Why relevance is the new personalization for marketers

Everyone knows the mantra. For decades, marketers have worked to deliver the right ad to the right person at the right time. But what if that strategy isn’t, er, right? Doug Rozen, chief marketing officer of Rokt, joined John Dioso, editor of Ad Age Studio 30, at Cannes Lions to discuss the difference between personalization and relevance in marketing, and how altering your agency’s mindset ever so slightly can help refocus your energy toward better techniques. When done well, personalized messaging has become an all-purpose tool in the proverbial marketing toolbelt. It’s given marketers a way to pinpoint that right consumer, and helped them drill down on the right place and time. The problem is when personalization is used as a hammer, rather than a more tactical chisel. “What we're trying to focus on at Rokt is getting the best ad to the best person at the best time,” Rozen said. “The difference between right and best is the difference between personalization and relevance.” It might seem like a slight change in phrasing, but Rozen believes that this tweak helps evolve basic marketing into prioritizing the role that value and interest play in consumer engagement. The paradox of choice—something that the overabundance of data often makes even the best marketer forget—tells us that sometimes bigger, or in this case more, is not always best. “More products, more ads, more touchpoints in front of a customer without realizing that that's not necessarily relevant—that's not getting the best customer experience,” Rozen said. “And so what we try to do is focus on how more is not always the best way to deliver that experience.” “One of the things I've always been envious of is those that can do more with less,” he continued. “I think when you think about how to strip things away and how to be creative with very minimal, very simple, very sophisticated ways of connecting with the customer, but not necessarily all the options and opportunities, that's where creativity really shines.” In a marketing landscape now contending with artificial intelligence and ever-advancing technology in the e-commerce space, Rozen said, evolving and optimizing does not mean a loss of relevance when done properly. But also, he pointed out, AI and machine learning are not synonymous. “When we think about machine learning, we think about the fact that we have 11 years of billions and billions and billions of transactions that we can understand the trends, behaviors and optimize off of that,” Rozen said. “So for us, machine learning is a lot about that optimization, leaning into deep learning opportunities.” AI, on the other hand, “allows us to get more predictive and understand what that next best action's going to be and then deliver a delightful and more relevant customer experience,” he added. When marketers, especially in e-commerce, are able to whittle down that data and find that best consumer to deliver the most relevant ad experience to and it leads to conversion, that moment of transaction is worth dealing with all the CPM or GRP or ROAS metrics. “That moment is one of the happiest places online,” Rozen said. About Rokt Rokt is the global leader in e-commerce, enabling companies to unlock value by making each transaction relevant at the moment that matters most—when customers are buying.

Why relevance is the new personalization for marketers

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