More personalized and targeted: How advertising is changing

The commercials and advertisements of the good old days worked according to the watering can principle: on the radio, on TV programs or on billboards, hardly any consumer could escape them. But like the rest of the world, the success story of the Internet has also fundamentally changed advertising over the past few years. How does good advertising work today?

Online marketing made big changes

“Fifty percent of advertising is always thrown out. But you never know which half it is. ”- This famous quote from Henry Ford shows the problems in the age of advertising pillars and TV spots. At the time, advertisers could never be quite sure whether they would optimally reach the interested audience through the selected channels or instead waste their budget ineffectively. Because, regardless of whether the advertising leads to sales campaigns or remains ineffective - the advertiser always had to pay for the space in the chosen medium.

This system changed permanently on the Internet. Success can be better measured here and billing is based on success:

01: PPC advertising

Pay-per-click advertising refers to forms of advertising in which the advertiser only pays when a prospect actually clicks on the ad. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo use this system for their advertising programs. The price that an advertising customer has to pay for a click is determined through bids. Highly frequented keywords usually cost a multiple of niche keywords.

02: Advertising can be measured

Unlike in the past, online advertising enables a look behind the scenes. Advertisers can see how many people their advertisement reaches and what percentage of them get them to interact, e.g. a click on the ad or even a purchase of the product. Different advertising concepts can also compete against each other at the same time. Do customers tend to jump to serious information or to an advertisement with a funny slogan? Both forms can be displayed alternately online and their statistics reveal which one is more popular.

03: Personalized displays using cookies

Cookies are small text files in which it is noted which website a user has visited. Then advertising networks can use them to offer the same user products similar to those offered on the websites they have already visited. For the user, this sometimes has the tiring effect that after buying a coffee machine, he is overwhelmed by a flood of overlays with coffee and coffee machines.

Advertising is becoming more and more personalized

The “advertising-relevant target group of 14 to 49 year olds” is now a thing of the past. This arbitrary limitation was made by the private TV broadcaster RTL in the 1980s in order to better position itself with the audience. Today advertising is much more personalized and addresses individual age groups, genders, but also people with specific characteristics and hobbies. This helps to place advertising much more effectively and not to waste money on clients who are naturally hardly interested in the product. The most important personalization tools today are:

• Social media helps to address the target group: Each target group visits their preferred social medium: while Facebook users are statistically getting older, the young are more likely to hang around on Instagram and Youtube. This is also where their respective icons, the influencers, have their channels that advertising companies like to use for their interests.
• Various options for targeting: Within social media such as Facebook, a target group can not only be restricted to age and gender, but also to certain regions, characteristics or interests. Companies that operate “psychographic targeting” go even further, i.e. choose their addressees according to certain personality traits that they e.g. learn about surveys. If the data was obtained in legally dubious ways, advertisers will come up against legal and ethical limits. The latest scandal involving Facebook and the data analysis company Cambridge Analytica shows what social consequences systematic targeting can have when switching from product advertising to politics.

Classic shapes are also included here

In the age of private television, every user statistically saw around 650 advertising messages a day. Today experts assume that we are confronted with 10,000 advertising messages every day. Since most of them appear in the digital world, this form of advertising is becoming less important for customers. Here companies can definitely stand out from the crowd with classic forms of advertising. The following advertising channels, for example, are suitable for this:

• Promotional gifts: Companies still rarely use this medium, although research has recognized that small gifts are one of the most effective advertising media. If companies distribute everyday objects, they bring them to the mind of potential customers each time they are used. But here, too, the optimal alignment with the target group is absolutely important: Younger users enjoy power banks and electronic gadgets, while customers of a more serious target group are more likely to be enthusiastic with high-quality writing sets. Ballpoint pens with special accessories are definitely among the more popular items.

Promotional gifts also serve to convey messages about the respective company. There is a trend towards sustainable promotional items, especially among young companies. They range from writing utensils made from recycled materials to reusable coffee-to-go cups and power banks that work with solar energy.

• Brochures, flyers and the like: Digital advertising is practically disembodied - that is why most people nowadays feel that advertising materials are of higher quality. This also applies to the generation of “digital natives” who know no world without the Internet. Companies that want to make a trustworthy impression therefore rely on high-quality brochures and flyers even in the digital age. Potential customers like to keep such articles at home so that they can refer to the information later. Here, reaching into the drawer is sometimes closer than googling a product seen on the Internet again.

Conclusion

Nowadays, potential customers are exposed to a veritable flood of advertisements. On the one hand, this leads to inflation in the expressiveness, on the other hand, there is also the possibility of smart companies to stand out from the crowd with unusual means.