Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Bates: Personalization requires individual intent understanding, not demographic targeting

Tony Bates · Is The Future Customer Experience AI Talking To AI? — With Tony Bates · Sep 11, 2026 · at 22:53

Tony Bates, CEO of Genesys, critiques the ad tech industry's persona models and contrasts them with genuine customer experience personalization.

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“Personalization is not targeting. And that's kind of like in the ad tech world is like, well, we'd create personas. That's not personalization. That's taking a group and treating them the same way. Personalization is understanding Why you want something, and giving it to you exactly the right moment, and doing it in the right way.”

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