DATA AND DIGITAL ADS

Digital advertising has become a phenomenal tool for companies that wish to communicate with customers and expand their sales. In 2015, US digital ad spending was equal to about fifty percent of US traditional ad spending. However, in recent years, digital ad spending has grown to account for forty-eight percent of US companies' total advertising expenditures¹, meaning its value is almost equal to all other forms of advertising combined. Digital advertising's success can be credited² to the many ways it's changed the industry. It's not only changed how ads are created and where they're presented but also who views specific ads and when.

Digital advertisements start with customer data and automation. Sophisticated automated programs collect people's online data to build profiles of potential customers. The collected data contains a wide range of information about each person, such as their contact details, transaction data, and web behavior. Once collected, this data is organized into data sets in a process called customer analytics³. These data sets inform advertisers of their customers' needs, concerns, interests, and more. They also give clues as to which messages, images, and videos would have the most appeal. To illustrate, consider your online shopping activities. Advertisers know which websites you look at most, how long you look at each product, and which brands you purchase. This information helps advertisers choose which platforms to use and what kinds of products to push.

Automation also does much of the heavy lifting for advertisers when connecting people with an ad. Automated programs communicate with other programs to retrieve a person's data and calculate which ads will have the maximum effect. This means that they can execute an ad strategy without direct human input. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), about twenty percent of digital advertising is done by one machine interacting with another. To illustrate this practice, have you ever looked up something like "best restaurants near me" on Google and then later find ads for restaurants on your Facebook account? That's targeted advertising, and it's implemented primarily by automated programs.

Digital advertising will continue to grow in importance as mobile devices multiply. As of 2019, there were over five billion unique mobile device users worldwide and 2.71 billion smartphone users. That's a huge audience. This is especially true in the US, where over eighty percent of the population owns a smartphone. A large audience isn't the only advantage gained from mobile devices. Advertisers also use mobile devices' geolocation⁴ technology to locate users and target them with local ads.

While technology has transformed advertising knowledge and delivery, it's also created some unique problems. Customers are shown so much advertising throughout their day that it's difficult for a company to stand out. Most people ignore pop-up ads, banner ads⁵, and texts. So advertisers have thought of more subtle ways to reach customers. This is where non-disruptive advertising comes into play. Non-disruptive advertising might sound like an oxymoron⁶ since we typically view ads as interference. However, these ads are disguised to be challenging to identify. For example, there's native advertising, which are ads that take the form of non-advertising content, such as infographics⁷ or "news" articles. If you ever see a "news" article about the health benefits of eating more hamburgers, keep an eye out for a fast-food logo somewhere on the page. Consumer advocates look at this and other clever digital advertising methods and point out that they raise concerns about deception⁸ and privacy on the internet. As a result, many are calling for digital advertising to be more heavily regulated⁹ by governments.

The primary driving force of change in advertising has always been technology. Printed ads gave way to television ads, and now television ads are giving way to digital ads. No matter the trend or medium, advertisers are evolving to stay competitive. Who knows what the future of advertising will bring.

• which websites
• targeted advertising
• communicate effectively
• where we are
• sorted into groups
• do not appear

• retrieve
• phenomenal
• interference
• execute
• non-
• sophisticated

Deep Fakes

The term "deep fake" describes videos or images that are edited by artificial intelligence (AI). Essentially, deep fakes are media created by Al that convincingly places a person, or part of a person, such as his or her face, into an image or video. Originally, this produced poor-quality images. However, deep-fake technology has now reached the point where it has many practical uses. Ad companies, in particular, are interested in the technology because it can give them a competitive edge.

One obvious application of deep fakes for advertisers is to recreate living and deceased celebrities. Doing so can run a company into legal issues, but when permission is granted, there are countless possibilities. For instance, in 2019, Goodby Silverstein & Partners created a deep fake of Salvador Dali for a video exhibition at the Dali Museum. Advertisers have even added deep-fake advertisements to television programs. In April 2020, a hit documentary about Michael Jordan called The Last Dance was released. It featured a deep-fake clip from the 1998 NBA finals. In the ad, the sports commentator Kenny Mayne interrupts his broadcast to make predictions about the 2020 documentary, tight jeans, and his TV network's partnership with an insurance company. The fashion industry is joining in as well, looking to use deep-fake programs to create fashion ads in which runway models' faces are replaced with our own. Social-media apps such as Snapchat have also added filters that utilize the technology.

Although relatively new, deep-fake media is definitely here to stay. Companies are already discovering its advantages in terms of development costs and accessibility. Perhaps in the future, deep-fake ads will become a regular form of advertisement.