The second edition of the new, digital Admap is focused on winning at personalisation, a key challenge for our clients. Catherine Driscoll, Commissioning Editor, explores this month's themes.

Personalised messages and precisely targeted communications are not new, but the technology, scale and expertise involved is changing fast. Personalisation has been shown to be effective and to increase revenue, however, without careful planning it can also alienate customers and provide a poor return on investment.  

In this collection of articles we’ve gathered experts in the field to address important questions, such as:

  • How to use dynamic creative
  • How personalisation works in different media
  • How to achieve personalisation at scale
  • How to work out the costs of personalisation

And we take a close look at the media, technology, data and people strategies required to implement effective personalisation.

With an unlimited selection of music, Spotify needs effective personalisation to help its audiences navigate the service. In our lead article Alex Underwood, VP and head of global strategic partnerships and verticals, shares insights on how Spotify personalises every touchpoint for users, creating deep engagement with the brand.

Christian Polman, chief strategy officer at Ebiquity explains why marketers need to weigh up the costs and benefits of personalisation, and why more traditional media planning may provide greater ROI.

Programmatic and addressable media have provided new opportunities for personalisation. Oliver Feldwick, global head of innovation, The&Partnership, points out that personalisation is not always the best approach and cautions that because we can doesn’t mean we should. He shares insights on the creative process for personalised content and how to measure success.

Jeriad Zogby and David J. Neff, global head of personalisation and vp of consulting, respectively, at Accenture Interactive tackle the challenge of achieving personalisation at scale. They explain how to organise your business to move away from ‘doing personalisation’ and towards creating effective personalised experiences.

Drawing on research with 13,000 consumers and 250 retail brands, Neil Lustig, CEO of Sailthru, shares best practices from brand that are getting it right and sets out the process for developing a sophisticated personalisation strategy. Richard Lees, evp of solutions, Merkle EMEA, also provides practical advice outlining a people-based marketing approach – beyond channel-based personalisation to managing the entire customer experience across multiple touchpoints.

We consider personalisation in different media, as Nicole Lonsdale, chief planning officer at Kinetic, explores how personalisation translates in an out-of-home environment. And Nicole Amodeo, global head of programmatic creative at Mediacom, gives a masterclass in using dynamic creative.

Finally Kunal Sinha, executive director, Kantar Insights, shares a fascinating overview of best practices for personalisation in India, and Ed Booty, chief strategy officer of Publicis Communications APAC, discusses how a communal experience is part of the power of advertising, and suggests that personalisation should only be used when appropriate for the message.

There’s a lot covered in this report, so if you’re short of time a pdf summary provides a quick read of all the findings, and we have Q&A videos from Alex Underwood of Spotify and Christian Polman of Ebiquity.

We hope you enjoy exploring this month’s Admap!