Seventy-one percent of consumers prefer personally tailored ads1. No one wants to feel anonymous or like they don’t matter. And they certainly don’t want their day, their online browsing, or their binge-watching interrupted with ads that offend or are irrelevant.
The ad experience is critical to your brand identity. Marketers must make a meaningful connection. Ads are the first opportunity for a consumer to engage with the brand. Get them right, and it’s the beginning of a lasting relationship. Get them wrong, and it may be the last time you engage with a particular consumer.
Ad Experience: Relevance Is Not Enough
Consumers only view 4 percent of digital ads for longer than two seconds. Unfortunately, marketers are not taking advantage of these critical moments and instead are delivering repetitive messaging throughout multiple stages of the buyer journey. Consumers routinely report that ads are a waste of their time. Is that the first experience you want them to have with your brand—as a time waster?
Brands now have immense capacity to make ads relevant. But the best ads don’t feel like ads at all. When they do, consumers quickly turn their attention elsewhere. Our report found that 73 percent of consumers feel negatively toward brands with repetitive messaging—a growth of 15 percent since the last report.
Also, nearly three-quarters of consumers report that they do not pay attention to ads, even on Facebook and YouTube, platforms known for high time spent and engagement. This lack of consumer attention is understandable given that 42 percent feel digital ads are irrelevant. This sentiment is even more evident in digital video.
Building Ads with Value
While the sight, sound, and motion of video ads are arguably more engaging than banner ads, consumers do not find value in watching, and they will always skip ads when given the opportunity. When video ads are irrelevant, consumers perceive them as much more annoying, potentially nurturing hostility toward your brand.
Consumers hate irrelevant video ads so much that, even when encountering non-skippable video ads, more than half of consumers will abandon the ad within 20 seconds—even when they must forgo post-ad content. Advertisers would be wise to focus on the most important content in the first five seconds of the ad. Since YouTube popularized ad skipping after five seconds, it has become critical for video ads to deliver value within this time frame because it’s highly likely they will be skipped.
Consumers have also grown tired of ads that simply remarket products they previously shopped for, with 60 percent feeling negatively toward this ad type, a trend that has continued over the past four quarters. Marketers must pay attention to this trend because they are alienating the people they are trying to woo.
Putting a renewed focus on tailoring ad creative to your audience is imperative to avoid further declines in consumer sentiment. Consumers have voiced that standard retargeting is no longer an adequate form of personalization. After all, browsing history is only one dimension of consumer behavior.
Many data points can help advertisers better define the target consumer. But how are you using this data? Do you know which pieces of information are truly critical and which are mere noise? The right ad experience platform empowers marketers to take decisive action that engages consumers and ensures an impeccable ad experience. You need more control over the process, a personalized approach, and data you can truly use. Learn how to get all three with RevJet.
View a freely reusable infographic summarizing report findings, or download a complimentary copy of the full report.
1 https://www.adlucent.com/resources/blog/71-of-consumers-prefer-personalized-ads/
