The Robots are Coming! The Robots are Coming!

By Lisa Bradner, Chief Strategy Officer, Yieldmo

In his 2015 Netflix Special, John Mulaney presciently noted that we are “living in a world run by robots” before launching into his hilarious take on how we as humans try to prove to robots that we are, in fact, not robots.  Nine years on his bit feels every bit as eerie as it does funny.  The robots are coming for us all now and knowing who’s real, who’s fake and who to believe is becoming harder than ever.

The rise of machine learning & algorithmically derived content curation has fundamentally altered the media landscape; replacing people’s information sources from a limited number of regulated mass channels and small network of friends into a personalized goody bag filled with a constellation of sources and an array of conspiracists, opportunists and bad actors as a free “gift with purchase”.  For advertisers, consumers, and plain old citizens it gets harder and harder to separate reality from fiction and almost impossible once one has liked and posted a few times, to get out of one’s own echo chamber.  The impact of this media fragmentation is evident everywhere: for media and marketing professionals it creates a landmine of trade-off decisions in a constantly changing environment.  The maturation of AI will only make it harder.

The hype and hand wringing around AI will only grow from here and if we learned anything from the rise of social media things will likely be neither as gloriously sunny as the tech entrepreneurs insist nor as completely nihilistic as the worst projections assume.  But as media professionals, the concepts of synthetic data and bots talking to bots makes the prospect of stewarding ad dollars to responsible sources and appropriate audiences more daunting than ever.

While we cannot know exactly when AI will achieve sentience (or what that will truly mean) there are things we can do now as an industry to make choices that help advertising be a force for good in the world and help show the CFO that our media choices are good investments with positive ROI.   Among all the changes some things remain constant and some old tricks take on new life,  Marketers who want to thrive in the AI era should:

Lean into your brand.  In a deep fake world brand authenticity and connection will matter more than ever.  Ruthlessly examine what your brand really stands for and to whom and build those deep connections now so that when a Deep Fake occurs your customers will recognize it couldn’t come from you.  Startups like BrandRank.AI are helping brands along this journey by showing brands who AI says you are and how to align your content and values to show up the way you desire.  Ripping the band aid off can be painful but until you know how the bots see you, anything you say internally about your brand is just talking to yourself.

Support consumer privacy–really.  Media’s current addiction to audience data is expensive, inaccurate and ultimately, unsustainable.  If you thought your current audience strategy lands you on some shady sites, wait until bot generated synthetic data gets in the mix.  Zero and 1st party data may still be fair game but using these signals to model your audience is a more sustainable and respectful approach than running down every deterministic data point you can.  The media industry should be leading with our government to protect and defend consumer privacy. Not just because it’s the right thing but because we will want the same protections for our own IP.  Whether corporate or personal, one’s own data, creations, content and art deserve protection from being appropriated by large language models and frankensteined into AI generated content.  Getting on the right side of privacy now will pay dividends for our industry in the future.

Reimagine the ad network.  I know, bear with me.  Early ad networks got a bad name because of lack of transparency but in a bot-filled future the ability to root out bad actors and malware in a purely programmatic environment is going to present a massive challenge.  Trade Desk’s recent move to the “Premium Internet” (as opposed to the open one) is a sign of how challenging a totally open ecosystem is to monitor and regulate.  Neural networks and large language models can benefit media buying by predicting performance, curating quality inventory and testing creative versions to maximize performance.  Doing so within a controlled ecosystem will allow brands to monitor and approve their brand assets to take advantage of the benefits of AI without relinquishing control.

Establish better KPIs for anyone who still believes CTR is a fabulous KPI, consider that bots will be finding bots who click and optimizing your media plan to drive more media dollars to those clicking bots. In an AI driven world that’s pretty much a certainty.  While I’m at it, stop going for the lowest CPM.  Understand quality should cost more, curate your publishers and be willing to pay accordingly.  Integrated planning with clear objectives and roles and metrics for each channel and disciplined measurement systems will help you direct ALL your media dollars to the right places.  Grade your partners’ homework and be willing to share back with them so they and you can get better.  Nothing wrong with a good cheap impression but cheap shouldn’t be your primary goal.

Support the publisher brands you believe in.  While mass media may have had its drawbacks, media fragmentation has been devastating to news organizations and professional journalism.  Many advertisers have steered away from news as “ too controversial”.  AI tools can help us determine quality, sentiment and placement in real time so we can put money toward journalism with integrity while continuing to skirt inappropriate context and controversy.  Marketers have often taken the “easy button” of predominantly directing spend to walled gardens but for those who want incremental reach, incremental growth and a robust brand it’s important to support a broad and healthy ecosystem of quality publisher brands who can be healthy enough to fight fake news with facts.

The robots are coming but whether they will be more like Rosie from the Jetsons or Arnold as the Terminator depends, in large part, on us humans coalescing and putting our considerable buying power and weight behind protecting and supporting our very human IP whether it be written articles, video, artistic content or brand assets.  If the bots win we will have only ourselves to blame.

Tags: AI