Algorithmization & Surveillance Advertising

Algorithm-optimized advertising and surveillance on digital platforms

Maytê Carvalho

Digitized advertising has required transformations related to the production of advertising messages through algorithms. Data collection processes are based on demographic and audience data. Thus, "the growth of online platforms has led to the intensification of data collection" (DIJCK?et al., p. 33).

Data generated by digital platforms are used in two complementary ways. The first way is a source of insights for advertisers, as they are related to users' behavioral data of digital platforms. Data are understood as a source for prior planning of actions by brands on digital media. They also segment the audience in the platforms, assertively forwarding messages to would-be consumers.?

There are, in this perspective, focused media investments that produce relevant data on the increase in investment in targeted advertising. According to the GDMA (2017), 36% of marketing executives increased their assets by 10%. The respective investments were concentrated in advertise targeting on digital platforms, according to Dick et al. (2018).

In this scenario, executives identified an increase in improvements in the performance of brand dissemination concerning platform users. The Algorithmization process becomes a solid ally to them.

Algorithmization, therefore, results from constant searches and concentration of data, working to organize the current actions that will be persuasive to users.

?Thus, algorithms are understood as a complex of rules that clarify the actions to be performed given the construction of advertising material that directly reaches its consumer audiences (MOURA; GOMES, 2016).

In this sense, the algorithmization process contributes to changes in advertising actions in the face of access to data and metadata generated by digital platforms. In a focused way, these platforms provide the informational set referred above, in which they suggest decision-making, having as a starting point the interpretation of data collected about the users on the platform.

It appears that there is a need to rethink advertising in the field of

new skills that are being demanded from professionals in these new business models [advertising], with job positions still under construction. Skills such as programming language, prototyping, and product development were not required from advertising professionals until then, which leads companies to resort to other disciplines of knowledge, and also shows professionals who already comprise the field to adapt to these new work characteristics (SCHHUCH, 2019, p. 90).

Thus, in the digital environment, the challenge is more intense concerning the materiality of modes given the ""automated resources such as content recommendation, facial recognition, and image processing"" (SILVA, 2019, p. 3).

Such resources reorganize the notion of work in the advertising field, as they fit the idea of personalization of content to users of digital platforms.?

It is worth mentioning that all generation of data and metadata promoted by digital platforms shares the characteristics of flexibility and fun, as in entertainment and consumption.?

These data also expand the possibilities of content advertising control. They encourage the creation of persuasive resources so that users (of digital platforms) decide on the ideas generated by the algorithmization process.

This is because, given the post-modern reality, there is a dissolution of the existing borders between public and private spaces (TRIVINHO, 2010).

The dissolution of spaces (public and private) fosters the collection of data and metadata and establishes the monitored control of users on digital platforms.?

This control contributes to creating crossings in the scope of surveillance, as they create the desires of platform users through subjectivities persuasively suggested by advertising actions. However, those involved in these strategies understand that their choices are free and do not rely on other filters.

Therefore, digital modernity is inserted in multiple digital and online activities. Their sharing, voluntary or not, produces multiple series of data that create a surveilled reality (LYON, 2018).

Given this scenario, advertising is inserted in

1. The technological field, as it makes use of algorithmization processes to collect and systematize data and metadata made available by platform users, which are the references for the construction of advertising material.?
2. The surveillance field, as digital advertising expands its scope of action to the field of appropriation and interpretation of data and metadata and defines the scenario and subjectivities that will be found in the imagination of its would-be customers.

Thus, advertising supports the deepening, in the technological and surveillance spheres, of forms of social control. It induces the organization of a repertoire of everyday practices (LYON, 2018).

In the advertising field, the need to form a well-diversified team with regard to issues of gender, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation is evident so that it appropriates the data generated by the algorithms in digital platforms. In this way, they amplify the control established by surveillance.

Anyone who is subject to a field of visibility and knows it takes up the limitations of the power of their own, makes them work spontaneously on oneself, inscribes within oneself the power relationship in which one simultaneously plays both roles, and becomes the principle of one's own subjection (FOUCAULT, 1987, p. 89).

Given this form of control, advertising helps to demonstrate that the visibility of users of digital platforms can be understood as a trap built for the users themselves, as their subjectivities are shared, and triggers are hit for the construction of new subjectivities so that its relationship with the world can be re-semanticized.?

Contemporary surveillance is used by a multitude of "little sisters" whose main objective is to better understand the consumer-individual through the invasion of all spheres of its life. Surveillance is no longer an exclusively state practice and has become a characteristic feature of the society we live in (JACOBI NETO, 2014).

However, the appearance of little sisters masks the vision that could otherwise enable a critical stance concerning the uses by advertising of data and metadata generated by users of digital platforms, for example.?

There is a predilection in the use of digital platforms that distances the individual from anonymity, even though privacy is understood as a set of rights. In this context, the digital understanding of exercising citizenship is part of the media visibility, as ""cyberculture, even if rooted in such a peculiar customization of the use of technological interfaces, has not brought, strictly speaking, anything new by having just warmed up the tradition"" (TRIVINHO, 2010, p. 11).

Therefore, there is a contradictory relationship between the stimulus of critical emptying and the feeling of comfort produced by the digital world. It builds, from data and metadata generated by users of digital platforms, a reality controlled by the desires of the current market.

References

BAUMAN, Zygmunt.?Vigilancia Líquida. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2014.

DIJCK, J; POELL, T; WALL, M;?The Platform Society:?Public Values in a Connective World. London: Oxford University Press, 2018.

FOUCAULT, Michel.?Vigiar e Punir: nascimento da pris?o. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1987.

JACOB NETO, Elias. “Vigilancia ou surveillance? Proposta para come?ar a compreender corretamente este fen?meno.” In: ROVER, Aires José; CELLA, José Renato Gaziero; AYUDA, Fernando Galindo (Org.).?Direito e Novas Tecnologias. Florianópolis : CONPEDI, 2014.

LYON, D. Cultura da vigilancia: envolvimento, exposi?ao e ética na modernidade digital.?In:?Tecnopolíticas da vigilancia: perspectivas da margem / organiza??o?BRUNO, F. et al. Tradu??o de Mour?o. H.C. et al. 1st ed. S?o Paulo, Boitempo, 2018.

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SILVA, T.?Racismo Algorítmico em Plataformas Digitais:?microagress?es e discrimina??o em código. S?o Paulo: Cortez, 2019.

SCHUCH, L. A.?Transforma??es na propaganda: um olhar rizomático sobre a prática publicitária.?Disserta??o (Disserta??o em Comunica??o) – UFSM. Santa Maria, 2019.

TRIVINHO, Eugênio. Visibilidade mediática, melancolia do único e violência invisível na cibercultura: significa??o social-histórica de um substrato cultural regressivo da sociabilidade em tempo real na civiliza??o mediática avan?ada. In:?XIX Encontro Nacional da COMPóS, 2010, Rio de Janeiro. Available at: https://compos.com.puc-rio.br/media/gt1_eugenio_trivinho.pdf. Accessed on 15 Sep. 2010.