The Personalization Plateau: Why Hyper-Targeting Is Producing Diminishing Returns
How Two Decades of Sophisticated Targeting Led to Less Effective Marketing
After two decades of increasingly sophisticated targeting, brands are hitting a personalization plateau where additional data and targeting precision produce minimal improvement in marketing effectiveness. The targeting arms race has reached its logical conclusion: more data, less impact.
The Targeting Exhaustion Point
Cross-device complexity sees consumers frequently switching between devices, complicating the tracking process, while privacy restrictions and initiatives like iOS 17's Link Tracking Protection in Safari limit tracking capabilities. Consumer behavior has become increasingly unpredictable as people manage multiple digital identities and use privacy tools to limit tracking.
The behavioral signals that powered effective targeting are becoming noise. Research by Forrester suggests that 56% of consumers use their mobile device to research products, with buyers using an average of almost 6 touch-points on the buying journey. This fragmentation makes traditional personalization approaches less effective, not more.
The Privacy-Performance Death Spiral
Enhanced privacy protections are making sophisticated targeting more expensive and less effective simultaneously. Brands are paying more for lower-quality targeting that reaches fewer people. The introduction of Link Tracking Protection has further complicated tracking, leading to fewer attributed conversions for major advertising platforms.
Cookie limitations see many browsers moving towards restricting cookie use, impacting traditional tracking methods. Attribution models like "first-touch," "last-touch," and "U-shape" assign predefined values to touchpoints, but these models are largely based on assumptions rather than empirical data, making their outcomes more speculative.
The Mass Personalization Revolution
The future of personalization isn't more granular targeting—it's better creative that resonates across broader audiences. Brands need to rediscover the art of creating messages that feel personal without requiring personal data.
AI-powered attribution models can connect customer interactions from various touchpoints, including online and offline channels, creating a unified view of the customer journey. Instead of trying to target individuals precisely, successful brands are using AI to understand broad behavioral patterns and create content that feels personally relevant to large audiences.
The most effective personalization strategies of 2025 will feel highly personal while being broadly applicable—the opposite of current hyper-targeting approaches.