What does marketing and advertising do?

It moves people, psychologically, economically — and often physically — to do something.

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A Digital Times Square

Theoretically, every advertisement or piece of media served up in digital environments, we have sought or agreed to view. But how many times have we been served up something we never sought, only to find ourselves showing up for it in one way or another? Buying, liking, following? Or buying a gadget for a need you didn’t even know you had? (And probably don’t have). Or trying out a new restaurant or hotel you saw online?

If you use social media, you’ve agreed to consume ads and be subject to personalized algorithms based on your unique patterns of views, slow scrolls, and clicks. Likewise, if you watch TV news, you’ve agreed to ads and that channel’s biases. And if you walk through Times Square, you’ve agreed to see huge digital displays by companies that pay for that advertising space. Yet, the complexity and effectiveness of digital marketing and advertising is so profound, I think most folks don’t even question why it exists to begin with, or what/where they are being ‘brought’ to. This is especially true for marketing professionals.

In an ideal world, the consumer benefits by being brought to the act of buying something they need or that enhances their lives. Also the producer benefits (and therefore can sustain itself), by providing some life-enhancing product or service to solve a problem, enhance quality of life, or sustain folks.

But perhaps in THIS world, the greatest beneficiary of marketing is the keeper of the marketing fields themselves. And by fields I mean digital spaces created by huge companies like Google, TikTok, and META. You could think these fields as digital spaces like Times Square where info-and-product-hawking covers nearly every square inch of visual space. In a field like this, not only is the advertising a ‘thing,’ the advertising IS the attraction. It means something and people flock to see it, while the flocking means more ads can go up.

Social spaces in the digital sphere, while seemingly about “content and connection” are places where content creators are being crafted into advertiser’s dream deliverers. The better they do that, the more they are rewarded. Now, more and more with actual money. These are simply kickbacks for serving highly targeted ads to their “friends.”

And the newest trend I see emerging is that the keepers of these fields —the ones controlling the mechanisms of ads —are using AI to train both ad pros and consumers in tandem. This likely also means some training of AI itself is happening too: it’s easy to discern from these activities how people best influence one another to take action and it’s all tied together with real tracking that the humans provide!

The ad field keepers are no fools to tap marketing professionals who’ve been “moving” people successfully for a long time. It helps them reap greater ad revenue, and power, while automating the process of influence! The online environments have become the attraction, and a place to inform yourself as to your own nature as a digital being.¹

The Advertiser Class: on the front lines of AI

As a participant in the marketing and advertising industry, I’ve noticed how the largest marketing vendors are altering the game to benefit themselves, by creating —and training —a growing “advertiser class” of humans to pull the levers to more effectively sell stuff to people. But do people really need to buy more?

In many cases, the marketing field monoliths have also gamified the very running of the ads themselves, much like they gamified the content production by YouTubers, TikTokers and the like. If you work in the marketing business, you’ve probably noticed how AI is now asking the folks to whom the ads are served, if it was a good ad, and provide feedback as to what would actually help influence them better.

The advertising class, and their audience, is training AI how to sell more stuff to humans, especially how to sell more stuff to knowledge workers.

The largest digital advertisers also offer up free human and AI to ‘help,’ but all this really does, is mean small businesses get compelled to spend more money and energy on ads to get same results. Results defined as people “showing up” and buying their stuff. The secondary result of this growing behemoth of marketing is a growing number of folks spending larger sums of money to make stuff to serve ads withing, or a growing flock hanging around a digital Times Square, congratulating themselves on how they make and see only the best ads.

Aayyy I don’t know if this sounds good to me, but here we are.

I’ve always sought a noble path in advertising, that is one where every piece of marketing gives something to the consumer in and of itself. This is an attraction strategy instead of a coercion, influence, or manipulation strategy. I’ll also only work on advertising when I feel certain that “showing up” is in the best interest of all. But giving like this is not AI-trainable, not if you want PROOF.

Giving is not a traceable metric that obviously makes money. Giving is of the heart, and yes, it also often makes money, but the path is sideways and spirited. In short, a noble path in marketing is hard to track.²

We are in an ever-growing digital ENVIRONMENT that breeds not only consumers, but now also moves producers and burgeoning advertising class to invest more brain power into growing marketing itself into a greater and greater force in society. This can be used in anyway by anyone who controls the environment. Consumerism seems the most benign to me, but is not the only thing for which it’s getting harnessed.

So what?

I think its good to always ask who is benefiting from your marketing brainpower. If it’s you and your nice customer who does good things in the world, fabulous. If it is a digital behemoth that is obscuring a power grab, training AI using your data while making you pay, it’s probably better to reconsider your strategy, or at least keep your eyes open while you do it. Times Square can take a lot out of a person…

1. An individual’s algorithm (derived from clicks to ads and browsing), is something that many young people relate to as a stand-alone entity. Like a pet they have trained, that occasionally surprises them with something new. One friend’s “pet” algorithm showcased to her such a horrible string of content, she decided to put it in a “time out” and retrain it consciously to stop showing her depressing content. My 14 year old daughter expresses pride that her algorithm shows her punk rock content. ↩︎
2. My next post will be about tracking as an art, a science, and a deep spiritual tool. Many kinds of tracking, that is. ↩︎