Reaching the right person with the right message at the right time has long been the holy grail of marketing. The technology and data is tantalizingly close, and yet context and intent remain elusive. Personalized marketing is still wasted if it hits the wrong context and intent.
Here’s how Google framed the opportunity recently:
“Every day, three billion people around the world have dozens of moments that matter to them and their lives. These moments create billions of ‘signals’, which not only include context e.g. where someone is, what device they are using or the time of day, but also intent: what someone wants or needs at that moment.
“This combination of context and intent-driven signals is a goldmine for marketers, providing more opportunities to be relevant and connect with consumers in more meaningful ways than ever before.”
Google has been advocating the concept of winning the “moments that matter” for your brand. As they concluded in a piece of research a couple years ago:
“People are more loyal to their need in the moment than to any particular brand.”
That’s a sobering thought for brand builders. Those signals may be a goldmine for marketers, but we’re still in the awkward adolescent phase of data-driven marketing marketing. We still have some work to do.
Here are a couple related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:
“Future of Advertising” August 2013
“Personalization” November 2014
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