Target the customers you want by understanding the psychology behind the buy button. How can you make sure you’re being listened to among the white noise of the internet?

Steckler will be speaking more about personalised retargeting and engaging the 95 per cent that get away at ad:tech London. Register now for free.

The human mind is by its very nature unpredictable. During the last century, psychologists have made great strides in working out what makes people tick. But the suspicion remains that we'll never truly understand what leads a person to make one choice over another. And for marketers, that can cause great headaches.

In the online sphere too, predictive analysis has become more sophisticated in the last decade. The internet can broadly be split into 'phases'. The second age of the web was more about a richer user experience and participation tools -- think blogs, social networks and photo sharing sites -- and is commonly referred to as web 2.0. Since 2009 we have entered the real-time web -- from FriendFeed and status updates in Facebook to the now ubiquitous tweet. Beyond that comes the next phase of the internet: something I call the 'intention economy'.

The next generation of websites and online advertising must get to grips with the fact that users want a more 'real' web, one that not only appreciates who they are but also personalises their online experience to reflect this. To give people what they want, advertisers must understand what motivates them, what they're looking for, and how to convert those needs into sales. A good example is 43things.com, which lets people list their hopes and dreams. If marketers could tap into something like this to offer individuals the chance to fulfil some of their goals -- in other words satisfy their intentions -- they could be on to a winner.

Other consumer web services are utilising a combination of data and prediction tools. For example, evri.com is a semantic search engine more interested in looking at the connections of information, people and products across the web. The use of technology and algorithms to understand the customer journey online is nothing new. But by building a platform that is able to respond in real-time and in context to people's online activity, we are revolutionising the web for advertisers.

As the web experience of most consumers becomes more personal, advertising will follow. The importance of understanding 'who I am and what I want', and the tailoring of the advertising experience to reflect that in real-time, is what we call scalable personalised retargeting. We work on advertiser data, understanding the intention of what people want or may want based on a recommendation engine that matches them with other similar users and displays the banner in real-time. Creative is produced simultaneously, with a mass of personalised executions. And, like search, all this is underpinned and optimised with hard performance-based metrics. Results show that this technique drives click-through and conversion to sale rates that are significantly higher than the industry average. 

The future of online display is about predicting intent through real-time data management and manipulation, while delivering a personalised message to each and every consumer relevant to your brand. That future is here.

Michael Steckler is MD of Criteo