Advertising Hiding All Around Us
Humans Like to Think They’re in Control
To borrow from Dan Ariely, humans are easily the most predictably irrational creature on earth. We pride ourselves on our autonomy and ability to be “unique individuals,” often while failing to notice that there are a few other million people who, too, are being “unique.”
When it comes to the products we buy — specifically, the clothes we wear — we like to believe that we make our purchases because we want to and not because some Don Draper-type convinced us with a carefully concocted advertisement. This is especially true for Generation Z, which statistically is buying less, and buying for identity.1
Having a consumer believe that they are acting in self-determination, or autonomy, is the first of three keys that must be turned to compel humans to engage in certain behaviors. Self-determination is the most important — people generally don’t like being forced to do something — but also the hardest to adjust. Let’s touch on the two easier-to-manage components of human compulsion before I present what I believe to be the future of managing these behaviors. The result will be a better online advertising experience for both marketers and consumers.
The Digital Revolution
The internet brought us both of the remaining keys:
1. High availability and minimal interference with the user’s other activities
2. Accurate and relevant delivery of the message
However, consumers hate traditional digital ads. In fact, a whopping 76% of them use an adblocker.2 Mobile has compounded the problem with full-screen pop over ads that often load when you’re halfway down the page, leading to accidental clicks (meaning fake engagement numbers) and frustrated users.3 This has gotten so bad that Google has recently started down-ranking websites that use these types of ads.
Video suffers from its own variation of this, with pre-roll ads that are often as long or longer than the content they run before. YouTube knows how much people dislike them(90% of people try to skip them2), so they let users skip them, for a small monthly fee, of course.
Nonetheless, video advertising and especially mobile video advertising grew 14% and 179% YoY last year, respectively.4 These were far and away the largest growing segments of digital advertising.
With the amount of time consumers spend online ever growing and their tolerance for invasive ads ever shrinking, how do we make the ads both more common and less obvious?
Come to Where the Flavor(ed Tea) Is
It is now possible for a perfectly mundane person to become “famous” on microblogging platforms like Twitter and Instagram by doing little more than sharing photos of his/her day-to-day activities. These new Insta-famous celebrities (YouTubers, Viners, Instagram models, etc.) are not Hollywood stars whose lives are untouchable, but rather humans who use the exact same apps as you. They are completely attainable, or at least appear to be, which forms the basis of their appeal. You can message them directly, and they might even message back, after they finish their “@SkinnyMintCom all natural detox tea,” of course.
With an audience comes marketers looking to monetize it, and since there is little to no cost (compared to traditional marketing campaigns) associated with setting up and running a “influencer” marketing campaign, a marketer can cover a much wider, yet also more targeted distribution of audience.
This approach is not without its shortcomings, however. Influencer marketing is broadly unmeasurable and inherently limited by who the star of the day is.5 Additionally, the FCC rules regarding sponsorship mean that influencers’ posts must clearly indicate that they are sponsored, creating dreaded immersion-killing barriers to the audience’s enjoyment of the content.6
Invisible Advertising: Everywhere, All the Time
How do we turn these keys? Is it possible to make unobtrusive, highly relevant advertising that the end-user wants to interact with? Yes, actually, and we’re building it right now.
The Markable Lens is going to effectively make all of the photos and videos your consumer see when online a directly shoppable advertisement 7. That means they’ll no longer be following two or three “influencers” and a handful of branded accounts on social media; rather, they will be following 2008 influencers of the most persuasive kind -their friends, family and celebrities they enjoy.
How about the 5.5 hours a day of video that they typical American watches? Yes, shoppable.
That means that every box of tea, pair of shoes, pants, socks, jackets etc no longer just makes them ask “Wow, I wish I knew what that was.” Now, it can give them an answer. In the vein of Steve Jobs, most consumers don’t know what they want until they see it, so removing the barrier between “seeing it” and “finding it” tightens that loop.
That also means that advertisers no longer need overly complex algorithms and customer profiles to target their ads. “20 year old middle-income female from Boston” => send her a yoga pants ad, but really it was her roommate who doesn’t care about yoga using the computer becomes “she clicked on a pair of yoga pants in a yoga video” => show her the exact pants.
Best of all for the user is that, by default, the Lens only appears when he/she wants it to. No messy overlays, no pop-ups, no pre-roll. Just the ability to answer the question “Wow, I want one of those. Where do I get it?”
If you’re a marketer, advertiser, video platform developer or app developer, sign up for the Lens Beta https://markable.ai/signup. This first group is only open to 50 entrants and we’re getting close to capacity already.
General interest questions or feedback from anyone, feel free to tweet me @huffmsa, or email us at contact@markable.ai
References
1. https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/tapping-generation-z
3. I personally will leave a site and blacklist it if I encounter an ad that interferes with my experience on the site.
4. http://adage.com/article/digital/iab-digital-ad-revenue-breaks-record/306557/
5. http://digiday.com/agencies/confessions-social-media-exec-no-idea-pay-influencers/
7. South Park, always ever so slightly ahead of the wave, skewered sponsored content in Season 19. In short, they made the case that ads and advertisers had realized the shortcomings of their old way and transitioned to making everything an advertisement (created by an AI, no less.)
8. Typical Instagram user follows about 200 people http://opticalcortex.com/instagram-statistics/
