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How AI and behavioural targeting can improve push notification performance

The more relevant the push message, the higher the engagement, and technology is increasing the ability of publishers to segment and target audiences.

25th April 2025

Image by MidJourney

In our recent report about how publishers can unlock the power of push notifications, we identified the importance of relevance. Publishers used their content strategy, user surveys and preference centres to increase the relevance of the push notifications, and by doing so, they enjoyed higher open rates and more engagement with their apps.

Publishers’ approach to delivering relevance is increasing in sophistication, as are the tools they use. Publishers are using a mix of customisation, allowing users to tailor their own experiences, and personalisation, leveraging technology to algorithmically predict and deliver the content audiences are most likely to engage with.

The technology services publishers use are also getting better at identifying and serving up relevant content to audiences, allowing for a level of personalisation that would have been impossible in the past.

Publishers such as The Hindu in India have discovered, as our research did, that mass, generic push notifications won’t engage audiences. And they found that AI technologies are more effective in delivering relevant push notifications than using an “old school” rules-based system.
Airship is providing new behavioural targeting features that allow publishers to identify audience segments by their level of engagement and send messages to re-engage them or deepen their level of activity in publishers’ apps.

If you want to learn more about app best practices, join other publishing professionals in our Mobile Matters community. It includes a Slack channel, webinars and member-only workshops. Find out more information about Mobile Matters here, and you can join here.

Kevin & James

Using customisation and personalisation to increase content relevance for audiences

By James Kember

Publishers have been curating content since the dawn of the newspaper. Over the last year, we have seen an increasing number of publishers looking to deliver a higher degree of customisation and personalisation in their digital products, particularly their apps. They have delivered this through a range of customisation options, such as offering the reader the ability to select their topics of interest, which drives a “my news” tab dedicated to that content. For example, the Guardian’s “My Guardian” section or the New York Times’ “You” tab. It’s also a feature we are working on at Pugpig, with Bolt Follow.

Meanwhile, personalisation is taking on an increasing number of forms. A recent INMA piece looked at how five different publishers are using AI to create new, more reader-relevant experiences. It included how Canada’s Globe and Mail was delivering a personalised homepage experience, Politico was using AI to summarise lengthy, dense US government documents and Sweden’s Aftonbladet was using chatbots to engage users with information about major elections. The example that caught our eye was The Hindu’s successful shift from push notification broadcasting to using AI to deliver more relevant notifications to audiences.

How publishers can get more from their push providers

As we noted in our recent push report, targeted messages increase open rates by nearly 40%, with intelligent segmentation being key to driving app engagement. At Pugpig, we work with hundreds of apps that use a mix of push notification providers, including Firebase, OneSignal, Airship, PushPushGo and Braze. As these platforms have increased in sophistication, we have worked more closely with publishers to help them better leverage AI, machine learning and behavioural targeting to improve the engagement rate of push.

Recently, we’ve spent a lot of time reviewing the capabilities of Airship’s enhanced behavioural targeting. We’ve looked into its ability to split app audiences into segments based on the recency, frequency and duration of engagement. This allows for a publisher to target audience segments based on their engagement or lack thereof, such as:

Rewards for your most loyal readers with special offers and encouragement to advocate for your brand.
Identify those most likely to become loyal app users and encourage them to do so.
Detect drops in engagement that could lead to churn.
Re-engage dormant users.

This can be enhanced with data models that predict the content a user is interested in can be used in combination with a preference centre, to tie the messaging to a specific content vertical. For example, if you know a user is interested in sport and is at risk of churning, then a positive approach to reengage them with the app would be a push notification mentioning the latest news of their favourite sports team. Likewise, using the location of a user can be key in ensuring their breaking news alerts are relevant to their area.

Moreover, Airship can analyse a user’s behaviour to determine the best time to send a notification using predictive send-time optimisation to improve open rates and engagement. Notifications are delivered when the user is most active, like during their morning commute or lunch break.

Ultimately, a successful push strategy that leverages AI at its most effective will contain several complementary components.

A preference centre is a great way to allow users to customise their alerts.
A model that uses data on content consumption or user-specific information like location is a great way to tailor messaging further, or as a means to deliver personalised notifications for users who haven’t interacted with their preferences.
This should be combined with an intelligent approach to message delivery that combines sending relevant breaking news in the moment with an optimised send time for less time-sensitive content.

As we wrote in our report, a successful push strategy will combine data-driven strategies and the right tools with a deep understanding of your audience.

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