Tailored Advertising, What Is It and Why Does It Matter?

Over recent years the marketing medium has experienced a seismic shift, the age of newspapers and flyers has given way to the highly bespoke targeted ads of today. Finding a website that does not sport any form of advertisement is a rarity with many opting to make use of all the free space they can muster to deliver a series of ads on a variety of topics. In order to better adhere to their clientele, many marketing companies have looked to tailor their advertising. What is Tailored Advertising? Many of us would have likely experienced tailored advertising without being aware and depending on your own online privacy settings you may be more or less exposed than others. Have you ever visited an online storefront in search of a product, left the website to browse elsewhere, or maybe look through social media and find that ads for the product are now plastered everywhere? This is a form of tailored advertising and works via accessing your past search history and areas of interest to provide ads specific to products or services that you have previously demonstrated interest in. Who Can be Targeted? Online traffic within this form of marketing campaign is segregated into a plethora of demographics, these may encompass anywhere from basic characteristics such as gender and race all the way to purchase history and online activity. There are also instances in which certain products or websites may follow you across the web or social platforms on the back of you having to access them initially. Certain demographics of the audience will be selected in tandem with whom the marketing team believe the product or service will most resonate with. How Is This an Improvement on Regular Advertising? The defining difference between tailored and regular advertising lies in the targeting of the ads. Regular ads – by their very nature – are pretty random, you may constantly experience ads for products you have zero interest in or see services offered that you simply do not need. Tailored ads aim to remedy this and will in turn offer to show you products or services bespoke to your interests or demographics. Targeted ads are beneficial to the user (once they get over the initial shock of having a product follow them across sites) by supplying interesting and relevant ads which are increasingly likely to result in a purchase. Businesses also benefit from this with tailored ads more likely to lead to sales whilst also funneling potential recurring clients into their sector. Different online users have varying opinions on privacy and data protection with tailored ads being something that worries some. Luckily, this section of the industry is heavily moderated with data privacy being a prominent subject within the news and we are slowly moving toward a world where data is truly private even with the presence of tailored advertisement.

For more information on Tailored Advertising, What Is It and Why Does It Matter? talk to Odyssey New Media Ltd