AI Will Tailor Ads to Our Personalities

A recent series of studies led by Jacob Teeny, an assistant professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, and his colleagues has shed light on the persuasive power of generative AI in creating highly personalized advertisements. The research findings suggest that as gen AI advances and our digital footprints expand, advertisers will increasingly leverage these tools to craft marketing appeals that speak directly to consumers' individual personalities and preferences.

The researchers conducted three studies to gauge consumer reactions to personalized pitches written by ChatGPT. The results consistently showed that gen AI was able to write messages tailored to people's complex psychological profiles, and these messages were more persuasive than non-tailored or generic messages.

In the initial study, participants were shown pairs of iPhone advertisements, one designed by ChatGPT to appeal to those scoring high on a given personality trait and another appealing to those scoring low on the same trait. The researchers found that for three of the four personality traits tested, the personalized ad designed by ChatGPT was more persuasive than the non-personalized ad.

Interestingly, in a follow-up study, even when participants were informed that gen AI had created the ad based on their personality traits, the effectiveness of the personalized ads remained unchanged. This finding suggests a cultural shift in the acceptability of being persuaded, with targeted ads becoming the norm in online environments.

To simulate how advertisers might use consumer data and AI, the researchers invited participants back for another study more than half a year later. Using each participant's most salient personality trait, gen AI created new personalized ads promoting a Rome getaway or a pair of Nike sneakers. Once again, the personalized ads proved more effective than the generic ads, particularly for the experiential offering of the Rome trip.

For e-commerce sellers, the implications of gen AI in personalized advertising are far-reaching. By leveraging consumer data and AI tools like ChatGPT, sellers can create highly targeted product descriptions, email campaigns, and social media ads that speak directly to individual customers' personalities and preferences. This level of personalization has the potential to significantly boost engagement, click-through rates, and ultimately, sales.

Moreover, as gen AI continues to evolve and improve, e-commerce sellers will be able to incorporate more facets of a customer's personality into their marketing messages, further enhancing their persuasive power. This could lead to a new era of hyper-personalized e-commerce experiences, where every interaction between a seller and a customer is tailored to the individual's unique traits and interests.

Tip: Your first step should always be building content based on a customer persona. Here is a quick 10 minute tutorial on that.

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