Programmatic advertising is hot.
Algorithms have long been used to drive search, but today 100bn ads a year are being served up by software systems targeting any digital device – from your smartphone and TV today, to the dashboard of your car and the thermostat in your home tomorrow.
And soon these devices will be able not only to deliver ad messages, but also track consumer response.
It’s a new era of ad accountability.
Much of what marketers do every day will also be completed by software-as-service-providers, too. Mar-tech is going to transform marketing forever, say experts.
But before we strap into this brave new world, allow me to sound a note of caution. Algorithims have their limits.
Whopping blunders committed by some of the biggest names in tech – all the result of algorithims – are surfacing each and every week. And they can be embarrassing.
last week, when its new photo app misidentified images of black people as "gorillas".
after it showed one user a photograph of his recently deceased daughter in its Year in Review feature.
Another man was sent a photo of his burning apartment under the headline "James, here’s what your year looked like!"
Researchers pointed out this week that for highly paid jobs than men.
Luckily, the denizens of Silicon Valley are starting to take note.
Some are backing off investing in digital services that rely purely on algorithms without any human input. At the same time, a new breed of digital services includes significant human input.
said tech site Mashable recently.
So there’s Apple's new music-streaming service, the standout feature of which is the genre and country playlists curated by real, live human beings.
uses human editors to choose the best music for any given activity.
to report and edit content related to the upcoming US election.
who can filter and aggregate tweets and links related to trending topics on the network, as part of what the company calls Project Lightning.
to its Pulse news-recommendation feature.
for its new Explore page.
And for its News app.
It turns out that, under certain circumstances, an algorithim is no match for the nuanced work of real, live human beings.
Hooray for real, live human beings.
Next, it will be the work of the smartest marketers to blend human creativity with the split-second precision and awesome reach of marketing automation.
Good luck with that.