Retail TouchPoints: Are Consumers At a Tipping Point Over Irrelevant Online Content?
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the Retail TouchPoints website.
Consumers no longer have patience for batch-and-blast marketing campaigns and irrelevant online content, according to new research released by Harris Interactive and Janrain. Overall, 74 percent of consumers said they get frustrated when ads, offers and promotions are not aligned with their interests.
Other findings:
- Sixty-seven percent would leave the site if asked for donations from a political party that they dislike the most;
- Fifty-seven percent would leave the site if they were married and shown ads for a dating service;
- Half would leave the site if shown a recommendation to purchase underwear that is for the opposite gender.
For the 2013 Personal Experience Study, Harris Interactive surveyed 2,091 U.S. consumers aged 18 and older. Of this sample, 57 percent of respondents indicated that they would share personal information on a website if they would receive a better experience in return. Results also confirmed that consumers want an open dialogue with brands and retailers: 77 percent of respondents said they would trust businesses more if they explained how personal data is used.
Further supporting consumers’ desire for personalized web experiences, survey respondents said they would take the following actions in order to receive more relevant online content:
- Give up social networks for a week (28 percent);
- Not eat chocolate for a month (25 percent);
- Not use their smartphones for a day (21 percent); and
- Use only a landline phone for a full week (17 percent).
"These results align perfectly with additional market research indicating that consumers have reached the tipping point when it comes to being shown content that isn’t relevant to them," said Larry Drebes, CEO of Janrain. "It’s a wake up call for brands to fix this problem or risk losing customers and prospects."
Discussion Questions
Have consumers reached a tipping point over online ads not aligned with their interests? Why are consumers apparently more frustrated over irrelevant ads online versus those coming from TV and other traditional media? What’s the solution for brands and retailers?
I think most of us have adjusted to tuning out online ads, learning never to read them or click on anything. I understand how the game is played. Sometimes when I want to read a certain news story I must see a 30 second ad first. Two things will happen. 1) I just won’t see the story because it’s probably not as interesting as the teaser suggests because nothing is more valuable than my time, or 2), I will have another window open to do another task while the ad plays.
Consumers want to be in control of their TV, internet, and their time, not advertisers. So they will gravitate to media that puts them in control. When we drive, we see billboards, but we are still in control. When we surf the net, we can see ads off to the side, but we have the option to look or not look. Make everyone happy, keep the ads on a side bar.
I think the re-targeting game has taken consumers to the tipping point. Don’t forget, email is free, and banner ads are pretty inexpensive. And it’s not like snail junk mail, which you can just toss. This stuff intrudes into your daily experience. It’s really, really annoying.
The solution? At some point you have to trust your brand. And work hard to establish relevancy and context (my partner Nikki Baird’s word for it).
Context, context, context. The way we get ads thrown at us (and ultimately, they’re ALL irrelevant…anyone who thinks re-targeting is a proxy for relevancy is on drugs) is a serious turn-off. Just because it’s cheap or free, and just because it seems to generate some kind of ROI doesn’t mean it isn’t costing you more with the majority of consumers.
No one has created a solution for skipping online ads like with TV. Thankfully, I skip all TV advertising so it no longer interrupts my life with products or services that are not aligned with my needs. Hopefully someone will create a similar service for online.
Now putting my advertising hat on, it is critical to share the right message with the right person at the right time. Easier said then done. As a marketer, I encourage clients to focus their efforts on locations they know something about the consumer.
Loyalty programs are a good start. Look at Walgreens as a great example. If I am buying a prescription that makes my skin more sensitive to sunlight, offer me a coupon for sun lotion. Kroger is another example where they are channeling marketing efforts towards loyal customers. Building the basket of a loyal customer is far less expansive and more profitable than advertising to recruit a new customer.
I wouldn’t say there’s a tipping point, but consumers are definitely communicating opinions and marketers should take heed. Online ads seem more invasive than television because now they follow you onto different sites where as in television you sort of expect to be entertained by a commercial. Then there’s always changing the channel and the mute button.
At this point there’s just an expectation level that is different of the two, and people expect online data to be smarter, more intelligent, and geared towards them. We all know that marketers collect data: What do they do with it? This is a conversation I feel we’ve had often in the last year or so with online ads growing at such a rate and personalization, or the lack there of, being displayed in greater depths. As always, the headline message for marketers is pay attention and use relevant data wisely in a meaningful way, or risk losing customers.
I’m with Paula. The sheer volume of targeted ads is intrusive and frustrating.
