When you sign up for a service, it’s inevitable that you’ll receive alerts of some sort: texts, emails, social media notifications – the list goes on. For consumers, it’s always important to be given a choice and most of the time we are. You can opt out of receiving marketing related material or opt in and with the introduction of GDPR, it’s not as easy to send out unwanted emails to customers who aren’t interested.
Targeted messaging has become a way for brands to stay in touch with their customers. Some phone network brands will usually notify their customers with upcoming bills, with a link to their account for more information. Notifications such as those are seen as acceptable by many, however, more consumers are beginning to feel ‘annoyed’ by unnecessary targeted messaging. In a recent survey which was conducted by NetImerative, featuring responses from 287,571 mobile users across the UK, US, France, Germany, Italy, Germany and Spain – some of the findings included:
52% of consumers globally agree that intrusive or irrelevant marketing messages give them a poor opinion of the app or website that hosts them.
Only 25% of UK respondents believe that targeted messages are useful.
Users feel that websites and applications that host targeted marketing, are making marketing spend less effective, whilst threatening a loss of business for all stakeholders. The amount of marketing spent on mobile ads is currently at $164bn per anum.
The bigger tech companies have access to large amounts of user data, which assists them greatly when targeting users with relevant messages. The UK particularly are growing in frustration with the amounts of targeting messages they receive. The survey concluded that 9 in 10 UK consumers found the targeted messages annoying, however, 13% out of 88% found them useful. For users it’s not always amount the amount of data which they receive, but how valuable it is. Technology giants (social media in particular) have come under much scrutiny about how they have handled data and the way they use data to target consumers with ads, without permission.
The study also reveals that 52% of users globally agreed that irrelevant messages give them a poor opinion of the app or website that hosts them. This may be worrying news for brands, Elie Kanaan, Ogury’s CMO , said, “This survey shows that brands and publishers should keep the long-term business outcomes in sight. They should not be lured by short term gains from serving intrusive or irrelevant ads. It is simply a business model that will scare away half of their customers.”
She went on to add: “At least two things need to happen to change users’ perception of digital marketing: give users clear choices and respect these choices when they are made” Kanaan continued. “Ogury is inviting the digital ecosystem to embrace this new marketing model driven by choice and providing a fair value exchange among consumers, publishers and brands.”