Artificial Intelligence In a Post-COVID World

The Future Of Advertising

2020 shook the world we once knew. COVID-19 has made us rethink the way we eat, interact with one another, champion for change, and most drastically the way we consume. In today’s current state, we have seen ecommerce completely turn our product lifespan upside down, altering our buying habits and where we search for products. Thus, brands are reevaluating how to speak to consumers, marketers are reevaluating where to intercept consumers, and advertisers are reevaluating effective tactics. In order to know where to turn to next, we must understand where we came from.

Over the years, advertising has adapted in order to better suit emerging mediums and evolving audiences. Throughout its evolution, we’ve seen advertising further connect to its audience as it advanced through each new era of communication. Through each innovation, advertising has found techniques that help personalize messages to consumers. I am going to take you through a brief history lesson of how we got to where we are today, and what the future of advertising might look like.

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Advertising 101:

The very first sign of advertising is said to date back to ancient Egyptians’ steel carvings in 2000 BC. However, the Print Revolution is what really propelled the oral and written eras of communication. The size and expenses of books at this time were extremely limited to an audience including only high class, wealthy aristocrats, royal families, church leaders, prominent merchants, and powerful politicians. Big surprise technology was only afforded to those who could afford it! Nevertheless, with time and continuous innovation, printers began reducing the size and cost of books making them more affordable to the masses. With this cost reduction, the very first print ad made its way to England in 1472.

William Caxon printed ads for a book, and tucked them to church doors:

Talk about an illegible typeface...

Books became the first mass-marketed product in history as the printing press aided faster and easier production. In turn, this made books affordable to less affluent people. This era fostered nationalism and nourished the idea of individualism; which influenced people to rely less on their local communities, commercial, religious, and political leaders for guidance.

The arrival of mechanical movable type printing introduced the era of mass communication, which forever changed the structure and understandings of society. The circulation of information and ideas posed a threat to political and religious authorities as it allowed for personal learning, growth, and individualism. The development of print allowed a new sense of autonomy within communities.

By 1704, the first newspaper ad was published in the US:

Fast forward 100 years and the first US billboard emerged in 1835 advertising the circus. These posters were over 50 feet tall:

Shortly after the first US billboard emerged, society entered the Electronic era. Factories began replacing farms for production in both Europe and the US. The telegraph was the first technology that allowed for the separation of communication from transportation, making media messages instant. The telegraph transformed information into a commodity, and led to future technological developments such as radio, fax, and the cell phone.

In 1935, George Gallup introduced the idea of gathering information about consumers to better relate and reach their audience — today we refer to this as market research. Even in the 30’s, personalization and targeted messages were prevalent. Gallup was onto something bigger than he’ll ever know. Personalization continued to develop especially in the 1930's when Rosser Reeves introduced the concept of the unique selling proposition. This encompassed how businesses will solve customers’ problems, being tailored and specific in order to differentiate one’s brand.

The first company to take personalization to a new level was Sears in the year 1892. Sears used the technology at the time, and launched a sizable mail campaign sending out over 8,000 postcards and generating over 2,000 new orders. By 1896, Sears catalogues were 500 pages and were being sent to over 300,000 homes. Direct mail became a worldwide key marketing tactic.

By July of 1941 society witnessed the world’s first legal commercial. It ran before the beginning of a baseball game in New York, between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies. The commercial was for Bulova watches and was broadcasted on NBC’s WNBT-TV; lasting only 10 seconds, the spot cost the company a total of 9 dollars. This set the tone for the next developmental phases of advertising.

By the 1950’s, tensions were rising in the US during the Cold War. However, the Golden Age of advertising was bound to open up America’s hearts and wallets. The use of larger-than-life brands caricatures and taglines really drew in consumers, and established a strong connection to brands. Tony the Tiger of Frosted Flakes emerged, along with the Snap, Crackle and Pop cartoon mascots for Kellogg’s cereal. These characters became the face families began to crave. More and more brands continued to attach faces to their product, personifying brands’ core messaging through voices and images. This made consumers feel like they were being spoken to directly.

In the 60s we see Marlboro Man appear:

The main purpose of these marketing tactics was to generate sales. However, after the Golden Age of advertising, the emergence of online advertising created an entirely new landscape. The digital era brought together images, texts, and sounds encoding them into electronic signals. In this new digital era, there became more of a focus on messages aiming to increase brand awareness and problem solving in contrast to merely selling products. This shifted product-focused advertisements to consumer centered messaging.

