Tailored Creative: Mastering Personalization in Advertising with AI

Katarzyna Kołpa, head of creatives offer innovation at RTB House, highlights AI’s importance in fashion retail advertising for 2024. She emphasizes capitalizing on AI tech to reach the fabric of a customer base without harming brand image to stay ahead of trends.

In the world of advertising, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to engaging with audiences. This is perhaps none clearer than within the fashion retail industry, where diverse consumer preferences, varying needs, and rapidly rotating trends necessitate a personalized marketing strategy. Therefore, it’s imperative that fashion buyers are met with tailored content relevant to who they are and their purchasing needs.

The ongoing economic uncertainty and fluctuating consumer spending amplify the importance of connecting with people on a personal level. Consumers are more hesitant to part with their dollars, so brands need to look for different ways to delight and activate audiences. 

Creativity is one of the key drivers of business growth. It is responsible for 56%Opens a new window of sales uplift online. However, as we transition into the cookieless era, 52% of advertising budgets are still being wasted on creatives that don’t deliver their potential impact.

Thanks to Deep Learning AI, brands are now able to change potential into a real impact. When Deep Learning is applied to shoppable creatives, enhancing personalization of product recommendations and paired with an attention-catching, brand-friendly package, marketers are enabled to use distinct branding elements, embrace personalization and dynamic optimization to ensure meaningful connections with consumers, and drive more sales at scale. 

Utilizing Deep Learning For Personalization

Looking ahead to this year’s Spring/Summer season and beyond, the popularity of AI is only set to surge in 2024. Utilizing Deep Learning can help brands deliver hyper-relevant marketing and meet evolving consumer needs.

There’s no question that Deep Learning is the most powerful type of AI. It’s capable of analyzing swathes of data from touchpoints across various channels and devices in real-time and adapting to often rapidly changing situations and trends. Its superpower lies in continuous improvement in two key areas: targeting, determining which customer will see the brand’s ad, and personalization, determining which type of creative and product recommendations are being shown. 

While more than 80% of consumers now anticipate tailored advertising that caters to their preferences from retailers, personalization is the driving forceOpens a new window behind half of all purchases. Deep Learning’s ability to deliver ROI is evidenced by the fact that it makes ad campaigns up to 50% more efficient than campaigns backed by standard machine learning and lifts click-through rates by 16% – all without advertisers having to increase spend.

Importantly, however, Deep Learning technology – and the insights it’s able to harness — works best when paired with the right creative ad formats.

See More: How To Develop a Marketing Culture That Measures Creative Performance

Activating Audiences With Style

Leveraging the effectiveness of Deep Learning-powered creativity is within banner ads, which have long been a staple of digital advertising. Within fashion advertising, personalized, shoppable creatives emerge as the most efficient by almost 30%. 

The success of these ads can be attributed to the combination of strong branding and personalized content to capture consumer attention. There are several creative ways in which advertisers can couple banners with Deep Learning-backed insights to deliver relevant and engaging ads to fashion shoppers with maximum impact.

For instance, brands could showcase a sequence of only the most relevant products to the consumer in front of a sophisticated backdrop. The alternative is to have those same items featured in a “digital catwalk,” where a selection of products take turns appearing in view and enlarging before heading back in the queue to let another item take center stage.

Another great way to learn more about consumers is to encourage real interaction with the ad through a more social media-inspired approach. Here, brands can find out what clothes consumers have their eyes on by giving them the opportunity to “like” what they see. There’s also a tremendous opportunity to leverage video within banners, showing products stylishly modeled in short video clips before giving the consumer the option to click through and add items from the brand to their wardrobes. 

To inspire customers, brands can utilize banners that show full outfits, followed by the individual pieces making up the attire that customers can click through to purchase. Deep Learning will select which products appear in the banners to enhance the customer purchase experience. 

Adding animated elements to it can be a great opportunity to trigger interaction throughout the journey, as driving performance can only happen once attention has been caught by the ad. Additional likeness to interact can be achieved with counters, for example to the end of a promotional period, to add urgency to the purchase with dynamic offerings.

Allowing the change of one element of the outfit within the banner, where potential buyers can alter the overall look and feel, can make a real difference. It can be as simple as changing the color of the sweater from natural beige to vivid and bold yellow, which will transform the appearance and ambiance of the entire ensemble. 

Experimenting with accessories like glasses, scarves, or belts will not only more effectively engage customers, especially the younger audience, but also drive sales of complementary product categories. Deep Learning can recognize and personalize the product-based part of the creative based on the signal from the interaction. 

For example, REVOLVE, a fashion retailer for Millennial and Gen Z consumers, helps scale up its display ad activities without compromising return on ad spend (ROAS). 

The solution was implementing an eclectic mix of high-performance dynamic banners and zipper banners, which reveal more about offers through user interaction. These creatives were developed in-house to best complement the brand and elevate product offers. The campaign worked on a dynamic budget adjusted based on predicted demand to ensure that revenue was maximized while demand was highest. The campaign outperformed the ROAS target by 56% within the first quarter, with a further 8% increase in the following quarter and driving an 11% overall uplift in revenue among test groups.

Combining Deep Learning with creative formats such as these will ensure that brands are not just reaching the right people with the right ads but are doing so in a way that captures the attention of audiences and drives the desired outcome. In short, brands can leverage Deep Learning insights to deliver relevant and engaging ads using these techniques:

• Dynamic product sequences: Showcase a series of the most relevant products in a sophisticated backdrop or a digital catwalk where items take turns in the spotlight.
• Interactive elements: Encourage interaction by allowing consumers to like products or use video clips to show items in action.
• Outfit inspiration: Display complete outfits followed by individual pieces, enhancing the shopping experience with interactive elements and urgency indicators.
• Customizable Banners: Enable consumers to change outfit elements within the banner, boosting engagement and sales of complementary products.

On The Runway To Success

With the Spring/Summer season approaching, marketers must master their creativity and connect authentically with consumers. Deep Learning can intertwine personalization seamlessly into marketing efforts such as banner ads, ensuring effective targeting in the retail sphere. 

In fact, AI is on course to be the most important piece of technology for driving digital advertising success for fashion brands. By embracing Deep Learning, brands can accurately identify consumers who are most likely to make a purchase and then target those with the creative that is most suited to them. The runway to success is paved with personalization, and AI is the key to not being left in the last season.

Image Source: Shutterstock

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