Seven AI announcements landed in advertising this week featuring seven different companies. But there’s only one pattern. And it's one the industry has seen (and ignored) three times.
Totally agree. As a strategist you always want to know the why or the so what. Also, there is so much value in non digitised data. Like noticing people coming down to London when referring to Oyster Cards and saying ‘have you got the whatsits for the bleep bleeps’. Or when I worked on the ID Buzz just seeing how it made drivers and onlookers smile. Really enjoying this Substack.
To zoom out another layer 'beyond the breathless headlines' leads me to two questions, or I guess, points for discussion:
1. It's amazing that we have all these tech layers supposedly optimising our online experience. And yet the experience of being online, on any major platform that hosts ads, is so unmitigatedly shit. Adding all these layers of 'optimisation' has somehow made the experience worse in every way. Interesting.
and
2. This is all optimising for one type of media, a highly commoditised type of data heavy online media with a certain kind of publisher in the middle. It's a house of cards reliant on the fact that this online audience has expanded enormously, and that audience will either grow or sustain, no matter how bad the online experience gets. Given the direction both of both legislation and popular sentiment, I don't think that's a safe bet.
1. All these tech layers are not optimising our online experience. The open web is full of trackers, bots and crawlers that collect as much data as they can about you so they can directly sell or leverage that data. Big, ad-funded publishers have no problem with that because their customers are advertisers, not readers. So while YOUR user experience may be shit, the UX for the advertisers is pretty good (if you ignore ad fraud and other huge problems with that market!)
2. Algorithms which are built to target young people with messages glorifying suicide or financial scams seems to be a poor user experience. But the same algorithms can be incredibly powerful at helping advertisers target young people with ads. If your response to the second sentence is 'so what?', I would remind you that people have been happily driving cars for decades, even though the number of people that have died in road fatalities in the last decade is around 12 million — DOUBLE the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.
Of course you know the answer to all this is not "the industry must do better", as some of my peers to believe, because people and businesses are behaving rationally according to the incentives of the market.
It's, as you say, regulation and legislation AKA democracy in action. I'd always bet on people over machines, given that we've managed to survive for hundreds of thousands of years!
Agree with those points. But - while the customers are advertisers - they need the readers. How much can the experience continue to degrade before that equation stops working? The numbers and the experience feel fragile.
On the roads - yes for sure too - but we recognise that as a problem and act on it. Hence the roll out of new lower speed limits (20mph), laws, fines, active travel provision, investment in alternatives, data-based decision making and an understanding that those numbers aren't acceptable. (The phrase for that acceptance, btw, is 'motornormativity' - fascinating, if you want to look it up.)
I neglected to mention that tomorrow in London there is the first event by the new Media Planning Group, which aims to support media planners through training, inspiration and community. One of many brilliant things to come out of the 'Advertising Who Cares?' initiative. https://www.apg.org.uk/mpg-events
Totally agree. As a strategist you always want to know the why or the so what. Also, there is so much value in non digitised data. Like noticing people coming down to London when referring to Oyster Cards and saying ‘have you got the whatsits for the bleep bleeps’. Or when I worked on the ID Buzz just seeing how it made drivers and onlookers smile. Really enjoying this Substack.
Great as ever Omar.
To zoom out another layer 'beyond the breathless headlines' leads me to two questions, or I guess, points for discussion:
1. It's amazing that we have all these tech layers supposedly optimising our online experience. And yet the experience of being online, on any major platform that hosts ads, is so unmitigatedly shit. Adding all these layers of 'optimisation' has somehow made the experience worse in every way. Interesting.
and
2. This is all optimising for one type of media, a highly commoditised type of data heavy online media with a certain kind of publisher in the middle. It's a house of cards reliant on the fact that this online audience has expanded enormously, and that audience will either grow or sustain, no matter how bad the online experience gets. Given the direction both of both legislation and popular sentiment, I don't think that's a safe bet.
1. All these tech layers are not optimising our online experience. The open web is full of trackers, bots and crawlers that collect as much data as they can about you so they can directly sell or leverage that data. Big, ad-funded publishers have no problem with that because their customers are advertisers, not readers. So while YOUR user experience may be shit, the UX for the advertisers is pretty good (if you ignore ad fraud and other huge problems with that market!)
2. Algorithms which are built to target young people with messages glorifying suicide or financial scams seems to be a poor user experience. But the same algorithms can be incredibly powerful at helping advertisers target young people with ads. If your response to the second sentence is 'so what?', I would remind you that people have been happily driving cars for decades, even though the number of people that have died in road fatalities in the last decade is around 12 million — DOUBLE the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.
Of course you know the answer to all this is not "the industry must do better", as some of my peers to believe, because people and businesses are behaving rationally according to the incentives of the market.
It's, as you say, regulation and legislation AKA democracy in action. I'd always bet on people over machines, given that we've managed to survive for hundreds of thousands of years!
Thanks for reading and your continued support!
Agree with those points. But - while the customers are advertisers - they need the readers. How much can the experience continue to degrade before that equation stops working? The numbers and the experience feel fragile.
On the roads - yes for sure too - but we recognise that as a problem and act on it. Hence the roll out of new lower speed limits (20mph), laws, fines, active travel provision, investment in alternatives, data-based decision making and an understanding that those numbers aren't acceptable. (The phrase for that acceptance, btw, is 'motornormativity' - fascinating, if you want to look it up.)
I neglected to mention that tomorrow in London there is the first event by the new Media Planning Group, which aims to support media planners through training, inspiration and community. One of many brilliant things to come out of the 'Advertising Who Cares?' initiative. https://www.apg.org.uk/mpg-events