Personalized Ads

14th December, 2005 | Martin Diessner

A quick note to inform everyone about a small update within BrandCentral.

We have added a small feature which allows agencies to produce dynamic creative that is personalized based on the login data of registered users within a publisher’s site. A good example is e.g. AME Info where users should be logged in to the site, in order to use most of the functionalities of the portal, and where that login data can be used to show personalized ads. For instance, based on the user’s nationality, the creative could show text in the user’s mother tongue, or images related to the user’s gender and so on.

The following data fields are being supported by BrandCentral’s ad delivery system and can be easily used within Flash banners without much programming:

  • bcFirstname, bcLastname - great for personalized greetings
  • bcEmail - good for send to friend functionality within a banner
  • bcCompany - for personalized ads, e.g. bank’s approved list of companies for secured and unsecured loans
  • bcGender - for personalized creative e.g. images or even product ranges
  • bcNationality - great for language
  • bcDOBDay, bcDOBMonth, bcDOBYear - age can be easily calculcated and then personalized creative shown
  • bcCity - for personalization based on geographic location

The first two publishers that enabled the interface from their site are AME Info and 7DAYS, and I am sure others will follow shortly.

So, how can you make use of this feature? Brief your clients on this added value and think about implementing this at the very first time that you develop your media and creative strategy for an online campaign, e.g. for an airline client the destination for a global promotion could be dynamically pre-selected. I personally would then see an Emirates Airline ad promoting Munich or Dusseldorf, whereas someone from the UK would see Manchester and London related creative formats. Overall, this should improve the quality of the ads, and hence increase CTR, lower CPC and add value to the campaign.

For the creative people, here are some guidelines:

  1. Implementation is very easy - you can reference ANY of the above variables by calling them in the Flash banners using _root.VARIABLE_NAME and then use dynamic text boxes in order to play with the values of the parameter, or run any action script that will then do the personalization job. Please remember to reference root in case you are in nested movie clips, e.g. _root.bcFirstname should be used. Also note that the variables are case sensitive as per Macromedia’s regulations.
  2. In order to test your ads in an environment outside AME Info or 7DAYS, just simply copy and paste the personalization code from either one of the websites in a test.html file and place the BrandCentral launch code underneath, and it will work.

An example of a current campaign using personalization is the latest Emaar South Ridge campaign, running on AME Info and 7DAYS. Please see screen shot below:

Personalized ads

Lastly, please be assured that any personal data being used is not stored or sent anywhere outside the publisher’s domain - in fact due to the Macromedia Sandbox security the data remains on the publisher’s domain unless they open themselves with a crossborder security file. However, we should focus on the creative aspects of adding value by personalized ads.

Please direct any questions to me via email, many thanks for your support!

Good news - besides AME Info and 7DAYS, now also www.zawya.com has activated personalized ads with bcFirstName and bcLastName.

I can only encourage more online media agencies to use this feature - imagine an airline ad that says “Hi ##FIRSTNAME##, why not flying for AED 1,000 to ##YOURHOMECOUNTRY##” - wouldn’t you all agree that this will achieve much better results?

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