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SoylentNews is people

posted by on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the good-riddance dept.

Advertising as we’ve always known it — large-scale campaigns predicated on instilling subconscious intuition in consumers — will die. What will rise from its ashes [will] be unlike anything we’ve seen before. It will not condition us to select from a menu of mediocrity, as it has done for centuries. Rather, the algorithms buried within the walls of companies like Google and Facebook will deterministically present us with our best options for everything from dinner to marriage, given the troves of user data they have at their disposal. At first, consumers may rebel, like they did with the advent of GPS in cars, or online shopping [4]. But as they realize that they are better served by allowing algorithms to take care of the decisions they once relied on their own autonomy to make, they will make the shift. It will not happen overnight, but it will happen.

This new world will be marked by a monumental shift away from branding, which is already happening, a shift away from search, which is about to happen, but most important, and perhaps most unsettling, a shift away from trust in the user as the final indicator of their own desire. As we make this shift, and move towards a world in which data — and the mastery of its use — is king, ads will become deterministic. The companies that define this future will master the use of consumer data to inform ad delivery, and as they continue to amass user data, both their advertisements — and in turn, their data — will improve in tandem, until both are perfect. As this happens — and it will be a process, given that new consumers enter the world by the hundreds of thousands every day — our world will become one in which every consumer will be deterministically paired both with what they want, and what they need. In this new world, whether there will even be a difference is far from clear.

"every consumer will be deterministically paired both with what they want, and what they need."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @11:17AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @11:17AM (#485813)

    AC from above:

    Okay, so maybe this kind of advertising will work on a majority of people, perhaps a whole class off the new generation who aren't capable of critical thought. Certainly, I see lots of young people, even if they are poor, running around with the latest gidgets and software. Somehow, though, I've pretty much always managed to keep my head above the water of advertising without succumbing to the need for the latest greatest thing. It was a much different story when I was a kid. I saw toys on TV and wanted them quite often.

    Nowadays, I really don't want much, and advertising simply sits, when it's there, in the background. I often think to myself, who in their right mind would want any of this stuff? But I guess a lot of people are susceptible to this kind of programming.

    What I usually find is that if there is a product I really want, I have to go hunting for it. An example of this is a laptop. I had to hunt on eBay for an old Thinkpad, because I hate chiclet keyboards. Businesses don't seem to cater to folks like me these days, who value functionality over form. I've still got a nice $20 cell phone I got from Walmart maybe a year ago. My friend from down the street asked me, "You still have that old phone?!" As if I'd done something morally wrong by keeping it. I just replied, yeah I do. And I'll probably have it until it breaks. :)