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Psychological Targeting Makes You More Likely to Click “Buy”
It’s always surprising to learn about how similar we all are, but businesses often care more about the differences between us. It’s all about “target audiences”, “customer profiling”, and “personalization”. Lumping customers into a single group and holding the same umbrella over them is not as effective as detailing their differences and using tailored strategies to profit from them. Showing everyone an advert for a million-dollar luxury yacht is not as efficient as showing the yacht to high-income groups while promoting cheaper holiday breaks for low-income groups.
When content is personalized to our own tastes and circumstances, it means we are being shown what is most relevant to us. It minimizes our workload in accessing the information we want or need. If we open up our internet browser to buy a new pair of shoes, it’s far more convenient to immediately see an advert for our favorite style of shoes than to search several outlets to find them ourselves. The more information that companies have about us, the better they can filter out the irrelevant content that we do not want to see.
You may already be thinking about the potential hazards of companies knowing too much about us, and you’d be right to raise that concern. Privacy is an important priority in our lives, and the more of it we give up, the less protection we have against those who want to mould or mislead us. But the frequent scare stories around this issue make it easy to forget the ways in which selling off some of our personal data is actually streamlining our lives. I’m not arguing that we no longer need to worry. I’m arguing that it’s worth keeping sight of why we make these sacrifices.
The major online services that you use every single day, but don’t pay for upfront, are likely to be making their money by selling the data they gather on you to other businesses. Those businesses use your data to show you adverts that fit your online activity patterns and personal information. The better they can tailor their content to suit you, the more likely they are to sell you a product at a minimal advertising cost. They want to pump their conversion rates — the probability that you will buy the product when you see their advert — as high as they will possibly go. To do that, they want to know everything about…
