F.A.M. (Francesco) Balocco MSc

The widespread diffusion of mobile technologies such as smartphones and tablets is revolutionizing the way marketers reach consumers. Firms can reach the right users, at the right place, at the right time, and in the right context, and leverage on their psychological response to the environment to increase the effectiveness of their advertising actions. In this context, however, users are increasingly accustomed to high volumes of ubiquitous advertising and only pay attention to those messages that are particularly relevant to them, challenging even the most advanced targeting techniques. With this work, I plan to investigate the role of mobile technologies in shaping the contemporary digital advertising landscape and propose new techniques to infer on consumer behavior and implement effective digital targeting strategies.
In this proposal, I present three studies that I plan to conduct as part of my doctoral dissertation. The first study investigates the role of combining multiple display advertising strategies in multi-device campaigns. The second study uses individual trajectory patterns to infer whether a user may respond positively to the advertising of product innovations. Finally, the third study uses geosimilarity networks to investigate the effects of social retargeting in mobile advertising. The proposed studies intend to contribute to the literature by uncovering the role of digital targeting in multi-device campaigns, by investigating how higher level psychological constructs such as a user’s desire for novelty can be derived from mobile data, and, finally, by introducing novel social targeting techniques for mobile advertising. In the following chapters, I present a general overview of the project, an extensive review of the current state of the literature on digital targeting and the three proposed studies.