Consumers are becoming more aware and protective of their personal data. Therefore, advertisers must ensure their messages resonate with their audiences without crossing privacy boundaries. The question remains: How can advertisers balance engaging ad creative with consumer privacy? The onus is now on advertisers to develop strategies that prioritize user privacy without sacrificing the effectiveness of their campaigns.
The Role of Ad Creative in Engagement
Creative is at the heart of any advertising campaign. It’s the element that grabs attention, tells a story, and persuades the user to take action. High-quality, compelling ad creative can significantly increase user engagement and lead to successful campaigns across a variety of KPIs, including Attention, viewability and brand lift.
Content that Resonates: Instead of relying on personal data to tailor ads, focus on universally appealing content. Creative that speaks to shared experiences, emotions, or common pain points can resonate across broad audiences. For example, creative that references an upcoming global event, such as the holiday season, or a large sporting event, can engage viewers without needing to know their specific interests or behaviors.
Design for Context: While personal data may be off-limits, contextual targeting isn’t. Understanding the context in which an ad appears - whether on a specific website or app - can help shape creative to be more relevant. For example, an ad that aligns with the content being consumed at the moment, such as fitness gear on a health blog, feels natural and engaging without infringing on user privacy.
Interactive Formats: Interactive ads, like playable ads or quizzes, invite consumers to engage directly with content. These formats can drive higher engagement by offering value in the form of entertainment or useful information. The key is to design these interactions to be compelling and self-contained.
Visual Storytelling: A picture is worth a thousand words, and in advertising, visuals can be more potent than data-driven personalization. Investing in high-quality, eye-catching graphics, videos, and animation can captivate audiences and drive engagement purely through aesthetic appeal and narrative power.
Leveraging Privacy-First Solutions
Solutions like Ogury’s Personified Advertising offer a way to deliver relevant ads without compromising privacy. Our Campaign Insights Surveys provide an exclusive data source that is generally complex and costly for brands to capture. Run alongside client campaigns to glean important campaign and consumer insights; these surveys measure a consumer’s perception of the brand at hand, purchase drivers and mindsets. Let’s say you’re an automotive brand - as part of your campaign, consumers will also encounter a survey question asking what their most important purchase factor for a car is. Depending on what the largest percentage of the audience chooses, we can offer recommendations on what should be highlighted in the campaign creative, to best resonate with the audience. That’s where Ogury’s expert in-house design team comes in.
Our design team can jump into client campaigns at any point in the creation of an ad. From adding animation to existing assets to custom, eye-catching designs, it’s the path to ads that drive awareness, encourage engagement and generate site traffic without the use of personal identifiers. Strong creative leads to strong engagement - with Ogury Originals, brands benefit from up to +20% time spent fostering Attention.
User privacy and creative advertising are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the constraints imposed by new privacy regulations can drive more innovative, thoughtful, and engaging ad creative. By focusing on content that resonates, leveraging contextual insights, and embracing privacy-focused solutions, advertisers can create campaigns that connect with audiences meaningfully - without compromising the trust and privacy of the audiences they seek to engage.
