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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."
(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:03PM
I posted this earlier in another thread here [soylentnews.org].
Advertising took over newspapers -- yet you had to still pay a subscription.
Advertising ruined radio.
Advertising ruined magazines with excessive advertising.
Advertising ruined TV. Ads got longer and longer. More and more annoying. Less entertaining. Then much louder than the content. The content got cheaper and worse.
Then came cable tv. Promise of no ads, since you pay for tv. But ads invaded anyway. Then they got longer, more annoying, much louder. Etc. Content got cheaper. The curse of Reality TV. Ads embedded in content "product placement". After a long string of ads, characters walk out on screen over the bottom 1/3 of the content you are watching, sometimes obscuring important content.
There was the web. It was for information. Then came ads. They were okay at first. Then they got to be blinking. And deceptive (eg, punch the monkey, or fake alerts about a virus, etc.). Eventually each web page had one paragraph of content surrounded by blinking dancing animated seizure inducing ads. You would click NEXT to get the next page with one more paragraph of the article, surrounded by another truckload of ads. Then came ad blockers and ad blocker blockers. Etc.
Billboards are a blight on some landscapes. Then came digital ad billboards with animated seizure inducing ads and major source of light pollution for neighbors near these billboards.
Advertisers have absolutely no shame. They want to know the most intimate details of your life. They will stop at nothing to put ads in front of your face. Spam is just advertising in its true ugliness. It practically destroyed usenet. And email. Only the most sophisticated technical efforts have kept email usable. Robo calls, same story. There is no bar too low. They have no shame.
Back in the early days of spam, legislation was tried to combat the problem but the Direct Marketing Association fought this and won. Old timers might remember this.
I guarantee you, once the technology is available, advertisers will get congress to mandate implants at birth that show ads on the inside of your eyelids. Count on it. The MPAA / RIAA will get in on it so that these implants can automatically charge your credit card every time you incidentally hear or see anything copyrighted.
They will make the inside surfaces of your home into advertising billboards (but not entertainment).
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.