Will AI mean better adverts or ‘creepy slop’?

Imagine you’re scrolling through social media on your phone one night and the ads start to look pretty familiar. It’s adorned with your favorite colors, features your favorite music, and contains phrases that sound like phrases you use regularly.

Welcome to the future of advertising, which is already here thanks to artificial intelligence.

Advertising company Cheil UK, for example, is working with startup Spotlight on using broad-language AI models to understand people’s online activity and tailor that content based on what the AI ​​interprets the individual’s personality.

The technology can then reflect how someone is speaking in terms of tone, expression and tempo to change the copy of an ad accordingly, and add music and colors based on whether the AI ​​considers someone to be an introvert or extrovert, for example, or to have certain preferences for loud or calm music or light or dark colours.

The aim is to show millions of people countless different ads tailored to them.

Brands in retail, consumer electronics, packaged goods, automotive, insurance and banking are already using the technology to create AI-powered, personality-based ads to target online shoppers.

AI can read what people share on public platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and other public forums), someone’s search history, and most importantly, what people enter into ChatGPT.

AI then makes inferences about the individual’s personality, layering this on top of what advertisers already know about people. For example, information brands can already see which part of the country you live in, what age range you are, whether you have children, what your hobbies might be, where you go on holiday, what clothes you like to wear, through platforms such as Facebook or Google.

That’s why the jeans you’re looking for online magically appear in your inbox as a sponsored ad, or the holiday you’re looking for seems to follow you online.

The difference is that AI can change the content of these ads based on what it thinks your personality is, based on what it reads about you. It targets individual people rather than the demographic segments or personas that advertisers would traditionally use.

“This shift is us moving away from the data and information currently available based on gender and age to a deeper emotional and psychological level,” says Cheil UK CEO Chris Camacho.

“You now have AI systems that can discover your entire digital footprint, your entire online persona, from your social media interests to the things you engage in.

“This level is much deeper than it was before, and that’s when you start to understand that person, whether they’re happy, whether they’re sad, or what personal situation they’re going through.”

An added benefit for advertisers is that they may not even need a bespoke AI system to personalize their output.

Researchers in the US examined the reactions of consumers to an iPhone ad with custom text written by ChatGPT based on how high that person scored on a list of four different personality traits.

The study found that personalized text was more persuasive than ads without personalized text, and people didn’t care if it was written by AI.

Jacob Teeny, an assistant professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management who leads the AI ​​research, explains: “Right now, AI is really good at that targeting piece. Where it’s still in its infancy is the personalization piece, where a brand is actually creating creative copy that matches some element of your psychological profile.”

“There are still some developments to go, but all roads point to this being the right path [digital advertising is done]” he adds.

Personalized AI ads can also provide a solution to the problem of digital advertising ‘waste’; That means 15% of the money brands spend on digital advertising goes unseen or unnoticed, thus adding no value to their business.

Not everyone is convinced that personalization is the way to go.

“Congratulations – your AI spent a fortune creating an ad that only one person will see and has already forgotten about it,” says Brighton-based Alex Calder, principal consultant at AI innovation consultancy Jagged Edge, part of digital marketing firm Anything is Possible.

“The real opportunity lies in using AI to deepen the appeal of powerful, mass-reach ideas, rather than breaking it down into one-on-one micro-ads that no one remembers. Creepy nonsense boasting about knowing your private details is still bullshit.”

Ivan Mato of Elmwood brand consultancy agrees. It also questions whether people will accept it, whether regulators will allow it, and whether brands will want to operate this way.

“There’s also the issue of surveillance. This all ties into the data economy, which many consumers are increasingly uncomfortable with,” says Mr. Mato, who is based in London.

“AI opens up new creative possibilities, but the real strategic question is not whether brands can personalize everything, but whether they should, and what they risk losing if they do.”

Mr Camacho, of Cheil UK, concedes that AI-personalised ads can also take a dark turn.

“There will be those who use artificial intelligence in a good and ethical way, and there will be those who use it to persuade, influence and guide people on the right path,” he says.

“And that’s the part that I personally find quite scary. When you think about elections and political campaigns, how the use of AI can influence voting decisions and who gets elected next.

But Mr. Camacho is determined to stay on the right side of ethics.

“We don’t have to use AI to make ads scary or manipulate individuals into doing unethical things. We’re trying to stay on the brighter side of things. We’re trying to improve the connection between brands and individuals, and that’s all we’ve ever tried to do.”