Avatar Personalization and User Engagement in Facebook Advertising

As users' online attention spans decrease and they employ various methods to avoid ads, advertisers are increasingly seeking creative strategies to enhance engagement with consumers. This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of utilizing personalized ads featuring users' avatars, with a focus on Facebook as a case study. To conduct this research, an experiment will be conducted in a laboratory setting with 50 participants from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. These participants will be exposed to various personalized avatar ads to measure their engagement levels, brand recall, and product interest. Additionally, 100 participants from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and 100 participants from the University of Lagos will be recruited for an online survey to assess their avatar identity, connection, and interest in personalized avatar ads. It is hypothesized that participants with a strong identification with their avatars will demonstrate higher engagement with avatar ads. The study aims to explore how personalized avatars in advertisements can establish a deeper connection with users, leading to increased engagement levels and improved conversion rates.