Wanted: creative types to join the Programmatic Revolution
VisualDNA’s Jim Hodgkins calls on creatives to step forward as the missing ingredient to drive the evolution of programmatic and psychological targeting.
There was a time when creative agencies would pull a face if the conversation turned to programmatic. They deemed it little more than the serving of banner advertising with minimal artistic input.
However, I believe creatives are the missing ingredient for a programmatic world, which has the potential to better target people according to their psychological profile.
I know I sound like an ad-tech hippy when I say this but I truly believe it’s the answer to solving the issues around the current awful digital user experience.
The creative execution can make the difference between an explicit user experience and an implicit one.
The former involves being followed around the Internet by display ads for Sofa.com until you end up shouting expletives at your computer screen. The latter involves changing the imagery or messaging in a way that is more aligned with people’s personality and motivations in order to elicit a more emotional response.
Seeing data profiling in psychological terms is simply using the vast swathes of consumer information in smarter ways. The more we understand people’s personalities, the more we can better understand their approach and reasoning behind their online behaviour and purchases.
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But we need creatives to complete the chain between the available data, technology and media. When we add this creativity into the behavioural and personality mix, we can target psychological profiling with visuals, video and ideas that will really resonate.
Psychologists are broadly agreed for over 50 years that the big five personality traits (because they encompass us all) are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism.
We all have specific personality traits within these of course, but if we accept that certain people are open, then we can determine that they are likely to be an early adopter and willing to accept new ideas.
An extravert is likely to get their energy from their surroundings whereas an introvert may prefer solitude.
If we can use smart data to classify consumers in this way, we can predict how they’ll engage with and respond to advertising. It’s not about finding audiences, it’s about once you’ve found the audience, being able to speak to the different types of people within it.
For the first time, we have the ability to target people differently, but we need the creatives to do it well.
By changing the visuals, and key benefit statements people will engage differently and convert more effectively depending where they sit on the OCEAN framework.
We need the creative artists to embrace this automated canvas as it expands.”
At the recent Media Playground event, hosted by Mediatel, I used a set of mocked up Tesco display ads to prove the point. In a retail environment, our six personality types, made up of OCEAN characteristics, include the Emotional Shopper, the Social Spender, a Self Assured customer and the more Insular consumer.
Using the ‘Every Little Helps’ tag-line we could target each profile with a different visual and produce a far better emotional engagement and response as a result.
This is already happening in the advertising world, just not enough.
During the General Election back in May, The Independent’s ‘i’ newspaper served daily creative content that was personalised and varied in reaction to the events of the electoral campaign.
People were targeted with messages relevant to their demographic, political persuasions and the social trends of the election. These messages were then adapted according to response, before people were offered a free subscription to the ‘i’ newspaper.
The beauty of this campaign is in its deeper understanding of who the paper’s readership are in terms of their personalities, why they behave in certain ways, how they differ and how they can be all communicated to differently, for added effectiveness.
Over the summer, Unilever creatively maximised its audience data in Brazil by relaunching its Axe deodorant brand with a video that could be programmatically served in 100,000 variations.
Things such as the soundtrack or the setting changed in the ad depending on the viewer’s interests. It’s believed to be the biggest creatively driven programmatic play to date.
By 2017 in the UK, programmatic penetration of digital display ads is predicted to hit 59% and 20% globally. We need the creative artists to embrace this automated canvas as it expands.
The more that creative agencies understand the technology, the more they can use smart data to fuel on-demand, native, video and other rapidly expanding ad formats. In turn, clients will get a more creative bang for their buck.
It doesn’t have to be a one-size fits all world anymore. Dynamic creative optimisation is possible but more creatives need to join the party and form a coming together of all the constituent industry parts. Then we’ll really see what creativity can do.
Jim Hodgkins is managing director at VisualDNA.