There’s a sea change taking place online, and it’s being driven by questions about when, why and how we make the decisions we do. It’s a given that information is abundant, but the volume and quality are such that it’s sometimes hard to make an informed judgement about the right choice. Michael Steckler, UK Managing Director at Criteo writes…
For most of us, the issue is simple. We want the right information at the right point in our decision making process. A good example of this is an iPhone app which allows you to look at wine reviews when deciding on a wine in a restaurant.
One of the key things driving the online sector is interaction that’s relevant to the needs of the consumer. The traditional approach online has always been that content is king. Whilst this will no doubt continue to hold true, the market is evolving to where intent, and the process of supporting it, has equal reign.
We’ve moved on from an environment where online interactions and information were time delayed, with news sites, blogs and picture sharing driving activity, to one where interaction is in real time with status updates, chat tools and check-ins increasingly used to disperse information. This proliferation of content, made that much easier by the lowered costs of technology-enabled production has resulted in a shift toward content filtering and personalisation.
The recent launch of Google’s Boutiques.com, a personalised fashion site that uses tastes and extensive filtering options to produce the item you’re looking for, is a good example of the continued success within this space.
This is now developing further with growing focus on customer intentions based not on self-selection but through intelligent automated modelling of collective knowledge and data in real-time. It is about predicting consumer intent and delivering relevant and highly personalised content in response – the ‘know who I am, know what I like’ pot of gold that all marketers seek.
Microsoft’s Kinect for example, says it can recognise individuals and their preferences and automatically delivers personalised settings and content to each user based on their preferences.
In order to match this rapidly changing nature of the online market, advertising needs to continue to evolve. The shift to intent underscores the vital importance of relevance, using technology to drive the personalisation of online advertising, based on real-time data.
I have written previously about the ‘Intention Economy’ which explains this shift. It focuses around the needs of the ‘buyers’ determining the products and services offered. This might sound like traditional marketing – advertise a product to fulfil a consumer need, however when you look at the actions of online consumers, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the model is not working. We know that around 95% of visitors leave an e-commerce site without making a purchase. Whilst this is a widely accepted statistic, any inroads made into this percentage could make an enormous difference to sales.
What’s critical is the understanding that people don’t necessarily browse in a linear fashion but rather browse and research products extensively before purchasing either online or on the high street. The prolific nature of web content means predicting each person’s intention during their browsing journey becomes that much more important for delivery of highly relevant and personalised advertising that speaks on a one-to-one basis.
By understanding the shift to intent, and through the use of clever technology, marketers will be better equipped to aid consumers in their purchasing decisions, by showing them what they wanted at a time that fits with their needs.
By Michael Steckler
UK Managing DirectorCriteo
