Personalized Online Advertising Effectiveness

The source, an excerpt from an academic paper by Bleier and Eisenbeiss (2015), focuses on the effectiveness of personalized online advertising, specifically the method known as retargeting. The authors investigate how the effectiveness of these ads is affected by the interplay of personalization intensity, timing, and placement factors. Through both large-scale field experiments and controlled lab studies, they show that while personalization can boost ad effectiveness, its impact significantly depends on when in the purchase process a consumer is reached and whether the ad appears on a motive-congruent website. Key findings include the phenomenon of "overpersonalization," where highly specific ads lose effectiveness quickly over time, and the influence of a consumer's Web browsing mode (experiential vs. goal-directed) on ad response to placement.