New research tells us the bar for personalization is rising faster than brands are meeting it

Marketers are no strangers to the woes of personalization. Brands have more data and better technology than ever to accurately market to consumers—but as ad inventory and competition skyrocketed, people have gotten savvier, busier and are quicker to tune out any advertisements that miss the mark.

And it’s not that people don’t want personalized advertising from brands. The opposite is true, actually—people want personalization more than ever, but they’re trusting brands to deliver it less and less. In new research from Epsilon Pulse, The push and pull of personalization, we found that the bar for personalization is rising faster than brands are meeting it, and it’s created a margin of error for marketers.

Below, we’ll cover key findings from our new research and give you an idea on how to use this information to make sure your personalization is hitting all the right notes.

Quick stats:

• 58% say brands have gotten better at personalization in the last two years, down from 65% in 2024.
• 88% of consumers have pulled back engagement from a brand that repeatedly got them wrong in their marketing or advertising.
• 91% of people have acted in some way (unsubscribing from texts, emails, etc.) when a brand contacted them too often—even if the message was relevant.
• 74% will view a brand negatively if it includes inaccurate information about them in its marketing.

Key insights about how consumers view personalization

What the research found is that personalization is still very much a two-way street. Consumers pull brands closer when it’s done well and push them away when it’s not, making the nuances of personalization all the more important for marketers.

Get personalization right, and people will reward you with more than just their wallets.

Good things come to the marketers who ensure their messages genuinely reflect who someone is and what they need. More than half of consumers (54%) say they’re more likely to buy when a brand gets something right about them, while 38% feel understood and valued and 35% become more loyal. On the flip side, personalization can completely change how people feel about your brand. 39% said when a brand gets something wrong about them, it makes them think badly of that brand—which will likely filter down to purchase behavior.

Brand affinity is on the line when personalization goes wrong.

It shows up in how people judge brands, too: 81% view a brand positively simply for advertising a product they need, and 79% think highly of brands with smart, relevant marketing. However, 74% will view a brand negatively if it includes inaccurate information about them in its marketing. What does this all mean? Relevance isn’t just nice, it’s persuasive. Personalization done well is one of the shortest paths to conversion, but it’s imperative that marketers ensure their communications are accurate and relevant.

People still want personalization—they’re just not convinced brands are getting better at it.

The appetite is there: 77% of consumers find personalized marketing at least somewhat appealing. More telling is the trend line: Just 58% say brands have gotten better at personalizing over the past two years—down from 65% in our 2024 report. In other words, consumer expectations are climbing faster than brands are meeting them. And those expectations only intensify once people opt in: 62% of loyalty members expect a lot more personalization in return, and 82% expect a brand to at least acknowledge them as a returning customer.

Getting it wrong is expensive—and consumers see “wrong” every single day.

Irrelevant marketing isn’t an occasional annoyance; it’s a daily one. 69% of consumers see irrelevant ads at least once a day, and 93% see them weekly. And consumers don’t just shrug it off. A striking 88% have taken action after a brand repeatedly got them wrong—27% stopped buying altogether and 18% switched to a competitor. Notably, being wrong is far costlier than being generic: 39% think negatively about a brand that gets something wrong about them, versus just 8% for a merely generic message.

Want access to the full findings, including how people view ad creative, what they think of AI summaries and overviews, and more? Read the report here.

How to refocus your personalization efforts

The data is telling us people have an appetite for personalization—you just can’t get it wrong. Here are three things brands should do to make sure their ads are focused and accurate:

1. Look at your data and identity

Data is the backbone of personalization. If you don’t have meaningful insights about a customer’s unique needs, preferences and past behavior, it’s almost impossible to tailor each element of an ad to that person. Plain and simple. Strong identity resolution makes it possible to deliver that message across multiple channels and formats to the correct individual. Without identity resolution, you risk missing your customers completely.

It’s the combination of data and identity that really makes personalization—and in turn, your entire suite of marketing messages—sing. You should work with a data and identity partner that can help transform your marketing from generic messaging to truly personalized experiences that drive real engagement.

2. Lead with relevance and real need

The data tells us that consumers are doing their research, but at the end of the day, true need for a product drives the ultimate buying decision. This is extremely important for brands to understand—if you’re not providing that value exchange and giving consumers something they need, it will impact how people feel about your brand.

The good thing is, when served an ad that featured a product they really needed, consumers viewed that brand more highly. Personalization is more than just getting their name right—it’s having a fundamental understanding of what that person needs and how your brand is positioned to give it to them.

3. Get smart with your creative capabilities

For most consumers, generic is forgivable; wrong is not. Marketing that routinely uses visuals, copy or an overall vibe that misrepresents the intended recipient can do more harm than you think. So, before optimizing for hyper-personalization, make sure your creative isn’t misrepresenting the people you’re reaching. The wrong life stage or tone costs you customers.

This is where we recommend marketers take a hard look at their creative capabilities, specifically the data feeding them. If you don’t have the correct information on your customers—and can trust that information—it’s extremely difficult to get it right.

How Epsilon can help personalize across channels

Personalization is more than a buzzword—it's the heartbeat of meaningful, long-lasting engagement with your customers. But delivering true 1:1 personalization, at scale and across channels, is no walk in the park, as these results illustrate. Epsilon Digital, our industry-leading programmatic advertising platform, runs on strong identity resolution capabilities and real-time dynamic creative optimization to help marketers get personalization right. Learn more about our identity capabilities and how we approach personalization.

Interested in more? In the full research report, we explore:

• Why consumers choose to engage with marketing—and what keeps them going
• The upside of getting personalization right and the cost of getting it wrong
• How consumers feel about personalization today, and where brands are falling short
• What makes ad creative feel “off,” and what that does to brand perception
• Why frequency and cross-channel consistency matter more than ever

See the findings now.