Digital Advertising Needs an AI Paradigm Shift

Taken at the Hirshhorn Museum’s new exhibit Pulse by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. The tiles are actually people’s fingerprints, and the lights pulse on and off with someone’s heartbeat. It makes me think of an AI examining all of our personal profiles.

If there is any aspect of marketing that can benefit from machine learning, it’s digital advertising. Digital advertising relies on wide swaths of online networks, retargeting empowered by cookies, and “precision” spends based on keyword performance and tightly-honed customer profiles.

When an ad achieves double-digit percentage rate of increased engagement, click-throughs or sales, brands celebrate a tremendous victory. Meanwhile, customers groan at the relentlessly targeted spam.

As each year of the Internet passes, the online medium becomes more intrusive. Online consumers are subjected to forced advertisement plays on YouTube, unrequested interstitials and offers for additional content and experiences, and pay-to-avoid advertising firewalls. The vast majority breeze by the ads, some not even seen, others willfully ignored. The overall click-through rate online is just 0.05 percent, according to SmartInsights.

For all of its impact on the brand and bottom line, advertising annoys customers. Most view it as spam.

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The advent of data has made some personalized advertising advances possible, but brands seem to squander the…