Ads are clever things these days, aren’t they? Or they try to be. It amuses me to think Google has some clever read of my personality, even though the evidence for this is regularly lacking. By the side of my email the other day there were ads for a bee-keeping suit, a honeymoon venue and a marriage guidance counsellor. I will admit that one of those could get a click, but I’ll be mysterious and leave you to guess which one.
In this age of clever advertising I’m happy to be sold the things I want, rather than see random ads that mean nothing to me. So why don’t advertisers let us express an interest in their offerings, or even save ads to bookmark later when we’ve more time to look? It could be that I have some interest, but not quite enough to want to click, but if they noted my interest then came back with a special offer I might then bite. If advertisers let me interact, learn to know me better, they might even make an offer based on other valuable information this gives them.
What if I could give a thumbs up or thumbs down (a Facebook-style ‘like’) to the ads I see beside my email each day? If I tell Google I like honeymoons (there’s the answer to the mystery) then they will know that I am likely to spend the £15,500 average wedding cost in the coming months, they also know I need to buy dresses, flowers, rings, and the rest. Knowing they’re on the right lines with the advertising could mean the honeymoon specialist comes back with a better offer, which suits me just fine. Perhaps there could be Groupon style benefits, in that knowledge-is-power, combined-spending kind of way. If I book my honeymoon from Honeymoons.com and also buy flowers from their partner might I save more?
I like the clever uses of technology to reach me with the right deals. But I’m not likely to buy a bee-keeping suit and I can’t tell anyone to stop it with the bee-keeping adverts.
