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Influence of personalised advertising copy on consumer engagement: a field experiment approach

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Abstract

Personalised advertising copy refers to the use of AI technologies such as natural language processing and machine learning to generate individually tailored ads based on consumer profiles and product information. It is affected by consumer profiles, product or brand selling points and language models. Personalised advertising copy has the following characteristics: it takes into account individual differences among consumers, it aims to generate a massive number of ads, and it is centred on matching individually tailored advertising copy to each and every consumer in a manner that is dependent on data and algorithms. Given that consumer engagement is an important criterion for evaluating the effectiveness of advertisements, this study compared the influence of personalised ads on consumer engagement with that of traditional advertisements created by professional advertising copywriters. Data from two large-scale field experiments examining the effectiveness of advertising copywriting for two car models advertised on Autohome, a leading online platform for automobile consumers in China, which both lasted for 188 days and involved 1.455 million consumers, show that personalised advertising copy generates better results in the cognitive, behavioural and emotional dimensions of consumer engagement. That is, consumer engagement is mainly driven by individually tailored advertising copy on a large-scale basis using human–machine coupling.

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  1. Bo Guo and Zhi-bin Jiang have contributed equally to this work.

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  1. School of Business and Management, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, 201600, China

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Guo, B., Jiang, Zb. Influence of personalised advertising copy on consumer engagement: a field experiment approach. Electron Commer Res (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-023-09721-5

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