Last week we attended the Oracle Data Cloud Summit 2016: The New Face of Data, where leaders from various industries came together to talk about the the latest trends in targeting, personalization and measurement.
One of the themes we were most excited to hear about was leveraging data and motion to create personalized experiences for consumers.
John Nitti, Chief Media Officer at Verizon, spoke about how brands need to stitch together their data to identify incremental insights and reach audiences in a “relevant and native nature” – across any device.
Tim Kendall, President of Pinterest, talked about how “motion is critical” and that video needs to be “woven into the organic flow” of a consumer’s experience.
And Paddy Hannon, Chief Technology Officer at Edmunds.com, summed up the entire theme perfectly when he said that marketers “need to tell better stories through advertising to revolutionize the space…it’s important to deliver value and give consumers more than bombarding them with messages.”
We ask: what better way to tell a story with motion than integrating personalized videos into your digital advertising or retargeting strategy?
But the push for personalization is not without its challenges – specifically around the tradeoff between data quality/accuracy and reach/scalability.
Several panelists talked about the challenge of effectively managing and linking devices to profiles in an accurate but scalable manner. As much as we want to reach every person with a unique, personalized message it can be difficult and costly to accomplish – meaning sometimes we sacrifice accuracy to increase reach.
However, according to Omar Tawakol, SVP at Oracle Data Cloud, accepting watered-down data quality in order to increase reach can be a slippery slope. You don’t want to connect the wrong customer profile to a tracked device and end up serving up ad about torque and horsepower to a women browsing the season’s newest fashions.
Finding the right time and place for personalization was also a concern for panelists.
There’s a fine line between using consumers’ trust and personalized messaging to create favorable brand experiences and unfavorable ones. Consumers can either be left inspired and ready to take action or rolling their eyes and annoyed with your brand.
My favorite example was a panelist who logged into a hotel’s wifi, was directed to the property’s webpage, and then proceeded to receive 8 different display ads…telling him to book now…at a rate lower than what he was paying. Talk about a retargeting fail!
