• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, August 22, 2016

How did Ancestry.com solve its banner-blindness issue?

Humbly, the lineage specialists asked whether its messaging was offering the right value exchange, and, perhaps, if it was too narrow. Out of that soul-searching came the idea of asking potential customers about their last names, and what they mean.

“Not everyone’s interested in family history, but everyone’s interested in what their last name means,” says Riddhi Goradia, director of display and content marketing at Ancestry.com.

As such, “we started to really broaden the way we talked to people,” Goradia told attendees of MediaPost’s Programmatic Insider Summit, on Monday.

“It also helped us open up targeting,” Goradia said. With its new message, he said, “we were able to approach younger audiences.”

What’s more, “We started to get at messaging that was more content focused,” Goradia added.

Rather that just driving consumers to a 14-day trial page, Ancestry started driving them to destination pages with an immediate payoff -- from giving them information about their last name, to the life expectancy rates of people with their last night, to maps of where people with their name are concentrated around the world.

“We gave people a real payoff experience,” Goradia said.