In 1992 the Internet took off, and users were harnessing it as a tool for their personal convenience. AT&T took this as an opportunity to meet consumers in a new space with new techniques. Thus, the first banner ad appeared in 1994:

The ad space was bought for three months at the price of a whopping 30,000 dollars. The banner produced a 44% click through rate which brought them to this landing page:

It’s mind boggling to see these simple HTML sites as our brains are used to thoroughly built out webpages. Although the page lacked design hierarchy, color contrast, and structure, it was revolutionary for its time and paved the way for a new trajectory within the advertising industry.

By 1995, Yahoo took AT&T’s landing page and made their very own business model. They transformed their platform from a web directory, to a commercial business creating the first keyword-based advertising. Yahoo created an advertising deal for their own banner ads including five sponsor company logos which alternated daily across their site.

From this point, companies began creating pay per click structures which prompted selling paid ad space.

Fast forward to the year 2007 and the release of the first iPhone advanced advertising into a mobile space. The launch of the App Store in 2008 with 3G allowed for growing capabilities such as GPS technology, and widespread data acclimation.

The transition to online and mobile advertising allowed brands to interact with audiences in new ways, while also providing a space for consumers to communicate with one another in a more organic fashion. Consumers are more likely to trust other consumers before instilling trust in a brand. User-generated content became popular with the introduction of social media advertising beginning with Facebook ads in 2008.

Applications like Google and Facebook have been collecting data and crafting users’ algorithmic identities with every online movement a user makes. In 2018, it was reported that throughout the course of a singular year, Google collects enough personal data from its users to equate to 569,555 sheets of paper. If these were printed and stacked, this would equate to over 189 feet tall. That’s a whole lot of trees and a whole lot of data. This data is being collected from users’ locations, apps, searches, bookmarks, emails, contact, calendar, Google Drive files, Google hangout sessions, YouTube history, music listened to, and photos taken.

Google knows more about you than your mom! It is safe to assume Facebook also knows more about you than your closest friend or family. As of 2018, it has been reported that Facebook alone has over 52,000 data points on each user ranging from every message sent/received to the time/place/device you log in from. We have seen how marketers take these data points and craft highly target ads. Sometimes this is effective and well received by consumers, but often consumers feel their privacy is being breached and they aren’t receiving content they want. So what does the future of data in advertising look like?

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Today’s Media Landscape:

COVID-19 not only threw the market into a recession, it changed the way in which consumers consume. Stay at home orders prevented people from in-person purchasing, creating a space where brands had to create messages that go further than catching attention. Now more than ever, messaging has to present a value and personal need/benefit for consumers. In today’s technological world, consumers are used to personalizing shoes, makeup, and even menstrual products. In a world where products are made for specific needs and wants — brand messaging must mimic this. Marketers must meet consumers in this new landscape and alter their messages to make consumers see personal value, feeling both heard and spoken to directly.

As aforementioned, AT&T’s first banner ad produced a 44% click through rate. In today’s content cluttered media landscape, this is unheard of. Today’s average CTRs are about .06%. The C-Scape illustrates the idea that consumers have power over the media. The 4 C’s can help to critically assess the current advertising landscape, and what will help propel content through clutter.

Consumers crave personalization. They want a product that addresses their unique problems and needs. Consumers seek products and messaging that feels like it was made just for them. As each consumer is unique, brands’ messaging should embody this.

Nowadays, modern ad content can be monotonous. After seeing 4 minutes of advertisements every 10 minutes when trying to stream a 30 minute show, ads begin to look the same. Hulu even employed an ad strategy which aired the same commercial various times while streaming a singular show. It is no surprise that ads are beginning to blend together. RevJet discovered that 73% of consumers dislike companies that put out repetitive messaging, and 42% feel that the advertisements they see on digital media are irrelevant to their needs. These numbers illustrate that if brand messaging doesn’t change, consumers will soon have an aversion for ads. Thus, there is a need for varied content that resonates and engages with consumers.

We have seen curated ads employed through programmatic and search targeting. However, consumers are still not genuinely resonating with today’s curated content. Brand messaging still feels vague and ingenuine to consumers.

Convergence is seen when ads run across multiple platforms. With varied curated content across various platforms, consumers are still not fully receptive to these brand messaging tactics. In accordance with Kondraieff’s K-wave theory, advertising is due for a disruption. It is time, in this new market and post COVID-19 reality to reinvent the way we think about and create ads.

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The Future:

Now that I’ve taken you through a little blast from the past and brief overview of the present, you might be asking: So what? Why does any of that matter? What the hell is next? Well dear friend, I didn’t take a stroll down memory lane for nothing!

