Marketers, you don’t know how consumers feel about your advertising, and it may be hurting you in ways you don’t understand.

Did you know, for example, that some people are totally cool with personalization in exchange for something useful, relevant, or valuable to them, while others — even when they understand what’s happening with their data and why — are totally NOT? Or that serving someone an ad for a product before she’s ready to buy it might actually turn her OFF of your brand? Or how about the fact that simply assuming that all Millennials feel the same about this stuff is a recipe for heartache?

What would you do if you understood these additional dimensions of consumer attitudes and behaviors regarding the ~$200 billion you and your advertising colleagues spend on advertising (and that’s just in the US) annually?

  • Maybe your organization would finally commit to orienting its advertising technology stack around people, rather than cookies or devices.
  • Or making holistic omnichannel frequency management mandatory.
  • And maybe you’d hit the pause button before assuming that hyper-personalization is best for every consumer in every instance in every conceivable ad slot.
  • And take a step back from automation overdrive and refocus on the importance of environment in advertising.
  • And perhaps you’d embrace opportunities to engage your consumers in this conversation.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all of this, I get it — you’re not alone, and I’m not claiming this is simple. Advertising is more complex than ever — more channels, more data, more technology to choose from. But at the end of the day, your responsibility is to two primary constituencies: your business and your customers (whether current or future). And if you’re making wrong assumptions about the latter when it comes to their feelings about YOUR advertising, you’re doing a disservice to the former, today and over the long term.

To dig further into what’s going on and what to do about it, check out our newly published report — “The Future Of Omnichannel Advertising Must Be Customer Obsessed” — the vision portion of our digital media buying playbook, which is designed to help you and your business on its march toward true customer obsession in all of your advertising.

And sign up for my July 11th Forrester webinar on this topic here.