Sometimes you see something and you just want to go „yes, yes, yes!“ because it’s so on point. Our very own analyst Lee Beale had such a moment when he came across a POV on personalization by Peter Weinberg & Jon Lombardo.
Being a client is hard these days. Your job is to lead strategically and find great answers to seemingly simple questions — what do we stand for; who are we after; what do we want them to do. Yet, clarity is hard-earned and often elusive because of the never-ending onslaught of distractions in the form of shiny new toys and premium snake oil.
While 99% of these so-called game-changing, paradigm-busting, globally-scalable disruptors are BS, you can’t afford to ignore them. Not just because of FOMO for the 1% that actually breaks through but because you’ll need to defend your rational mindset to a boardroom that is easy prey for having their minds blown.
It’s not easy to stand your ground against a groundswell of hype and peer pressure, so it’s always nice when other clear thinkers bravely bust myths that probably made your life miserable at times. Thank you Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo for speaking the honest, boring truth to power. These two gentlemen are pushing back against the runaway train of Personalization at Scale. Essentially Peter and Jon are saying forget personalization at scale. It’s near impossible. By the way, they aren’t the only voices saying this. The chorus of conscientious objectors is growing. “Marketers’ enthusiasm for personalisation at scale may be needlessly adding complexity while reducing effectiveness because of a lack of attention to marketing fundamentals,” says Samuel Brealey, a marketing consultant. He goes as far to say that “In general, the best ad for one audience is the best ad for all audiences.” Messrs. Weinberg, Lombardo, and Brealey are validated by a recent study from Analytic Partners that reports context targeting is generally up to 2.5x more effective than individual-based hyper-targeting.
Yet, the false prophets of personalization persist with their post-cookie identity solutions and workarounds. At the end of the day, what will be revealed is that true personalization is a pipe dream because of subpar data quality that won’t likely be overcome. When we attribute media through to verified “person-level” client data, the accuracy of industry-standard targeting leaves much to be desired, let alone micro-targeting and personalization. All too often, third-party cookie targeting performs no better than generic demo-based segments. Instead of obsessing over the marginal gains that “optimized” personalization brings, or even expensive third-party data appends, we should first focus on inspired creative that resonates with everyone.
Foto credit: Pieter (Unsplash)
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