Throughout that little history lesson, the main recurring theme evidenced through each new innovation is that every new era focused on reaching consumers in a more personalized fashion. Each advancement allowed advertisers to speak more directly to consumers, crafting messages that resonate more effectively with its desired audience. By personifying messages with caricatures, voices, and images brands were able to connect with consumers in unimaginable ways.

By now we know that demographics are a thing of the past. As opposed to grouping ages and genders of users, targeting them through overgeneralizations, advertisers must interact with consumers that make them feel heard and valued. Although big data is a key buzzword nowadays, data is not new. The Internet has allowed for the most accurate personalization model yet — the Internet and its ability to collect millions of data points on users is a unique and unmatched secret weapon marketers are beginning to utilize. Data is being incorporated into marketing strategies that have the power to heighten brand relationships and affinity, or halt brands from authentically connecting with users. This fate relies on how we use it.

Modern technologies and data accumulation and acclimation raise concern amongst consumers. Research confirms that millennial markets are most skeptical of advertisements. Being the first generation to grow up in tandem with the Internet, social media, smartphones, and laptops they have witnessed the evolution of content and advertising. They have seen Television turn into streaming, and product placement turn into celebrity endorsements and influencer tactics. This generation went so far to even pay for ad blockers. So how do we re-instill trust and present genuine value to consumers who are tuning out brand messages?

At the end of the day, data is being interpreted by people and transformed into insights and creative executions that must be approved by a client. Unfortunately, agencies and clients are not yet truly representative of the nation, and can not predict how ads will be perceived. But, what if there was something that could make that prediction, and accurately represented the market?

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Introducing AI Into Advertising:

AI is finding its way into nearly every industry as we know it, aiding us with data driven techniques which save time and minimize errors. Especially in this ‘post pandemic’ world we are outlining, where what we once knew is shifting to a completely new reality. Schools are implementing AIs to support teachers and students’ learning at this time. AIs are also being used in medicine paired with Big Data, AI is finding new drugs to treat COVID-19.

There are skepticisms surrounding AI systems. Behind every AI is a person who created the algorithms, and humans are inherently biased, regardless of whether they are aware of it or not. Consequently, people who work in the agency world as well show biases.

As seen through the Kendall Jenner Pepsi campaign — we as humans miss the mark, especially when those who sit at the table are not representative of our nation.

So what role will we as humans allow AI to play in the industry?

Well, in 2018, we’ve seen brands like Lexus utilize AI to script their ads. Lexus worked with IBM Watson to analyze 15 years of car and luxury brand campaigns that have won Cannes Lions awards for creativity, as well as a range of other external data. Watson was able to identify which elements from the data set would resonate with viewers.

The Senior Manager of Global Engagement at Microsoft, Purna Virji, noted that advancements in both AI and machine learning allow marketers to free up time by letting machines do the ‘heavy lifting.’ She explained that these tools can allow marketers to automate repetitive tasks and spend more time where it really counts: the customer.

So why aren’t more companies utilizing these technologies? AI is emerging, and is doing so quickly. AI in advertising has the capabilities to create ads without human involvements. As humans, this is frightening, people fear their jobs will be replaced and that our world will be run by robots. However, it is how we use these tools in the future that will impact brands’ relationships with consumers, as well as agencies’ relationships with data.

Right now data feels like a weapon in consumers eyes. But what if consumers were able to see their data improving their content, and doing so with ethical data practices? AI driven tools and technologies can create audience models from clients data to deliver relevant and targeted predictions and insights. This will not only be based on clients behavioral data, but also on predictive algorithms that can anticipate consumers’ needs and interests throughout the entire buyer journey. AI has the power to predict creative images and copy for successful media campaigns before ever launching. The software can run up to 75 million tests in a few minutes, scoring current creatives and making suggestions. These tools will negate marketers’ need for A/B testing, focus groups, and other costly experimentation models. So what is holding us back?

We are. Many of us don’t fully understand what AI is, what its uses are, and how to effectively incorporate it into new markets. By bridging that gap and pairing AIs abilities with human approval — we have the power to meet consumers organically in various mediums with content they want to see, with visuals that appeal to them, and in moments they are most receptive. This is an opportunity for advertisements to look different for each user — based off of their unique data. Consumers will no longer be grouped together, they will have the opportunity to have their unique needs and wants individually addressed. These technologies have the power to drastically benefit the market, the client, and the consumer if we let them. In the coming years each users feed could be tailored with personalized deep fakes wearing the products for sale. As technology and access continues to evolve, the future of advertising is limitless.

In order to live in a space where we do not fear AI, and can implement it within various markets, we must understand it. We should learn how this technology works, how it can assist us, and how to ethically and responsibly use it. AI is here, and the future is in our hands.