual level. In a word: personalization. 

The Rising Demand for Personalization 

Personalization can take many shapes and forms, and digital advertisers can tap into a range of personalization tactics that can run throughout the entire journey to purchase. In today’s campaigns, brands are compelled to move beyond a blanket targeting approach and instead create content that caters to their audience’s unique experiences and meets them on their preferred channel. And consumers are increasingly demanding it: 73% of all buyers (including both B2B and B2C) say they expect companies to understand their unique needs, while just over half (56%) expect offers to always be personalized. 

When done manually, omnichannel personalization strategies can be incredibly cost sapping and time consuming, relying on a host of disparate platforms. This model was once the only one available, but it’s inadequate for an era where marketers need the ability to easily modify and customize creative assets with audience-specific language, calls-to-action, real-time messaging, visuals, and products. Further exacerbating these challenges is consumers’ recent reevaluation of businesses’ roles in society, with stakeholder capitalism becoming an increasingly major factor in purchasing decisions. Modern consumers want more than just personalized experiences—they want empathetic and authentic ones, with 62% saying they feel an emotional connection to the brands they buy from the most. 

Marketers who are looking to successfully incorporate personalized moments into their advertising experiences—and find the greater flexibility, efficiency, and scalability required to implement them—need three things: a strategy to streamline planning, technology to effortlessly control campaigns, and data-driven measurement. Fortunately, there is one existing solution that offers all that (and more): digital advertising automation. 

Across every industry, from automotive to education, financial services to retail, technological developments in the areas of artificial intelligence and machine learning have enabled advertisers to create more personalized content while leaving antiquated manual techniques behind. Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) systems activated by advanced data management infrastructure can automatically build thousands of digital ads that vary in real-time for product-based retargeting, creative personalization, audience segmentation, and customer journey enhancement. By adopting this workflow automation, media buyers have more time to focus on these types of strategies and ensure they are crafting messaging that better targets unique segments. The end results: more conversions, loyalty, and revenue.

The Current State of Personalization: Six Stats

• 61% of consumers are comfortable with companies using relevant personal information in a transparent and beneficial manner—up from 52% in 2020. 
• 74% of consumers say companies collect more personal information than they need. 
• 80% of business leaders say customers spend 34% more (on average) when offered personalized shopping experiences. 
• Over three-quarters of Gen Z consumers say that having an ad experience based on their data is invasive, and only about 40% are willing to give data to get a more personalized experience. 
• Only 35% of marketers believe they are successfully achieving omnichannel personalization. 
• 79% of consumers say they’re more likely to trust a company with their information if its use were clearly explained.

Automated Personalization in Action: Eight Examples

Geo-targeting campaigns

• Vertical: Retail & E-commerce
• Target Audience: New prospect – Top of the funnel
• Advertising Automation in Action: Weather forecast predicts rain in prospect’s zip code > Trigger ads for coats and waterproof clothing

Feed-based product campaigns

• Vertical: Travel & Tourism
• Target Audience: Rewards member – Bottom of the funnel
• Advertising Automation in Action: Books a flight to a previously visited destination > Triggers ads for their favorite hotel

Sequential storytelling

• Vertical: Retail & E-commerce.
• Target audience: High-value customer – Bottom of the funnel
• Advertising Automation in Action: Repeat tote bag purchaser > Trigger ads showcasing next season’s line

Behavioral prospecting

• Vertical: Education
• Target Audience: Recurring customer – Bottom of the funnel
• Advertising Automation in Action: Recently completed a beginner’s course in learning Spanish > Trigger ads for an intermediate course

Geo-targeting campaigns

• Vertical: Automotive
• Target Audience: New prospect – Top of the funnel
• Advertising Automation in Action: Browsing active auto loans and leases > Trigger ads displaying the best showroom deals near them

Contextual targeting

• Vertical: B2B
• Target Audience: Disengaged prospect – Top of the funnel
• Advertising Automation in Action: Visiting website for the first time in nine months > Trigger “Welcome back” website content

Sequential storytelling

• Vertical: CPG
• Target Audience: Recurring customer – Bottom of the funnel
• Advertising Automation in Action: Purchases a bottle of wine > Trigger ads with suggested food pairings

Behavioral prospecting

• Vertical: Automotive
• Target Audience: New prospect – Top of the funnel
• Advertising Automation in Action: Researching family cars > Trigger ads for SUVs that highlight their safety accolades

Wrapping Up: Creating Personalized Customer Experiences

The very meaning of the term personalization has evolved quite a bit over the last decade. Indeed, until relatively recently, the concept of personalizing content equated to simply inserting someone’s first name in an email or basic push notification.

However, personalization today is a different animal—much more complex, much more challenging, and much more pervasive. To get it right, and at scale, advertisers need to first get their data house in order before layering on top various automation functionalities that can empower them to go from rigid linear storytelling to something markedly more dynamic and engaging.

Want to learn more about advertising automation? Check out our guide and see why automation is essential to the future success and long-term growth of the media buying industry.