Computational Advertising for a Conscionable Society & Economy

All Advertising is now Computational. Can it be Conscionable?

The growth of Streaming and Connected Television heralds the final capitulation of advertising to computation, data, and technology. Finally, the separation of "traditional" and "digital" vanishes. Inevitably, Advertising Adtech dominates spending and power, as at the recent Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity .

At issue is whether advertising that is computational can be conscionable .?Although digital, programmatic, and automated by tech, can advertising ever be guided by a human and collective sense of right and wrong??

The term "computational" is prefer to digital because it captures the method and practices rather than the technology. The term 'conscionable" is preferable to ethical because it captures our individual and collective agency in determining the objectives and outcomes of the advertising we create and execute.

In 2019 Professors Jisu Huh and Ed Malthouse presciently convened a Computational Advertising Thought Leadership Forum, inviting leading US and EU academic researchers to the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism. I keynoted the event together with fellow practitioner Jonathan Copulsky.

I have long observed that how advertising is practiced is determined by the objective and metrics set for it. Following the forum, I contributed ?to a paper on this critical topic of measurement: Full article: Challenges and Future Directions of Computational Advertising Measurement Systems (tandfonline.com) ; one of a set of papers published in a special issue of the Journal of Advertising collectively cited as among the most influential that year: Article collection: Most Influential Articles in 2020—American Academy of Advertising Journals (tandfonline.com)

Now in 2022 this initiative is developing through a global network of researchers organizing through the Computational Advertising Knowledge Exchange (cakexchange.github.io) led by Joanna Strycharz (Amsterdam), Ewa Maslowska (Illinois), and Su Jung Kim (USC):?“C.A.K.E. is a multidisciplinary research group fostering and facilitating collaborations among scholars from diverse disciplines and industry partners investigating various aspects of computational advertising and its role in the society. As a collective, we want to figure out how advertising scholars and practitioners use computational advertising to contribute to society.”

At the kick-off event earlier this year I shared a panel with Hari Sundaram (Illinois), Joo Jungseock (Nvidia and UCLA), and Menno Van Der Steen (Group M). For my talk, representing my experience and conviction about what can make advertising a force of the betterment of society, I believe we must recognize in advertising and marketing the externalities that most marketers and their businesses ignore. I believe the state of the science and art of computational advertising makes feasible the recognition of a bigger picture. To illustrate a greater ecosystem I drew on a framework from another passion which has also innovated in recognition of the huge importance of externalities viz. economics:

§?how marketers can work with computer scientists to model advertising within the larger complex and adaptive ecosystems of society, the economy, and markets

§?how computational advertising models can account for consumer culture, trends and movements and social activism

I lent on my own experiences of modeling the effects and drivers of advertising as well as the revelatory work of the UK’s Peter Field and Orlando Wood in summarizing how if digital advertising appeals to the left brain it is the right brain that leads decision-making: as well as to brand engagement (with reference to the computing market); how long-term brand effects trump short-term performance (with reference to the telecom market); how cultural, generational, and social trends explain market performance better than any marketing mix analysis (with reference to the alcoholic spirits market).

I highlighted how computer scientists can use Structural Equation Models and Neural Nets to manage multiple objectives and metrics including those that most marketers wrongly see as externalities. We can no longer ignore the impact of cultural and climate effects. They are more important than any marketing tactics to our own results, but what we must recognize and incorporate are their lasting societal and environmental consequences

I proposed a framework for data, measurement and prediction based on economist Kate Raworth’s “Doughnut”. The next phase is to develop the data sources and apply the framework and computational methodologies to the real world. Joanna, Ewa, and Su Kung will shortly be issuing a call for research contributions and papers. Please follow the Computational Advertising Knowledge Exchange (cakexchange.github.io)

Stewart Pearson

Stewart is a Scot who has lived, worked, and traveled in the UK, Europe, Asia, and in New York and most U.S. states. He now lives in Seattle. He has four decades of experience in marketing and advertising focused on building client brands directly.?He was Global Chief Client Officer and Vice-Chairman of Wunderman, then a fast-growing unit of WPP serving clients like Microsoft, Best Buy and Star Alliance airlines. David Ogilvy once sent him a telex from India and Lester Wunderman told him stories of Picasso from the village of Mougins in France where both men had lived.

Please contact Stewart at?LinkedIn ?and?Twitter .?His views are his own.