I recently had the pleasure of speaking at Masterclassing’s Digital Marketing Masterclass in Boston. This event brought marketers together for an interactive half-day Masterclass designed to showcase the latest strategies, tools, tech, and trends in digital marketing.

I had many great discussions with brands about how to achieve personalization at scale while remaining privacy compliant. Below are some key learnings from these discussions.

Personalized advertising drives business results

During my presentation, I shared some results from Aki’s 2021 Receptivity Report where we conducted a real-world test to explore whether personalization has a measurable impact on advertising campaigns. We discovered that the audiences that were targeted were at least 2x more likely to engage with personalized video compared to non-personalized video. We also learned that on average, personalized rich media drove 110% higher engagement than non-personalized rich media. And we learned that overall, personalized creative drove 84% higher engagement than non-personalized creative.

Sharing these results brought up some interesting conversations around how to combine traditional strategies with digital innovations. One of the brand marketers I spoke to said that the funnel is no longer the focus. It’s no longer about focusing on awareness vs conversion or vice versa. It’s about engaging audiences across their consumer journey during moments of receptivity. It doesn’t matter which stage of the journey they’re at. What matters is being able to reach them with relevant messaging when they’re likely to engage. What matters even more than that, is ensuring that if you do share personalized advertisements, you must respect the consumers’ privacy.

Privacy regulations are expanding

It was evident to me that many marketers understood the importance of privacy regulations within digital advertising. Everyone was familiar with the GDPR in Europe and the CCPA in California. What some marketers were less familiar with was how many privacy legislations there are and the intricacies of each one.

State-level momentum for comprehensive privacy bills is at an all-time high. The challenge for marketers is to understand the varying stipulations of the many bills. This is basically an impossible challenge given how vast privacy legislation is. If businesses want to avoid violations, they will need to only leverage data that is privacy compliant by design.

Here’s how to do that:

  • Lean into contextual and cohort-based alternatives
  • Leverage probabilistic alternatives to 1:1 deterministic data
  • Partner with IDFA-agnostic targeting and attribution providers

Looking ahead

I asked a few of the marketers to share what they’re missing and would like to gain in 2022 and one response that stood out was “confidence.” Confidence in the effectiveness of their strategies and the measurement of their results.

By accessing data that is privacy compliant by design, marketers can be confident that their targeting is future-proof. By reaching audiences with personalized advertisements during moments of receptivity, marketers can be confident that their campaigns will drive results.

To learn more about how to drive campaign results in a privacy-first future, feel free to email me directly at rc@a.ki.

Risa Crandall, SVP CPG Strategy and Sales at Aki