The Demand of Personalization on Content Creation

Marketers have jumped on the personalization band wagon in a big way. But, according to a recent survey by Adobe, they are struggling to meet the content demand created by increasingly personalized content. 

The Adobe survey, which included 1,000 marketers, creative, advertising and IT professionals from North America, found that even though a lot of content is being created, marketers and advertisers believe they should be doing even more. An average of 28 content pieces is being created each week and it can take as long as 12 days to get a piece to market.

More survey findings:

• Only about one-fifth to one-quarter of survey respondents (26% creatives, 21% marketers and 24% advertising professionals) believe that their organizations are doing a sufficient amount of personalization in their digital advertising.
• At least half of survey respondents (59% marketers, 52% advertisers, 41% agency creatives and 53% brand creatives) are struggling with personalizing content at scale.
• Survey respondents that consider themselves more “digitally advanced” believe that they are exceeding their competitors’ performance, have well-coordinated processes for content creation and delivery and have more extensive personalization in place than other organizations.
• One-third of respondents said that time investment is their biggest barrier to personalization, while 20% said cost is their biggest barrier.
• On average, only about one-third of businesses (34%) were satisfied with their content strategy, content creation and process, although half of companies with revenue greater than $50M had a higher satisfaction with content and personalization at their organizations.

The tide does seem to be turning, at least somewhat. Staff for content creation is being added by advertisers and marketers and content quality is preferred over content quantity. Further, the various teams involved in personalization and content creation – marketers, creatives, IT pros – are getting better at communicating with each other, both during pre-planning and ongoing content creation.