Our life situation, profession, hobby, social relations, health condition, the place we live in and the way we commute. We’re also ageing, or sometimes, become younger, at least that’s how our digital consumption can be perceived by the software, which in more and more sophisticated way analyses the footprint we generate every day. And that data is gold – or – is it really?
That’s me. Now
Flying to Norway a couple of days ago, at the airport, I met a colleague. We have not talked to each other for a couple of weeks and buying him a coffee I remembered he was a heavy latte drinker. That led me to buying him a nice cup of coffee with milk. “Thanks mate, I’m allergic to milk. I’m not sure how I developed that at my age but that’s the fact, that’s me now”.
Later on that flight the irrelevance of my initiative made me think about the web, and all the pointless ad campaigns that target us from all directions. I’m not interested in buying the new mountain jacket. I bought it a week ago. No car please, I know I was spending weeks searching for a new one but I already got it. And I’m happy. No change in this area. I changed my job a year ago – for now I’m not interested in changing one or even going to the job boards. My intentions, plans and future activities are different now.
A few steps ahead
But where are the intentions? That’s the question we need to answer. Most probably they cannot be found using the old data (until there is some kind of clear pattern within). What are my intentions, what am I going to do, how have I changed recently, what are my new habits?
The key: User intention
User’s intention: that’s the key, which might open the door to better conversion rates. It might be achieved by having close to real time connection with what we’re doing right now and who we are right now. Instead of a sophisticated classification mechanism, a quick reaction to changing environments and habits. Dynamic user profiles.
We don’t have to try to be smarter than the user. Just a bit faster them him or her.
Understanding the reality
Also, the insight: knowing there are 300 people that are cooking right now, browsing the recipes using their mobile app, we can significantly increase the efficiency of the campaigns. They have the intention to cook something, to be a chef at this very moment. Not tomorrow.
Yes, we can spam the web with thousands of irrelevant ads selected by processing the old data but that’s not necessarily the only way to go. Knowing that, is your data a gold or just a bare metal? Is it heavy, difficult to form and sometimes – a bit rusty?