Artificial intelligence is probably the No. 1 technology news story since the smart phone. The name certainly captures the imagination. But mainstream AI is really just statistics and semantic relationships that materialize nuances in data patterns. It seems spooky when a search engine knows what we’re looking for, but it’s just numbers working in the background on our personal profiles. It would be nice if the makers of AI would fix the pain points in our relationships with technology instead of what we have now.
Sometimes an insightful company will create products that resonate with users. For example, Apple’s self-managing and self-healing devices eliminate the burdens common with Windows and Android. It would be nice if AI could somehow identify all the software work-arounds we carry in our heads and fix those problems first. That’s essentially why Apple devices seem special: they’re streamlined so that human creativity can emerge without the operating system getting in the way. It’s interesting that when Apple demonstrates its profound grasp of human-machine relationships, we are awestruck; but maybe we should simply have higher expectations for all technology.
Evolution is part of the technology development cycle and it’s natural that first iterations leave much of the heavy lifting to the user, which is okay for the enthusiast or early adopter who is tolerant of missing pieces as a trade-off for the perceived benefits of being the first to use it. But it’s not suitable for the mainstream because pragmatic users won’t tolerate a technology that is forever in the early adoption phase of refinement. At some point, a business case must be made for its continued use even it it’s a free app.
Clients tell us that online advertising has an ephemeral business case. There is a high bar to entry in terms of skill for DIY like Google Ads. There are social issues around tracking and privacy, and the whole thing seems a little too opaque to be true. It’s easy to spend tons of money and get nothing in return. The digital advertising marketplace is ripe for disruption and a lowering of the barrier to entry.
Enter Adobe, inventor of the PDF and maker of creative software that has become the de facto standard. It has been quietly working on a solution for digital advertising and it appears to be on the same wavelength as Apple. Experience Cloud transcends the tyranny of immature ad platforms and embraces a higher purpose. It’s designed to be an end-to-end solution that allows marketers to produce ads using Adobe creative software and then syndicate the campaign using one control panel.
Marketers can find niches, choose audience profiles, manage content, buy advertising, personalize delivery, perform analytics and follow up with engagement marketing. Experience Cloud will even do a cost-benefit analysis and suggest alternative ad channels suited to your particular business, which may or may not include the obvious choices.
This means that you can target your personal farm area with ads on streaming television, social media and the many different search engines on any schedule you like. Your prospective client can see your practice in their phone map, on Instagram Business, as a search suggestion and again as a commercial on Roku. The amazing part is that anyone can do this right now by using Experience Cloud. From a single site, it’s possible to deploy a complete customer experience in a vast segment of the online ad marketplace.
In comparison, the work required by manual systems is significant and costly. A marketer must research available ad spaces, then visit each platform to set up and manage campaigns. The campaigns are contained in silos that are separate with disparate data. Pity the assistant who is responsible for assembling campaign data from multiple silos and presenting it in a meaningful way for the boss. With Experience Cloud, data is collected from all campaigns in all silos and presented as holistic information, the way it should be.
It’s easy to see how this technology will likely evolve: As software like Experience Cloud becomes more prevalent, more advertisers will want to join the marketplace. At some point, the system will go critical and include print, network and pay television, radio, even the flyer delivery guy who visits your office. The AI behind Experience Cloud will bring advertisers and ad delivery together in one marketplace. For now, it’s for professionals. The future of digital multi-media advertising looks more exciting every day.
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