“Campaigns of one” are a common refrain today among digital marketers, replacing mass market campaigns with highly pinpointed orchestrations of content, offers, ads, and more directed at individuals.
But that pinpoint keeps getting sharper and sharper, driven by a massive influx of new types of data and by increasingly intelligent platforms.
At some point, do we reach over-personalization, when the messaging has crossed the line into creepy? And, if so, is there a way to deal with it at scale?
There are signs everywhere that over-personalization is approaching. For instance, Cambridge Analytica — the data firm for Donald Trump’s campaign — claims it has created psychological profiles for every adult consumer in the U.S.
The Internet of Things is well into being a thing, with sensors and connectivity appearing in appliances, cars, billboards, or inside physical stores, creating the ability to track our movement and preferences throughout the real world. (Whether our identity is stated or inferred.) Biometric-based marketing is learning how to discover our preferences even before we know them.
And then there are our new family members — Google Home, Amazon Echo and soon others. They listen to us all day long, ostensibly only paying attention after we say, “Ok, Google,” or whatever.
But will you be surprised to find out someday that they’ve been listening more than you thought?
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