Only 27% of Consumers Think Brands Understand Their Interests

What happened

A new report from Site Impact finds that only 27% of consumers believe the brands they interact with genuinely understand their interests. The research points to stale customer data and repetitive, poorly targeted messaging as the main culprits eroding confidence in personalisation efforts.

The findings suggest a persistent gap between how much brands invest in data collection and targeting technology, and how accurately that investment translates into messaging consumers actually find relevant. Rather than feeling understood, many consumers report seeing the same offers and content repeated regardless of changing preferences or behaviour.

Why it matters

Personalisation has become a baseline expectation rather than a differentiator, yet this research suggests most brands are failing to clear that bar. When targeting relies on outdated or poorly maintained data, the result is not neutral — it actively signals to customers that a brand isn't paying attention, which can undercut trust built through other channels.

For experience and marketing leaders, the finding reinforces that personalisation technology is only as good as the data discipline behind it. Investment in AI-driven targeting or recommendation engines will not improve perceived relevance if the underlying customer data is stale, fragmented, or not refreshed in step with changing behaviour.

By the numbers

• 27% of consumers say brands truly understand their interests, according to Site Impact's report.

The Renascence take

The headline number is a trust signal as much as a marketing metric. It reflects what happens when organisations treat personalisation as a technology deployment rather than an ongoing data and behavioural discipline.

Most brands chase personalisation as a feature to switch on, when it is really a muscle that has to be exercised continuously — refreshing data, retiring stale segments, and checking whether messaging still matches behaviour. The real tell here isn't that targeting fails sometimes; it's that repetition itself becomes evidence of inattention in the customer's mind. A customer-obsessed operator should audit how quickly their data decays and tie personalisation success metrics to relevance decay rates, not just reach or click-through — because being ignored by an algorithm feels worse to a customer than being ignored by a person.