Artificial intelligence in advertising is here

A partnership of M&C Saatchi, Clear Channel and Posterscope, revealed “the world’s first ever artificially intelligent poster campaign. “It’s the first time a poster has been let loose to entirely write itself, based on what works, rather than just what a person thinks may work. (David Cox, chief innovation officer of M&C Saatchi). The poster can read the reactions of it’s audience and adapt itself accordingly.This is all possible by using artificial intelligence. The advertising is for the coffee brand Bahio. The system uses it’s content from an initial “gene pool of pictures and copy. With this 22 ads can be created with the poster assessing the level of success of an ad. If successful, a particular ad will move onto the next gene pool and be part of the next generation. The unsuccessful adds will be removed.

So we see that the advertisements are getting smarter by the day by using algorithms. “It’s a Darwinian algorithm, it’ll evolve to be more and more effective(David Cox, chief innovation officer of M&C Saatchi). The poster uses Microsoft Kinect to work out who’s standing in its vicinity. The system is able to assess 12 people at a time. While it does it takes reactions into account. So it’s audience won’t see immediate alterations: “It cares whether you’re looking at it. It won’t do anything different while you’re there. Live interaction and facial recognition could become the next step for the system.

In the initial trial run of the system tracked over 42,000 interactions.  So there could be privacy issues on the horizon? “We’re not saving anything recognisable, we’re not storing images or data. Each interaction is given a number, that’s it. We’re trying not to be creepy. This is no different from an automatic door, it’s a mechanical reaction,(David Cox, chief innovation officer of M&C Saatchi).

As of 20 July 2015, 1540 ads had been automatically generated. The results are showing that shorter copy was more popular, with heart images a particularly frequent occurrence during our viewing.

How will our adds look like over 10 years when we are already doing this to our advertising. A creepy world on the horizon?