A Little More Personal

This week one of the main topics we focused on was consumers, and how marketers determine which consumers they choose to target. Not very long ago, marketers had to choose certain groups and market strictly to them. While marketers still do that and probably always will, modern technological advances have allowed them to do something that was unimaginable just a few years ago. Now, marketers can, in a sense, market to individuals. 

Anyone who uses the internet, whether that is reading blogs, using search engines, or even browsing Pinterest, has probably experienced the "personalized ads" that pop up on the sides of the screen. They advertise flights and hotels for destinations recently searched, or products that may be relevant to what you've been researching lately. But does anyone even pay them any attention?

Personally, those ads serve as more of an annoyance to me than a helpful reminder to buy a certain product. However, they must be doing some good, because companies continue to put the money, time, and effort into creating and using the software that learns what we like, and shows it to us over and over again. Our textbook mentioned the next step in this type of advertising, such as facial recognition, and billboards flashing advertisements as we walk by them. That just makes me wonder...20 years from now, what will our technological advances have done for marketing and consuming?