Over the last 10 years paid search has evolved from a keyword-targeting system to a match-making system in which content-to-intent alignment as determined by advanced AI models are the primary driver used for audience targeting. This has dramatically increased the importance of ad copy in Paid Search, making it more important than keywords or match types for audience targeting and performance.  In this post we will review a recent case study that proves unequivocally that ads are the new keywords.

Advertising dollars are spent to reach potential consumers and inform them about a product, and perhaps the single largest American venue to do this is the Super Bowl. Companies that buy ad time during the Super Bowl have the potential to extend the reach of their ad if it makes a splash and gets talked about in the follow-up news cycle, so it’s no wonder so many companies are willing to pay top dollar for Super Bowl ads. However, it would seem this money would only be well spent if the Super Bowl audience included a large proportion of potential consumers for a given product; otherwise, how would such a massive expense pay off?

How Psychological Traits Drive Buying Decisions

In last week’s blog post, I argued that personality traits can be conceived of as “chronic motivations”, and that such a conceptualization shows how they can be used to uncover the true motivations behind consumer behavior. This week I’m going to expand upon this theme by arguing that there are, at least, two general pathways for such motivations to be realized, and make some suggestions on how to tell the two apart.

Personality Traits as Chronic Motivations Get Around the Confabulator

The object of study of personality psychology is primarily traits--patterns of emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral differences that tend to be stable over the lifespan and across situations, and that differ between individuals. One can conceptualize personality traits as chronic motivations, motivations that a person tends to have across their lifespan and across different situations. Conceptualizing personality traits as chronic motivations offers a novel way to study consumer decision-making and behavior.