From Guesses to Personas : The Potential of Automatic Persona Generation (APG) in Targeting Digital Advertising Messages

The role of precisely targeted marketing has grown strongly with the rise of new media such as social media. It is possible to control in digital channels to whom one wants to show advertise- ments but creating the initial targeting parameters and marketing message can be difficult if one is not sure about the target audience. APG, standing for automatic persona generation, enables the usage of existing digital data in persona creation process. With this technique it is possible to reveal fast and precisely up- to-date information of a company’s target audience with accompanied attribute information. Creating marketing message for people-like personas has been shown a powerful method for communicating information on company’s offering. Each company has digital data on their customers gathered one way or another. Data used in this research consists of data gathered by a company called Elämyslahjat during the years on its website users. These data were used to develop personas and lists of characteristics with APG effectiveness of which was then again tested by recruiting thirty marketing professionals to write ads based on these personas and lists of characteristics to Facebook. After this the effectiveness of ads written for personas and for lists of characteristics were compared. The results show that there might be potential for APG to act as a basis for more effective marketing due to its speed in persona creation and preciseness. There were differences between mean click-through-rates (CTR) of ads written for personas and for lists of characteristics. APG shows also potential with its speed to mold data into more understandable form as personas quite rapidly for the purposes of advertising and marketing. This enables the usage of precise target audiences which is a desirable in marketing. The research shows that there is potential for persona-based advertisements as a marketing boosting element in digital environments. This has business-wise significance while it saves time and improves the efficiency of work done in ads creation.Tarkkaan kohdennetun markkinoinnin merkitys on kasvanut voimakkaasti uusien medioiden, kuten sosiaalisten medioiden, esiinmarssin myötä. Digitaalisen markkinoinnin kanavissa on mahdollista tietää tarkasti kenelle mainos näkyy, mutta kohdentaminen ja viestin luominen saattaa silti olla hankalaa, jos ei ole varma kohdeyleisöstään. APG, eli automaattinen persoonien luonti, mahdollistaa olemassa olevan digitaalisen tiedon käyttämisen persoonien luontiprosessissa. Tekniikan avulla on mahdollista selvittää nopeasti ja ajantasaisen tiedon avulla kulloinkin mielenkiinnon alla olevan yrityksen kohderyhmä ominaisuustietoineen. Mainosviestin luominen oikeiden ihmisten kaltaisille persoonille on havaittu tehokkaaksi tavaksi viestiä yrityksen valikoimasta. Kaikilla yrityksillä on sähköistä dataa asiakkaistaan kerättynä tavalla tai toisella. Tutkimuksessa käytetty data koostui Elämyslahjat-nimisen yrityksen vuosien aikana keräämästä verkkosivujen käyttäjädatasta. Tämän datan avulla luotiin algoritmipohjaisesti persoonat ja ominaisuuslistaukset, joiden tehokkuutta mitattiin kolmenkymmenen markkinointiammattilaisen kirjoittamilla mainoksilla Facebookissa. Tutkimuksessa vertailtiin mainosten tehokkuutta kohderyhmissä, kun mainokset oli luotu persoonille tai ominaisuuslistauksille. Lopputulokseksi osoittautui, että APG-metodilla saattaa olla potentiaalia mainosviestin tehostamisessa sen nopeuden ja tarkkuuden ansiosta, sillä erot persoonille kirjoitettujen mainosten klikkausprosentin (click-through-rate, CTR) ja ominaisuuslistauksille kirjoitettujen mainosten klikkausprosentin välillä olivat keskiarvoisesti olemassa. APG:n puolesta puhuu myös sen nopeus persoonien luomisessa, ja sitä kautta se voi olla apuna datan muokkaamisessa mainonnassa käytettävään muotoon. Tämä mahdollistaa tarkkaan rajatun kohderyhmän käyttämisen mainonnassa, mikä on yleisesti markkinoinnin alalla arvostettua. Tutkimus antaa tuloksen siitä, että persoonapohjaisesti luoduilla mainoksilla on potentiaalia mainonnan tehostamisessa digitaalisessa ympäristössä. Tällä on liiketoiminnallista merkitystä aikaa säästävästi ja toiminnan tehoa nostavasti

The Realness of Fakes : Primary Evidence of the Effect of Deepfake Personas on User Perceptions in a Design Task

