Personalization works. Half-hearted does not.
A meta-analysis of 1,536 results from 290 studies finds personalization lifts responses with almost no backlash. Moderate levels do worst.
Marketing in 3 · Topic
13 issues of Marketing in 3 on Advertising, newest first. Each one explains a new peer-reviewed study in plain English, with steps to apply it.
The brand walks. The influencer burns.
In the Ferragni and Balocco case, 96% of journalists' tweets were about the influencer. Consumers followed the press, and the brand barely got mentioned.
The dashboard said 7.47. The experiment said nothing.
Facebook reported a return of 7.47 on retargeting. A field experiment across 210 markets found the retargeting budget could be cut to zero without losing a single order.
Caught, not told: the worst way for an AI actor to be found out
Viewers who worked out the actor was AI rated the ad 2.83 against 4.59. Being told afterwards hurt far less, and priming people made them twice as likely to notice.
Write the post for them and they will send it
Handing customers a ready-made post lifted sharing from 0.4% to 2.1% in a real gym campaign, and quietly stopped unhappy customers posting at all. How to use it, and where it gets uncomfortable.
"This ad is deepfaked" is not a warning. It is a fact nobody acts on
A plain "this ad is deepfaked" label changed nothing. Adding one sentence about what that means cut perceived truthfulness from 3.33 to 2.41, without costing a single sale.
Four screens, four audiences: reading the gaming channel
Shooters are the favourite of 36% of console players and 17% of phone players; strategy games 35% on laptops and 4% on consoles. How to read the gaming channel, from 116,047 players.
Match ads to pages by look, not just by topic
Placing ads by both look and topic of the page lifted predicted attention by up to 10%; matching by category or text alone did not. Evidence from 3,531 ads.
AI search takes the questions, Google keeps the keywords
People used AI search for 54% of advice searches but 6% of shopping searches, and clicked in 12% of AI searches vs 59% on Google. What it means for search ads.
Test your ads in the feed, not on a slide
The same airline ad scored lower (4.31 vs 4.82 out of 7) when placed among flood posts. How to pretest social ads in a realistic feed, for free.
Why half-sponsored influencers get the least engagement
Influencers who post mostly ads or almost none get the most engagement; those at around 40–50% sponsored get the least. How to pick influencers by endorsement rate.
When brand memes sell, and when they flop
In a field test, a meme ad doubled click-through (1.40% against 0.65%) and raised ROAS from 1.14 to 1.52. Memes work only when mature and for mainstream products.
Generative AI images that actually engage
Fine-tuned on top-rated ads, generative AI made ad images that beat conventional ads in pretests and lifted Meta click-through by 49%. How to apply it, and when it fails.