> Advertising, once a creative industry, is now a data-driven business reliant on algorithms. The implications are deeply sinister – not only for the consumer but for democracy itself.
When everything is labeled a "threat to democracy", nobody takes that actual threats to democracy seriously.
> These days, consumers are less likely to have favourite brands, since “their favourite brand is going to be whatever Google tells them at that moment is going to match their exact needs”. The brand getting the most buzz in the car industry is Tesla. “What’s different about them? No advertising. Innovation in the car industry is not about putting Cindy Crawford in a TV ad. It’s about building a better battery.”
Really? I would use Tesla as an extreme example of effective marketing and cult of personality around Elon Musk. Elon Musk is Cindy Crawford.
> “When’s the last time you saw an ad agency executive on the cover of Business Week?"
Not sure Business Week is really a barometer of what's going on today, but that's fair. However you do regularly see the leaders of these companies, who are the face and effectively the advertising. Not sure if there is a person or team behind their image.
> Clients are spending less on the kind of entertaining, seductive, fame-generating campaigns in which ad agencies specialise, and more on the ads that flash and wink on your smartphone screen.
Really? I think sponsored content that's actually entertaining is a lot more common now.
> Clients only have to decide how many people they want to reach, and how much they want to spend; algorithms do the rest.
Wasn't this automated before and the automation was just done by the ad agencies? Why bother hiring ad agencies in the first place
> The advertiser might create multiple ads and serve different executions to different slices of its audience. Some companies, such as Cambridge Analytica, claim to be able to target personality types using this method. The more valuable your particular profile is to the advertiser, the higher price its algorithm will pay the publisher to get an ad in front of your eyes. In this way, every scintilla of attention is transformed into money.
In the past advertisers often had multiple ads that played in multiple mediums, targeting multiple audiences. And yes, more value mediums (e.g. target market with a more affluent readership) does cost more. Why wouldn't it?
This whole article is just a list of complaints and contradictory observations without a central theme or any coherent structure.
Marketing doesn't work but is extremely common. Its rampant with fraud but is incredibly convincing. It's a huge turn-off with consumers tuning out but it's dominating our lives