Deepfakes, realistic portrayals of people that do not exist, have garnered interest in research and industry. Yet, the contributions of deepfake technology to human-computer interaction remain unclear. One possible value of deepfake technology is to create more immersive user personas. To test this premise, we use a commercial-grade service to generate three deepfake personas (DFs). We also create counterparts of the same persona in two traditional modalities: classic and narrative personas. We then investigate how persona modality affects the perceptions and task performance of the persona user. Our findings show that the DFs were perceived as less empathetic, credible, complete, clear, and immersive than other modalities. Participants also indicated less willingness to use the DFs and less sense of control, but there were no differences in task performance. We also found a strong correlation between the uncanny valley effect and other user perceptions, implying that the tested deepfake technology might lack maturity for personas, negatively affecting user experience. Designers might also be accustomed to using traditional persona profiles. Further research is needed to investigate the potential and downsides of DFs.© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

How Do Users Perceive Deepfake Personas? Investigating the Deepfake User Perception and Its Implications for Human-Computer Interaction

Although deepfakes have a negative connotation in human-computer interaction (HCI) due to their risks, they also involve many opportunities, such as communicating user needs in the form of a “living, talking” deepfake persona. To scope and better understand these opportunities, we present a qualitative analysis of 46 participants’ think-aloud transcripts based on interacting with deepfake personas and human personas, representing a potentially beneficial application of deepfakes for HCI. Our qualitative analysis of 92 think-aloud records indicates five central user deepfake themes, including (1) Realism, (2) User Needs, (3) Distracting Properties, (4) Added Value, and (5) Rapport. The results indicate various challenges in deepfake user perception that technology developers need to address before the potential of deepfake applications can be realized for HCI.© 2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 979-8-4007-0806-0/23/09. https://doi.org/10.1145/3605390.3605397. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

How Does Personification Impact Ad Performance and Empathy? An Experiment with Online Advertising

This research explores the value of personas for supporting professional advertisers to design adverts for social media. We test if a personified user group (PUG), when provided to online ad designers, results in better ad performance than when using a non-personified user group (NUG) that had no face picture or name. Our experiment has 30 participants that created Facebook ads using both PUG and NUG. We found that using PUG did increase advertising click performance of ads created by people who are more experienced with ads and personas. Moreover, an analysis of the ad texts showed that the use of PUG increased the empathy of the created ads, supporting the foundational empathy benefit cited in HCI literature. However, the use of PUG did not significantly increase purchase intent. The results imply that using PUG for online ad design evokes more empathy and improves click-through performance. More empathetic ads can have a positive impact on social media users, given that they appear to increase relevance

Association Between Distance From Home to Tobacco Outlet and Smoking Cessation and Relapse

Importance  Reduced availability of tobacco outlets is hypothesized to reduce smoking, but longitudinal evidence on this issue is scarce.Objective  To examine whether changes in distance from home to tobacco outlet are associated with changes in smoking behaviors.Design, Setting, and Participants  The data from 2 prospective cohort studies included geocoded residential addresses, addresses of tobacco outlets, and responses to smoking surveys in 2008 and 2012 (the Finnish Public Sector [FPS] study, n = 53 755) or 2003 and 2012 (the Health and Social Support [HeSSup] study, n = 11 924). All participants were smokers or ex-smokers at baseline. We used logistic regression in between-individual analyses and conditional logistic regression in case-crossover design analyses to examine change in walking distance from home to the nearest tobacco outlet as a predictor of quitting smoking in smokers and smoking relapse in ex-smokers. Study-specific estimates were pooled using fixed-effect meta-analysis.Exposures  Walking distance from home to the nearest tobacco outlet.Main Outcomes and Measures  Quitting smoking and smoking relapse as indicated by self-reported current and previous smoking at baseline and follow-up.Results  Overall, 20 729 men and women (age range 18-75 years) were recruited. Of the 6259 and 2090 baseline current smokers, 1744 (28%) and 818 (39%) quit, and of the 8959 and 3421 baseline ex-smokers, 617 (7%) and 205 (6%) relapsed in the FPS and HeSSup studies, respectively. Among the baseline smokers, a 500-m increase in distance from home to the nearest tobacco outlet was associated with a 16% increase in odds of quitting smoking in the between-individual analysis (pooled odds ratio, 1.16; 95% CI, 1.05-1.28) and 57% increase in within-individual analysis (pooled odds ratio, 1.57; 95% CI, 1.32-1.86), after adjusting for changes in self-reported marital and working status, substantial worsening of financial situation, illness in the family, and own health status. Increase in distance to the nearest tobacco outlet was not associated with smoking relapse among the ex-smokers.Conclusions and Relevance  These data suggest that increase in distance from home to the nearest tobacco outlet may increase quitting among smokers. No effect of change in distance on relapse in ex-smokers was observed </div