Super Targeted Advertising: Tailoring Messages to an Audience’s Cognitive Style

July 16th, 2008 seph250 Posted in Design, Internet |

There is some interesting research coming out of MIT (professor Glen Urban) that I think will eventually be relevant to behavioral ad targeting. The research recognizes that different people, in different contexts have different cognitive styles.

Cognitive styles can be measured across several different dimensions. Some examples include: impulsive (makes decisions quickly) vs. deliberative (explores options in depth before making a decision), visual (prefers images) vs. verbal (prefers text and numbers), or analytic (wants all details) vs. holistic (just the bottom line).

As we are better able to determine what sort of customer is viewing an advertisement, we will not only be able to show them an ad of something they may be interested in (geographic, demographic, contextual), but we can present the advertisement in a way they are most receptive to it.

For example, if it is determined that a customer has a verbal cognitive style, they will be more interested in an advertisement listing impressive specifications of a product than they would be to a picture of the product. This will ultimately lead to higher click through rates.

Additionally, we’ll see these ad’s take users to the advertisers website in more intelligent ways. For example, take an impulsive buyer to a purchase page, and a deliberate buyer to a product details page. This will ultimately lead to higher conversion rates.