How can a brand connect with diverse audiences, such as women’s football fans, through personalised advertising? By personalising for context and culture before tracking. Niche communities reward brands that show they understand their world, and punish the ones that only turn up when there’s a final. Technique matters, but trust comes first.
The market is saying so with its chequebook. According to El Publicista, SAMY, the Spanish-born, Bridgepoint-backed social-first agency, has bought Get Engaged, a US agency specialising in creators, talent, entertainment and culture. Get Engaged co-founder Cam Fordham sums up the thesis: the future of marketing belongs to brands that can create moments people want to be part of. (Disclosure: SAMY is a Defy client.)
Look closely at that line. It isn’t about reaching each person with their name in the ad. It’s about earning a place in something people already care about. That’s the personalisation that works in 2026.
What does personalising advertising mean today?
For years, personalisation meant stalking: following someone around the web and showing them the trainers they looked at yesterday. That model depends on third-party data that’s ever scarcer, pricier and more regulated, and it triggers a recoil everyone recognises in themselves.
The alternative isn’t to stop personalising. It’s to change the foundations. Instead of adapting the ad to what you know about one person, you adapt it to the community they belong to, the moment they’re in and what that community says in public. Less surveillance, more understanding.
| Criterion | Tracking-based personalisation | Community and context personalisation |
|---|---|---|
| Basis | Browsing history and third-party data | Public conversation, first-party data and media context |
| What it adapts | Product and offer | Message, tone, cultural references and moment |
| External dependency | High | Low |
| Risk to trust | High: “how do they know this about me?” | Low, if the brand offers something in return |
| Scale | Automatic, but generic | Through variants, with more up-front work |
| How it’s validated | Clicks, after you’ve paid | Understanding first, then testing before spend |
Why does badly done personalisation destroy engagement?
Trust Theory, in its economic form, gives the most useful explanation: trust is what makes exchanges cheaper. When you trust someone, you don’t need to watch them, check everything or protect yourself. When you don’t, every interaction costs more.
Personalisation is an exchange. The audience hands over attention and, sometimes, data; in return it expects relevance. If people feel the brand knows too much, or is only using them to sell, the deal breaks. And it doesn’t break just for that campaign. It breaks for the ones that follow.
That’s why trust is the soil in which engagement grows. It isn’t a side effect of a good campaign; it’s the condition for there being a campaign at all. In niche communities, where everyone knows everyone and opportunism is spotted instantly, the margin for error is even smaller.
The women’s football case: a niche that doesn’t forgive opportunists
Take a hypothetical example. A sports drinks brand wants to reach women’s football fans in Spain or Latin America. The lazy approach would be to target “women, 18–35, interested in football” and launch a single ad fronted by a famous player.
Now suppose that, before buying any media, the agency listens to what that community posts and finds three groups:
- Lifelong club supporters, who complain about shifting kick-off times and broadcasts that are hard to find.
- Grassroots players, who want relatable role models and kit designed for them.
- Newer fans, who arrived via the national team and follow specific players on social.
Three different tensions, three different personalisations. For the first group, the brand can be useful by helping them follow the matches. For the second, it can talk about football as they actually play it, not just the elite game. For the third, the creators and players they already follow are the natural channel. None of this requires knowing who each individual is; it requires understanding each group.
How to personalise ads for a niche audience, step by step
- Listen to the community in its own spaces. Social platforms, forums, match-day comment threads, fan accounts. Before you speak, learn how they speak.
- Cluster what you find into personas and tensions. Not by age, but by the problem or desire they share.
- Work out what the brand can bring. If the answer is “nothing, we just want visibility”, the community will notice. Find a useful role.
- Build variants for each tension, with voices from the community. Same idea, different tone, different references. Creators who genuinely belong to the niche bring a credibility that media money can’t buy.
- Test the variants before you spend. With several versions per group, guessing which will work gets expensive. Defy, for example, scores each creative’s likelihood of being clicked before media spend, with predictions validated against real ad performance, so the results conversation with the client starts from evidence rather than gut feel.
- Activate with first-party data and context. The advertiser’s own audiences, the media and environments where the community already is, and the calendar moments it cares about.
- Measure by group and give value back. Split results by tension and check whether the community is responding or drifting away. Trust can be measured too.
If you want to see how listening, analysis and creative evaluation connect in one place, take a look at the Defy platform.
Can you personalise at scale without losing authenticity?
That’s the question behind SAMY’s deal. According to El Publicista, the acquisition follows wins of the Unilever Foods and Barilla global accounts, and CEO Juan Andrés Elhazaz Walsh says the combination “consolidates SAMY as a global leader in scalable social and influencer marketing operating models”. Alex Dermer, CEO of Get Engaged, explains that his agency was founded to help brands connect with culture in ways that drive business.
Scale and culture look as if they pull in opposite directions, but they needn’t. What doesn’t scale is improvising every piece. What does scale is a method: listen, cluster, build variants and test them before you pay. People and communities supply the authenticity; the system stops every campaign starting from scratch.
What should brands ask their agency?
If you’re an advertiser about to invest in personalisation for a niche, four questions separate a serious proposal from a punt:
- Where do the personas and tensions you’re showing me come from? Can I see real examples?
- What does the brand give that community, beyond visibility?
- How will you choose between variants before spending the media budget?
- How will you measure whether the community trusts the brand more or less after the campaign?
An agency that answers all four with evidence isn’t selling you personalisation. It’s selling you understanding, which is what makes personalisation work in the first place.
