The Power of Ad Personalization: Promoting Ads that Make a True Impact

Laura Kloot

1 month ago

Think back to the last time you received a birthday card or letter with a hand-written message inside. Knowing that somebody thought about you and took the time to write a personal greeting gave you a warm and fuzzy feeling, right?

Ad personalization needs to be a bit more subtle than that, but when it’s done well it can increase people’s warmth towards your brand.

A recent survey of business leaders found that 89% believe personalized communication is key to success with modern customers.

However, if it’s done badly, ad personalization feels intrusive or “creepy”. It’s a fine line to tread.

Read on to discover how to create personalized ads that talk to “people” rather than “prospects”.

Understanding Personalized Ads

Ad personalization means making ads more ‘individual’ and relatable to viewers. To do this, you need to get your ads in front of people:

in the right place
at the right time
with the right message

Good quality data helps you to target your ads well and deliver them at the perfect moment, but you also need an intuitive sense of what will connect emotionally with your audience. Ads that make an emotional impact perform twice as well as those that only appeal on a rational level.

The evolution of personalized ads

Believe it or not, marketing personalization began centuries ago. As people started trading with each other, shopkeepers and craftsmen tailored their products to meet the needs of individual customers.

When the printing press came along in the late 1400s, trade catalogs were born. These early brochures initially targeted a small, educated section of society, who were literate and wealthy enough to buy the products.

It wasn’t until the advent of mass media in the twentieth century that we started to see advertising on a commercial scale. Businesses reached a vast audience through newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. At this stage, ads became more generic in order to appeal to mass markets.

When the internet took off, personalization started making a comeback. Marketers could now collect data on individuals, such as behaviors and preferences, allowing for more tailored ads. Email marketing became a popular way to send personalized offers directly to customers’ inboxes based on past purchases or interests.

In recent years, the growth of online advertising and social media has taken personalization even further. Platforms like Facebook and Google track online audience behaviors and serve ads that feel like they’re reading your mind.

We’ve come full circle. Just like the old shopkeepers, today’s marketers can use personalized ads to offer just the right product, to just the right person, at just the right time – on the internet.

The Art of Creating Personalized Ads

The best personalized ads make people feel seen and understood.

That’s not just hyperbole. Thirty-nine percent of Gen X and millennials think that ads work best when the content or deals are based on their behavior or interests.

But how do you achieve that? How do you make ads that feel like they’re personally addressed to your ideal customer? There are three main steps.

Step one: Identify your target audience

When creating personalized ads, you need to know exactly who you’re talking to. Start by researching key details about your target market. Ask questions like:

How old are they?
Where do they live?
What’s their income level?
What are their personalities like?
What are their interests?
What are their fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations?

Once you understand your audience on a deep level, you can build marketing personas and tailor your ads for each persona type. This allows you to speak more directly to different customers and better address their needs.

Step two: Use compelling ad copy and visuals

The next step is to get the attention of your target audience. This means writing ad copy that feels like you’re entering the conversation in their head and connects emotionally.

Use insights gathered during your research and present them in an empathetic way. For instance, if you sell hair loss products for men, mention the challenges of hair loss in a sensitive way that makes bald men feel understood. Pair your messaging with eye-catching visuals for maximum impact.

Humor and relatable insights are two powerful tactics used by advertisers to make ads feel more personalized. For example, imagine an ad for a meal kit delivery service. Instead of just saying, “Get fresh ingredients delivered to your door,” the ad could tap into a common frustration – the struggle to decide what’s for dinner after a long day. The copy could read, “Tired of asking ‘What’s for dinner?’ Let us handle it,” paired with a visual of a stressed-out parent looking at an empty fridge.

Step three: Persuade them to take action

Now you’ve caught their attention, the final step is getting them to do something. This could be clicking on your ad, visiting a landing page, or checking out a relevant blog post or video. You’re competing for people’s attention so you need to give people a good reason to take the next step.

For example, if you sell online courses on digital marketing, instead of saying “Learn digital marketing” as the call to action, you could add an extra incentive, such as “Sign up today and get a free eBook on mastering SEO”.

Boost Engagement with Data-Driven Ad Personalization

Once you’ve got your ad creatives done, you can use some clever techniques and tools to personalize your ads even more.

Dynamic titles

Advertising platform Outbrain offers a useful tool called “Dynamic Titles”. It lets you create more relevant ad headlines by dynamically inserting information such as a user’s location or the day of the week into the title.

It’s simple to use. All you have to do is add dynamic parameters like ${city}$ or ${dayofweek}$, directly into the ad copy. The system fills them in when the ad is displayed.

Platform integration

To deliver personalized ads at scale, you can integrate your data sources, such as CRM, website analytics, and email marketing platform, with the advertising platform. Pulling data in from all these sources means you can tailor your ads to individuals, rather than large groups.

Different types of ads

There are several types of personalized ads you can use to attract people’s attention and get them to take action.

Demographic-based ads

Based on information like age, gender, income, education, and marital status. For example, an ad might target young professionals in their 20s or 30s.

Behavioral ads

Based on online activities, such as browsing history, past purchases, or content engagement. For instance, if someone is searching for travel deals, they might see ads for vacations or travel gear.

Geographic ads

A local restaurant might show ads to people within a certain radius of their location. A fashion store could promote weather-appropriate clothing based on the user’s region.

Psychographic ads

Based on lifestyle, values, interests, and personality traits. For example, highlighting eco-friendly values with sustainable products.

Retargeting ads

Ads are shown to users who visited your website or store but didn’t buy yet. The ads are reminders, showing products they already viewed or offering discounts.

Dynamic ads

Content changes based on real-time data, such as location, time of day, or recent behavior. For instance, an ad might display different products based on what the user recently searched for.

Contextual ads

Ads that match what the user is reading on the page. For example, if someone is reading a fitness blog, they might see ads for health supplements.

Best Practices for Effective Ad Personalization

Run A/B tests

Advertising isn’t an exact science. Even if you do in-depth data-driven research into your target market and create highly personalized ads – sometimes the results still don’t come.

Rather than overhaul the entire campaign, you can run A/B tests. Create two versions of the same ad, but with one small change between them, for example, changing a few words in the headline. The system randomly displays one version of the ad to half your audience and the other variation to the other half.

Over time, you can use A/B testing to arrive at the best possible version, fueling better results in future campaigns.

Non-intrusive personalization

You know those annoying pop-up ads? The ones that block content from view? Or videos and sounds that start playing without permission? Intrusive ads can create a negative impression of your brand.

However, 83% of people say not all ads are bad. Therefore, if you make your ads feel less intrusive and subtly personalized, people are more likely to welcome them.

Personalized native advertising can work well, such as a social media ad that appears in your feed and looks just like a regular post. Outbrain native ads are served on the open web, on publisher sites where people browse and consume content, such as news or sports websites. Personalized Outbrain ads are a great way to blend the non-intrusive native format with personalization that feels more natural and connected to the target audience.

Adapt to changes in consumer behavior

Consumer trends and preferences change all the time. Keep an open mind and adapt to trends as they happen, rather than ignoring them and getting caught on the backfoot.

At the moment, the trend is for relevant contextual ads that don’t disrupt the overall online experience. It seems unlikely we’ll ever go back to an online world full of intrusive ads. People want ads that add value rather than interrupting their web-based experiences.