Synthetic Personas: The Next Leap in AI Insight 🚀

As we continue to evolve our research methodologies, synthetic personas are emerging as a powerful tool that complements our existing ways of working. This technology offers new opportunities to understand target audiences more deeply and optimize media strategies with greater precision. The upside with using synthetic data is obvious; it’s fast, cost effective and scalable.

Can't read through how we use synthetic personas? 🎙️ We've got you covered. Listen to our podcast episode.

Note: This podcast was created entirely using Google's Notebook LM —no human marketing expertise was involved in the content creation beyond the initial prompting. We're not just talking about AI; we're using it!

What are synthetic personas and why they matter 🔍

Synthetic personas are AI-generated representations of consumer segments that embody the behaviours, preferences, and consumption patterns of real audiences without containing any actual individual’s data. Unlike traditional personas, which are often based on limited sample sizes and generalized assumptions, synthetic personas are created from vast datasets and sophisticated behavioural models that capture the nuanced complexity of real consumers.

These digital twins go beyond demographic and psychographic profiles to incorporate dynamic elements like content preferences, daily routines, emotional drivers, and decision-making patterns. For us, synthetic personas represent a transformative approach to target group analysis, enabling us to simulate interactions with our audience segments and gain greater insight into their media consumption journeys.

Key benefits for media research and planning

Always-on access to target group insights

One of the most compelling advantages of synthetic personas is the ability to “converse” with the synthesized target audience 24/7. This always-on accessibility eliminates the delays traditionally associated with research planning, recruitment, and execution.

Instead of waiting days or weeks for a study to complete, we can immediately query synthetic models that represent the target audience or persona to gain valuable insights.

The richness and depth of these synthetic personas allow us to move from static audience segments to living, responsive models that can be queried and analysed from multiple angles. This represents a paradigm shift in how we understand audiences and develop media strategies tailored to their authentic behaviours.

Enhanced creative testing

By leveraging synthetic personas, we can now deep dive into testing creative concepts to gain a greater understanding into how the target audience perceives the communication. In the past, this has been constrained by cost and time limitations. With synthetic personas or synthetic target groups, we can rapidly evaluate multiple creative variations across different audience segments before campaign start.

Applications in media strategy

Beyond reach and affinity: Understanding content consumption patterns

Traditional audience research tools like TGI’s provide valuable reach and affinity data for channels and media platforms, but they often fall short in explaining the nuances of content consumption. What specific content does our target group engage with? Why do they choose it? When are they most receptive to it?

Using synthetic personas, we now have the chance to answer these critical questions, mimicking more qualitative data. Our personas offer granular insights into content preferences across platforms, revealing the underlying motivations and contextual factors influencing media consumption that could be taken into consideration for media planning and buying. AI models will also help predicting tomorrow’s media habits, bringing value to media strategies for the next year.

Complementing traditional research

While synthetic personas provide significant advantages, it should be seen as a compliment to traditional methodologies. Synthetic data will not fully replace traditional human-based data, and it is important to recognize the human context and emotional understanding in shaping our synthetic models.

The combination of synthetic data’s scale and traditional research's depth creates a powerful synergy that elevates our strategic recommendations and delivers measurable results for our clients.

As media consumption fragments across platforms, synthetic personas will become increasingly vital in helping us understand the complete consumer journey and optimize engagement at every touchpoint.

Elevate your media research with synthetic personas: let’s connect

If you’re curious about how synthetic personas can elevate your media planning and insight work, we’d love to continue the conversation. Reach out to us to explore how we can help your organization harness the power of innovation and data-driven strategy in the field of research and insights.