Push notification fatigue – comScore data

I find this interesting

Yes is the short answer,  and it is entirely in line with other similar declines is use.

We advertising in the late 1990’s had very good click through rates,  and now they are infitessimal.
SMS and MMS advertising had huge response rates when first used,  guess what,  that’s right, they are in the toilet now.
and the same is happening with Push notifications.

Initally the rarity and novelty work well and people respond well, however soon there after more and more arrive,  more adverts, more notifications and you start to ignore them.  Worse so many lead you to nowhere interesting and so you learn to distrust them.

A good case in point is Blyk,  a mobile networ where the calls and texts were free,  because you signed up knowing you would get MMS based advertising,  and this paid for the calls/texts.  A good idea, aimed at students and similarly wallet challenged.  When you signed up you answered a questionaire that helped blyk target ads to you.  L’Oreal was an early adoptor and had, iirc, over 40% response rates, due to affective targeting.  But very quickly this dropped dramatically, and so blyk was not the success one might expect.

The killer for me is that the advertising world has focused on personalisation for nigh on 30 years and yet, still, it is not working the way it should, in part because the relationship is the wrong way round,  it’s brands focusing on the consumer,  rather than the consumer controlling the inbound advertising domains.  Thi si sexpounded by the VRM project by Doc Searls,  where VRM stands for Vendor Relationship Management,  ie the user personalises the vendors.  FOr me this is the best way forward,  even if it is unlikely to work (because people are people,  and people are lazy and distracted, and so do not actively manage this kind of thing.)