David Ogilvy, the genius marketer, once said, “You cannot bore people into buying your product, you can only interest them in buying it”.
What do you think he would have said about annoying people into buying your product? Well, it's a rhetorical question.
Intrusive ads
The fall in smartphone prices, affordable internet charges, and an abundance of available online content has made our lives much easier. If someone has a question, they can just search online and most likely find a solution. While it has simplified our lives, it has also led to a constant flow of digital ads that interrupt our web surfing experience and annoy us at times.
As a technology, digital ads have been a blessing for marketers as it helps them in tracking the user journey and targeting them at the various stages of the sales funnel.
The underlying logic is intuitive that if a user has visited a product website or searched for it on Amazon, they are interested in buying it. So, displaying the ad for that product on their social media feed and elsewhere is an effective way to help them make a choice and buy it sooner. The problem arises as the ad technologies start factoring in every action we take across apps and websites, in serving digital ads. To the point that we get overwhelmed by the ads every time we unlock our phone, browse an app or consume some content.
The line between "oh! that is something I have been looking for, let me see it", and "no, not this ad again!" is diminishing.
In a recent study, as many as 66% of participants voted against automatic video ads with sound. While 36.3% of participants mentioned they found social media targeting annoying.
No wonder people have skillfully learnt to dodge them. Ask yourself, doesn’t your finger hover over that skip ad button, as soon as the ad starts.
A study by Edelman Trust found that 75% of consumers avoid ads. In fact, 47% have actively made changes to their media habits to see fewer ads while others use ad blockers to prevent them altogether.
How can brand marketers combat this dire situation?
- Being considerate about the user experience while planning ads
Not everyone who has come across your product or service online is likely to be a buyer. With 5 hours of daily active smartphone time and interconnected sites, people could take many inadvertent actions. Hence, while deciding the ad format, placement, and timing, being considerate about the user behaviour is key.
For example, pop-up ads should only be shown to the most engaged visitors to your site so that they can follow through to complete the purchase. You can set your bar of the amount of time you consider highly engaging depending on your business.
- Find the frequency sweet spot
Retaining users is important for any brand/business. Re-targeting can help brands get in front of the interested users and retain them. But there is a threshold until which the prospective customers react positively to such ads.
A study shows that if an ad is shown more than five times it is considered annoying and if shown more than 10 times can actually make people angry.
In 2020, Snapchat found that 1-2 ads per week work best for them. However, this number can vary depending on several factors.
So, the key takeaway is that you need to experiment with the frequency of re-targeting and find out what works best for your brand.
- Don’t scare users away with too much personalisation
Personalisation is awesome, users love custom-designed experiences.
But the balance between personalised and creepy can be tricky, especially at a time when users are so sceptical about their online privacy.
According to a HubSpot survey, ads related to previous online searches are considered most invasive.
Just because someone searched for earphones once doesn’t mean they would want to be bombarded with ads every time they are online.
Even though consumers are more willing to share their data with brands now than they were a couple of years ago, 43% are still just not comfortable doing it.
Brands need to be mindful of the frequency and relevancy while showing personalised ads. Also, giving users the opt-out feature is a good rule of thumb that brands can follow for digital ads.
- Leverage engaging content platforms
Brands have been using varieties of innovative content formats and platforms to build their brand image for years. One such platform that multiple leading brands have started utilising is conversation media marketing which helps them raise brand awareness, create a lasting brand recall and lift the purchase intent.
Conversation media marketing is a marketing technology that offers marketers an opportunity to use subtle yet powerful conversation elements like GIFs, emojis, and stickers to build brand awareness and fast track conversions.
But why should brands use conversation media marketing?
Look at the sheer numbers that reflect users' love for conversation media formats.
A survey shows that as much as 50% of the mobile accessible audience prefer chatting as their go-to means of communication. And during these chatting sessions over 10 billion emojis and 1 billion GIFs are sent every day.
How does conversation media marketing work?
Conversation media platforms like Bobble AI and Holler allows brands to become a part of user communication with interesting content.
If you have to cancel a plan with your friend, you will search for a sorry sticker or sad face emojis. Stickers and emojis now have search bars and allow you to search for keywords like sorry or sad. That’s just how CMM works as well. The only difference is content is branded and yet super useful and contextual.
CMM stays non-intrusive by allowing brands to take command of their audience using these conversation elements. Rather than a face-to-face approach, CMM brands can use tailored content to be a part of their audience conversation.
But some brands are killing it with amazing collaborations.
Like when Holler made these branded GIFs for Stella Artois based on the latter’s “Friends giving Campaign”. The branded GIFs pack was integrated into a popular payment app and wildly shared by users.
While in India, Bobble AI and Prime Video made the ‘Cinderella’ movie, starring Camila Cabello, the talk of the town with branded stickers and hyper contextual targeting.
Conclusion
The key takeaway for brands and marketers is to be considerate and mindful of user experience. Too many digital ads can backfire and lead to annoying consumers to a point that they may develop negative sentiments about the brand being advertised. Hence, it makes sense to trade some of those ads for engaging content distribution platforms like conversation media marketing, to organically engage your users and become an integral part of their everyday lives.