I was approached by a technology company to do some work for them, and I then visited their Web site. Since then, every video I watch on YouTube is preceded by an ad for the company. Noooooooo!
This will all probably get worse before it gets better. Customers are going to have to find a way to voice their annoyance.
I’m surprised the survey results were not even more dramatic. I’m fascinated that at least 50% of consumers (at least the ones surveyed here) are willing to basically accept ads that are irrelevant. Consumers must not feel that online surfing should be any more personal than TV surfing.
Bottom line, even if consumers tolerate irrelevant ads, brands should leverage technologies available today to cut the advertising waste.
A tipping point implies that a significant change will occur immediately and as a result of some threshold having been reached. What would that change be, in this case? No longer using the web? That seems unlikely. More likely is mass adoption of “do not track, do not follow.” However, even in the aftermath of the NSA scandal, there does not appear to be a grassroots movement which would lead to that outcome.
So no, I don’t think we’re at a turning point. However, I do think that if a game changing player (such as Google or Apple or MS) made a commitment to change, that alone could create the tipping point. But irritation with inappropriate ads served? Don’t see the real evidence yet.
Consumers shut off retailers with a click of a button; either delete or unsubscribe. Retailers must deliver relevant content to the right consumer—it’s that simple.
With software today, it’s easier than ever to customize the online experience. Retailers should send me an add for a business suit and not a dress, unless they specifically know that I buy dresses for my wife (which I don’t).
The tipping point is that consumers are knowledgeable enough to know what they want and don’t want—what they will read or delete.
The internet, like TV is loaded with such a clutter of advertisements few users even bother to read any. For TV, users simply record the show and fast forward through the commercials. For the internet, users tolerate side advertisements even if they have hair triggers should your mouse brush them, but get upset with advertisement that dominates the screen. An advertisement that won’t go away forces the user to leave the web site.
It seems how the ads are presented may be more important that what they are advertising. There are still many TV commercials where I scratch my head wondering what this brand is doing on this show. On the internet, if I’m looking for a stove and see advertisement for a dating service, I just conclude that another brand manager or advertising executive has no clue.
TV and traditional media don’t attract the same criticism because there’s no expectation of custom/personalized content in those channels. (At least not yet!)
The fact that companies have the ability to deliver more personalized and relevant messages but are not doing so is at the crux of customers’ frustration. It’s been a one way street where companies get all the benefit of the online channels but don’t offer enough real value to customers. Most companies are running a “mass model” in a “personalized channel.” This incongruity is readily apparent to customers.
Maybe it’s just me, but frankly, I’m not sure I ever want people placing blast ads on public access websites to know, connect, (or guess) so much about little ol’ me that they know which candidate or political party’s ad could offend me, which kind of underwear I might need, or what the current state of my marriage or relationships are.
But when I voluntarily give detailed personal information about myself and family to a particular store or service provider and in return expect them to pare and customize their online ads and offers for me, that is a different story entirely. My expectations are much higher that they will not waste my time.
The referenced study is cute and attention grabbing, but unfortunately a little bit all over the place when it comes to facts and conclusions.
To Paula’s point on retargeting, don’t you just love seeing ads from a retailer for a product that you already bought—from someone else? I understand retargeting for cart abandonment, but if I did a product search and passed you by, why would I want to read your advertising again later on and even so, 2 weeks later still be seeing it?
Clicking through irrelevant emails and ads has become a normal daily activity. Some retailers are better than others in targeting and I notice continued general improvement. BIG data will have a very positive impact, but consider, is it easier to click through the irrelevant ads than give up more privacy? A click is easy, a TV ad is 30 seconds.
In the survey below, I responded that consumers were just as frustrated with irrelevant TV ads. Let me explain why. We found a way to bypass them! Now we want to find the same thing with online ads. That’s equality baby! Haha!
All kidding aside, we do enjoy some TV ads for amusement, emotion, whatever sense they are touching. I have even seen some online ads worth taking my time, relevant or not.
If I have signed up on a mailing list because I like the brand, no problem getting their ads. Yes, I would love it it they used all the data they have about me and made the ads more specific, but what about when I’m shopping for other people? I just might need that ad about baby clothes. Catch my drift?
I’m thinking the real issue here is the stuff that is thrown at us; like Cathy mentioned. The banner ads we didn’t ask for. The spam stuff that comes in our email and we can’t get rid of it. That’s number one and the kind of stuff we want to find a TIVO solution to.
And, what would make the mail list ads more tolerable? Let’s go back to Paula (and Nikki). Relevancy and context. Show me relevant content then allow me to opt for other categories should I be shopping for someone else. Voila!
