Will AI mean better adverts or ‘creepy slop’?

Imagine one night, you’re scrolling through social media on your phone, and the ads start to look remarkably familiar. They’re decked out in your favourite colours, are featuring your favourite music and the wording sounds like phrases you regularly use.

Welcome to the future of advertising, which is already here thanks to AI.

Advertising company Cheil UK, for example, has been working with startup Spotlight on using large language AI models to understand people’s online activity, and adapt that content based on what the AI interprets an individual’s personality to be.

The technology can then mirror how someone talks in terms of tone, phrase and pace to change the text of an ad accordingly, and insert music and colours to match, say, whether the AI deems someone to be introverted or extroverted, or have specific preferences for loud or calm music, or light or dark colours.

The aim is to show countless different ads to millions of people, all unique to them.

Brands in retail, consumer electronics, packaged goods, automotive, insurance and banking are already using the technology to create AI-enhanced, personality-driven ads to target online shoppers.

The AI is able to read what people post on public platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and other public forums – as well as someone’s search history, and, most importantly, what people enter into ChatGPT.

Then, with what it deduces about an individual’s personality, the AI overlays that on top of what advertisers already know about people. For example, what part of the country you live in, what age bracket you’re in, whether you have children or not, what your hobbies might be, where you go on holiday and what clothes you like to wear – information brands can already see through platforms like Facebook or Google.

That’s why the jeans you’ve been searching online for magically appear in your inbox as a sponsored ad, or the holiday you’ve been searching for seems to follow you around the internet.

The difference is now AI can change the content of those ads, based on what it thinks your personality is, thanks to what it’s been reading about you. It targets individual people, rather than the demographic segments or personas advertisers would traditionally use.

“The shift is that we are moving away from what was collected data based on gender and age, and readily available information, to now, going more into a deeper emotional, psychological level,” says Cheil UK CEO Chris Camacho.

“You’ve now got AI systems that can go in and explore your entire digital footprint – your entire online persona, from your social media interests to what you’ve been engaging in.

“That level is far deeper than it was previously, and that’s when you start to build a picture understanding that individual, so whether they’re happy, whether they’re sad, or what personal situation they’re going through.”

An added bonus for advertisers is that they might not even need a bespoke AI system to personalise their output.

Researchers in the US studied the reactions of consumers who were advertised an iPhone, with tailored text written by ChatGPT based on how high that person scored on a list of four different personality attributes.

The study found the personalised text was more persuasive than ads without personalised text – and people didn’t mind that it had been written by AI.

“Right now, AI is really excelling on that targeting piece. Where it’s still in nascent stages, is on that personalisation piece, where a brand is actually creating creative copy that matches some element of your psychological profile,” explains Jacob Teeny, an assistant professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, who led the AI research.

“It still has some development to go, but all roads point to the fact that this will become the way [digital advertising is done],” he adds.

Personalised AI ads could also provide a solution to the problem of digital advertising ‘wastage’ – the fact that 15% of what brands spend on digital advertising goes unseen or unnoticed, so it generates no value to their business.

Not everyone is convinced that personalisation is the right way to go.

“Congratulations – your AI just spent a fortune creating an ad only one person will ever see, and they’ve already forgotten it,” says Brighton-based Alex Calder, chief consultant at AI innovation consultancy Jagged Edge, which is part of digital marketing company Anything is Possible.

“The real opportunity lies in using AI to deepen the relevance of powerful, mass-reach ideas, rather than fragmenting into one-to-one micro-ads that no one remembers. Creepy slop that brags about knowing your intimate details is still slop.”

Ivan Mato at brand consultancy Elmwood agrees. He is also questioning whether people will accept it, whether regulators will allow it, and whether brands should even want to operate this way.

“There’s also the surveillance question. All of it depends on a data economy that many consumers are increasingly uncomfortable with,” says London-based Mr Mato.

“AI opens new creative possibilities, but the real strategic question isn’t whether brands can personalise everything – it’s whether they should, and what they risk losing if they do.”

AI-personalised ads could also take a dark turn, Mr Camacho at Cheil UK acknowledges.

“There’s going to be the camp that uses AI well and in an ethical manner, and then there’s going to be those that use it to persuade, influence, and guide people down paths,” he says.

“And that’s the bit that I personally find quite scary. When you think about elections and political canvassing, and how the use of AI can influence voting decisions and who is going to be elected next.

But Mr Camacho is committed to staying on the right side of ethics.

“We don’t have to use AI to make ads creepy or to influence individuals to do things that are unethical. We’re trying to stay on the nicer side of it. We’re trying to enhance the connection between brands and individuals, and that’s all we’ve ever tried to do.”