Have you ever gone to a website to check out the discount on that amazing piece of clothing only to enter another site and see dozens of banners that display the thing you were just looking at? These banners will become a whole lot more personal because of Morphing.
What is morphing?
Morphing is a technology that uses visitors click-stream to find a consumer’s segment and to show that consumer the ad that is best suited for that person (Liberali, 2015). For example, Samsung might prepare several ads for three consumer segments. Segment one is mainly interested in the design of the phones, segment two is mainly interested in the performance, and segment three is mainly interested in the features of the phone. So, as visitors enter the website they might decide to look at the design of the phone the most. This leads to the website deciding that these visitors are consumers from segment 1. Another group of visitors may look mainly at the specifications of the which means that they are from consumer segment 2. When the visitor decides to leave the site and visit another, they will see the banner that works the best with their identified consumer segment.
How will it affect businesses?
Current research concluded that the usage of banner morphing increases the click-through rate by 83% (Urban et al). This shows that the technology can increase the return of investments in marketing. Furthermore, this technology can be used in several other ways. Websites could be changed to show the best variation based on the customer visiting the website. This could improve the customer’s experience. This technology could potentially disrupt the advertising industry as it allows for a better way to target the right customer in the right way thus it could lead to a personalised online experience for every user of the internet.
References
Liberali. G (2015). Morphing Theory and Applications to Online Experiments: [online] Available at: http://www.webanalisten.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/DDTT-May-19-2015-Gui-Liberali.compressed.pdf
Urban G., Liberali G., MacDonald E., Bordley R., Hauser J. (2014) Morphing Banner Advertising, Marketing Science, 33(1): 27-46.
