Attention Merchants
The attention merchants of the modern economy – Meta (Facebook / Instagram), Alphabet (Google), Microsoft (Linkedin), Bytedance (TikTok), Apple and Amazon have built a corporate economy worth over US$11 trillion dollars. This is just under 50% of US GDP.
Globally, people average 6 hours and 58 minutes of screen time per day. Which is over 52 days per year. Which if you lived to 80 would be about 9 years of your life staring at a screen. Crazy huh!
Sure, lots of this time is productive work, being informed, and being entertained. But the reason they want us there on the little screen is mostly, to serve us advertising. All this time to entice us to buy things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t know.
If you think advertising has infiltrated the modern mind – then buckle up for things to go next level when we add AI to the equation.
Speaking of Modern Minds - last post AI Quiz Result - 58% got it correct. AI was the pic on the right.
Watched by Loving Machines
What comes next will be hyper personalised – Some will call it utilitarian, others will call it invasive.
Advertising in an AI world, won’t just serve up a message to the right target market – it will be one size, fits one. The primary weapon in its arsenal will be ‘observing the audience’. But I’m not just talking about decoding the target audiences age, location and income, or even tracking their browsing habits – I’m talking about literally watching them. The key focus will be ‘Emotional Detection’. Read here; an ability to commercially leverage our core momentary vulnerabilities.
…. Real time sentiment targeting.
The AI behind our screens will know if we’re sad, happy, angry, disgusted, ashamed, guilty, embarrassed, excited, anxious, jealous, lonely, bored, frustrated, elated or content… you name it.
It’ll know all of this via mutli-modal methods. Not just by what we type and swipe, where we go, what we do and what we buy….but also through hearing our tone voice as we speak many times daily to the AI’s, watching micro gestures in our facial expressions. Every human moment will be on record, and analysed by the worlds best psychoanalyst - AI.
Bonus Quiz:
For You Page 2.0
In the future advertising will often feature ‘You’.
You’ve had a tough week, you’re feeling sad, the AI observes your emotional state and serves you up an advert of yourself, in future state of happiness. Which of course will be a consequence of buying whatever it is they happen to be selling. For me, it might be a long overdue surf trip in some tropical location!
Maybe you’ve been feeling a been feeling lonely and the AI serves up a message from Kim Kardashian speaking to you by name, with knowledge of what you’re going through. She has a really personal chat with you – and actual live interaction in her exact voice which is like she’s a long lost friend. After you chat for a few minutes, she invites you to a personalised shopping spree with her. She then literally joins you in a virtual world to spend money on clothing which will feel so real, that you won’t be able to tell the difference, and neither will your dopamine detector.
If you thought the age of the influencer was coming to an end, think again.
And if you think this won’t happen, that it’s all too much of an intrusion, then recall what freedoms and privacy we’ve already given up in the digital era.
With the offer of an all knowing AI at our disposal, to do any task for us, for free…. Then a price will be paid. And I can’t help but think it will be like what’s happened in the last 2 decades…..
… it’ll just run deeper into our souls.
Keep Thinking,
Steve.
*Bonus - Did you know household robots will be as common as cars - I discuss here on radio.