Why UK advertisers should fret over using Cambridge Analytica-style targeting tactics

When executives from the now-defunct data company Cambridge Analytica were secretly recorded explaining how they helped target pro-Trump political messages on social media during the US election, many in the advertising industry winced.

“We made creative, hundreds of different kinds of creative, and we put it online,” Cambridge Analytica’s Mark Turnbull said as he boasted how the British firm worked like a digital ad agency to produce the anti-Clinton attack ads. “This stuff infiltrates the online community and expands but with no branding — so it’s unattributed, untrackable.”

Cambridge Analytica’s actions have caused a political scandal, but the marketing principles behind its campaigns were uncomfortably close to those being adopted by some of the world’s biggest brands. Mass personalisation at scale is one of the hottest buzzphrases in advertising as brands hope that making hundreds, thousands, even millions, of pieces of customised creative for different audiences will engage consumers better.

Advertisers and agencies are anxious to put distance between themselves and the likes of Cambridge Analytica. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, which represents UK ad agencies, called last month for a temporary suspension of all micro-targeted political ads because of the potential risks and suggested such ads should be “listed for public display” in the interests of transparency.

The IPA insisted a blanket ban on all digitally-targeted advertising was “unnecessary” because consumer ads are subject to self-regulation by an independent watchdog, the Advertising Standards Authority — unlike political ads. “There’s nothing wrong with using data to micro-target advertising for holiday destinations or sports cars for example,” the IPA said.

Still, brands and agencies need to ask themselves how much this kind of micro-targeting will be welcomed by consumers and society. A lot of people in the ad industry are staking their future on personalisation at scale, led by Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer at Procter & Gamble, the world’s biggest advertiser, who talks about mass marketing with “one-to-one precision”.

Ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi recently showed off technology to investors that let it create multiple variations of a TV ad for travel company Expedia. There were hundreds of permutations based on the consumer’s home country, holiday destination and personal interests such as food, nightlife or adventure, plus a range of male and female voice-overs in the appropriate language and details about prices.

Kate Stanners, global chief creative officer of Saatchi & Saatchi, says: “As a creative person, you spend your time defining and refining constantly to get to that one perfect answer but what I am re-learning is there is no one answer. There are many rights. And that is quite transformational.”

It’s a seductive proposition but it raises lots of questions. For a start, if the creatives are thinking about how to introduce an easily interchangeable message, the risk is the magical idea that might win over consumers becomes secondary to the “dynamic creative”. The best advertising becomes part of culture but that’s hard if we don’t all see the same ad. Then there’s the fact that many consumers feel uncomfortable about brands using personal data to stalk them.

There is a bigger issue about whether highly-targeted messages are beneficial for brands in the long-term. Marketers who want mass reach to build brands and make them famous fragment their message at their peril. In a world where we are consuming more media and our attention spans get shorter, there’s an argument that consistent brand communication becomes more important — rather than micro-targeting and frequent changes.