70% of People Receive Irrelevant Ads From Brands at Least Once a Month, Report Finds

70% of people who experience a lack of relevancy with ads are often spammed and receive inaccurate information in brand communications, according to a report by customer engagement and data management software company Redpoint Global via Dynata Research. Irrelevant culprits include inaccurate promotional emails or recommendations unrelated to prior purchases. While 70% of consumers reported receiving mistargeted information at least once a month, nearly 24% received this type of information daily. “This kind of mistargeting introduces friction into the consumer experience,” said John Nash, chief marketing and strategy officer at Redpoint Global. “Utilizing the most up-to-date information on consumers to deliver seamless, relevant interactions with as little friction as possible will be a major factor in the future successes of today’s brands.” With cookies slipping away and privacy driving brand communications, trust has become a critical currency for advertisers. Although half of the consumers surveyed find current privacy laws inadequate, they expect brands to protect their data. Exposing Ad Trade Secrets, and Unintended Consequences of the EU’s Digital Services Act This survey was conducted in June 2022 and targeted 1,000 U.S. based consumers over 18 years of age. Although the survey was consumer-based, Nash points out industries such as retail, consumer packaged goods, health care, financial services, travel and hospitality industries often face this issue. Mismatch in the brand and consumer data The core problem, according to Nash, is the data is often out of date. Additionally, brands hoard duplicate customers on file where a consumer receives multiple messages relaying the same brand information. Further, data timeliness where brands update their data on a daily or weekly basis doesn’t match the consumer cadence. “Consumers expect the brands to know them in the context of their journey,” said Nash. For example, someone who buys an item online and plans to pick it up in-store may continue receiving irrelevant emails based on the retailer not updating the data on the person. "We miss an opportunity to promote something that's relevant to what [the consumer] is picking up at the store" said Nash. “And not being updated at the right cadence creates friction in the experience.” Gen Z and millennials want to share their data While only 25% of Gen Z feel that brands know them well, 41% of millennials feel brands should be able to immediately adapt offers and interactions at the moment of new data ingestion. To combat the high level of mistargeted information, younger people are more willing to share personal data in exchange for a better experience, according to the survey. However, 27% of consumers surveyed said that current privacy regulations such as the state-wide laws do not protect their data effectively and half of them expressed a desire for stricter federal privacy regulations as well as better transparency around data leaks. But ultimately people feel it's a brand’s responsibility to ensure their data is protected, 48% of people said they would stop doing business with a brand if it gave away their personal information without permission. “Marketers have multiple views of customers, and the data is disparate, and it's not very well controlled,” said Nash. “To have a single unified view of a consumer that's used consistently across the enterprise is the gateway to driving, real-time omnichannel customer journeys.”