The average American is exposed to as many as 10,000 ads per day across email, mobile, desktop, television, and other channels. With so much competition for attention, brands need to find novel ways to deliver powerful, hyper-relevant messaging in moments when consumers are the most receptive.
“For modern marketers, the secret sauce when it comes to attracting and retaining new customers is being able to understand their ‘why,’ or what’s motivating them,” explains Michael Della Penna, chief strategy officer of marketing technology company InMarket. “It’s no longer enough to rely on superficial characteristics about your audiences to inform your marketing campaigns. Consumers want relevant, personalized experiences that directly address their needs and are delivered when and where they can most benefit from them.”
InMarket’s solution to delivering these experiences is a blend of artificial intelligence-driven predictive modeling based on rich data sources, creative optimization through nuanced customer understanding, and real-time delivery of ads as consumers shop.
Finding a Receptive Audience
While many marketers still rely on basic demographics such as age, gender, income, or general interests to inform audience segments, InMarket’s AI and analytics technologies can create highly granular audience segments exhibiting unique behaviors.
“For consumers, marketing in 2024 is about personalization, and for marketers it’s about getting the most for your buck,” says Della Penna. “In order to do both, creating custom audiences that encompass those customers who will be the most receptive and find the most value out of your ad experience is essential.”
One example of this customized approach is the creation of “commerce audiences,” segments that are grounded in fine-grained data on past purchasing behavior.
Previous purchases are one of the most reliable indicators of future buying behavior, allowing for highly targeted campaigns designed to resonate more deeply with potential buyers with a genuine interest in a brand or product category. Combining this transactional data with intent and location insights can drive significant improvements in engagement because together they create a holistic understanding of customers’ evolving shopping behaviors .
InMarket used this approach in its campaign for NotMayo, a plant-based mayonnaise from Kraft Heinz and NotCo. Identifying consumers with a history of health-conscious purchases, the company designed an eye-catching mobile ad that achieved a click-through rate of 9.55%, over 15 times greater than the industry average.
Eliminating Wasted Ad Spend
In addition to building receptive audiences, InMarket’s predictive AI can help focus paid media spend exclusively on the consumers most likely to be in an active purchase cycle for particular products or services.
The company’s “Preceptivity” solution analyzes past purchases, browsing activity, and other signals to forecast precise windows when specific segments will be most likely to look for offers. For example, the platform might identify when a shopper tends to buy groceries, then deliver ads and promotions 24 to 48 hours before their next trip to the store to keep those value propositions top of mind as they are making purchase decisions.
This approach also ensures ads are not delivered when customers are not receptive, such as in the days immediately following a shopping trip, reducing wasted media spend.
A recent InMarket report found that the lowest performing companies wasted roughly 75% of their ad spend, equivalent to $15 million of a $20 million campaign. At the same time, “Our platform has proven to help marketers eliminate media waste up to 94%, by optimizing campaigns in-flight, be it response to offer, creative or more, which can have a significant impact on the bottom line,” says Della Penna.
Focusing spend only on the highest-potential audiences within their most receptive purchasing windows and optimizing key variables like creative, offer, or even media placements enables InMarket to drive higher engagement rates compared to traditional digital targeting approaches, and at a lower cost.
Creative That Connects
While predictive AI optimizes the timing of ad delivery, InMarket’s proprietary Moments platform serves brand experiences tailored to the real-time context of each consumer’s shopping experience.
When a customer matching an advertiser’s audience profile enters a relevant real-world venue like a retail store or restaurant, or is even passing near a relevant location, the consent-based Moments platform can trigger an ad on that user’s smartphone.
It can even enable immersive ad experiences. For one client, Bob Evans Farms, InMarket developed an immersive Moments experience that guided customers to purchases with aisle directions in-store after swiping through various table settings showcasing Bob Evans Farms side dishes. The interactive campaign, which targeted audience segments that shopped at specific national grocery chains, achieved click-through rates as high as 5.31%, well above industry averages, while driving nearly $1 million in incremental sales for Bob Evans Farms’ featured cauliflower side dish offering, a 6.3% sales lift amounting to a $6.44 return on ad spend per customer.
“Technology and data are opening a new world of possibilities for marketers and brands, where environments, even your own backyard, inspire next-level opportunities to engage with customers,” Della Penna said in a recent report on innovations and trends in marketing for 2024. “Immersive media has emerged as one tactic that provides brands with the ability to drive deeper connections through highly interactive and engaging experiences that also achieve record click-through rates and drive visitation and sales lift.”
InMarket’s 2023 Breakthrough Moments winners demonstrated the power of the platform to elevate digital ads into intuitive, visually-striking brand experiences personalized to each consumer’s real-world context and mindset. Animated creatives, celebrity integrations, gamification, and seamless e-commerce functionality were just some of the features that helped campaigns for companies like Michelob ULTRA, Welch’s, and Wendy’s capture attention and drive meaningful conversions.
“Creating brand experiences that don’t feel like ads is no small feat,” the Breakthrough Moments report states. “But when combined with a thorough understanding of consumer context to engage shoppers when and where it matters most, it can lead to extraordinary results.”