There’s definitely been a tipping point in terms of irrelevant ads, or for that matter, relevant ads. I think the NSA spy-on-us news didn’t help, but it’s just plain spooky to have converse ads show up on a web site you’re looking at after you shopped for converse on Amazon. Not good, stop it.
One of my personal faves: the dating services hooking up with The Weather Channel. Call up the weather online and get a selection of single named faces from around town to choose from. Who thought of that? Better yet, why would Weather Channel think that’s brand right? Not only spooky and weird, but brand wrong.
Clutter and irrelevance from marketers, whether online ads or mass marketing via direct channels like email (even if it’s “free”), are only underscoring the scarce value that is our (consumers’) time. Television was built as a sponsored medium whereas the medium led to the sponsorships in the online world. Online media and many online applications were ideas in search of a business model and that model ultimately became advertising.
The problem with irrelevance is not diminishing though the browsers and the regulators are increasingly providing consumers tools to be “not tracked” and protected with their privacy. The trusted brands with a quid pro quo relationship with their customers will win as those will be the ones that are better able to manage, and profit, from those relationships.
Short answer: no. Longer answer: until we see “one-hundred percent” as the number of people who will leave a site over some ad, we will continue to see such ads.
For marketing pros like us RW-ers, the sophisticated yet slipshod methods of online advertising are becoming more and more transparent. How ironic that we wring our hands over relevancy and obsess over consumer survey results like these.
When you search online for an automated swimming pool cleaner, then find paid ads popping up all over the Web for weeks after you made a purchase, you are witness to both the sophisticated and the slipshod. Relevant? Yes, based on a coarse standard of subject matter interest. But also pointless, since the selling opportunity has passed. A waste (maybe a fraudulent one) of the advertiser’s money.
I suspect many “normal” online consumers are starting to recognize this is happening too, and they respond to what-if questions in surveys with righteous indignation. I guess we can say they are at a “tipping point” when it comes to online ads. As with every form of media in human history, folks are learning to exploit and consume and ignore them.
SPAM!!! That’s what a high percentage of advertising IS. And the lower the cost per thousand, the more marketers are willing to SPAM a lot of people in order to reach a few. But this is an absolute violation of the sales principle I learned from one of the greats, Frank Bettger: “How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling.“
The principle is, that when calling on a prospect, even if the prospect doesn’t buy, you owe it to them, to yourself, and to the sales profession to make it a positive experience. This is essential if you ever expect to be welcome there on another occasion, and it is essential to prepare the soil for the next competent sales person who may call on them.
Wide violation of this principle is what has given the sales business an atrocious reputation in many quarters. This is sad, given that sales and selling is at the cutting edge of social evolution—the betterment of the race: Retailing: the Trojan Horse of Global Freedom and Prosperity.
If salesmen trash the market, ad agencies are far worse, never giving a care to the massive damage they are doing to the business of their clients, through their willingness to miscommunicate with millions if the cost of reaching the few thousand they want is bearable to them. So, on they go, spewing virtual SPAM left and right, as shoppers grow an ever expanding subconscious filter to eliminate waves of “garbage” they must live with in nearly any commercial environment.
I do know that in the 20 years from 1989-2009 when my own business grew at a 30% annualized rate, I studiously attempted to make every client/prospect contact helpful to them, whether they were going to do business with us or not. It’s simple for advertising material. Just ask yourself, what information am I providing here that will be useful even to the people who are not really targets for my business? In many cases, that will be a perspective or tidbit that is generalizable. On my website, it was a daily motivational quote.
I don’t know whether this works for everyone, but being honorable has a satisfaction that transcends the nitty gritty world of profit and loss.
The better things get on the web, the worse you look if you don’t keep up—that’s why expectation management is a central concern and why the best sites/apps are in a state of perpetual beta.
If I have a great experience on Virgin Airlines or Amazon, the visitor may wonder, “why is this so much of a headache or so burdensome when XXX company makes it so easy!?
In the past retailers needed to only match the expectations of a closely geographical audience, so if the retailer across the street installed air conditioning, I would quickly follow. The same is true today, but it’s not just other retailers we need to keep pace with—it’s the digital experience in general.
In the bricks and mortar world, once the prototype store was figured out, we took out the cookie cutter and replicated. Changes were not easy so we built a mindset around change. That’s not true today—changes are easier and perhaps that means we need to create cultures where they can be made continuously. Budgeting for incrementalism is the pill that needs to be swallowed; the work is never done.