Bigger = Smaller
I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. - Edith Wharton from Ethan Frome
The moment you type in a word online, you are keyworded*. Besides your date of birth, present location and gender, search engines can now query your online shopping, your taste in films and books, your relationship status, political leanings and whatever else you reveal about yourself online. We have become this giant planet of digital knowledge that grows with every nanosecond. Soon we will spin that off and start a new galaxy - to balance that there will be a Black Hole that sucks in all your forgotten digital information that fuels a parallel universe of lost doppelgangers.
The More There Is, The Less We Know
With this swirling morass of information, does it help define who we are as a group or as an individual? How does all this help the companies that need to market to us? People in Los Angeles prefer one flavor of potato chip over the East Coast, yet communities in Los Angeles will argue that one flavor tops another. In the last century, advertising targeted major groups with one large brush, and it worked. Now on Facebook you will get an ad targeted to you.
My Facebook Keywords
Gender: female
Interests: biking, art
College: BFA
Occasionally it all goes so wrong. This ad was posted to my Facebook page:
And then they get it right:
Bigger = Smaller
Advertising will catch up with the growing pile of information and you will start seeing ads targeted at you while you read Wired on your iPad, or on any other thirty tablets coming out in the next year. On your Smartphone, ads will appear to second guess what you are craving and give you the closest location or allow you to order and pay in one click and it will appear on your doorstop in less than thirty minutes.
The Bespoke Product
We live in a culture that is surrounded by mass production, we don't know if the pair of jeans we are wearing is one of a thousand or a hundred thousand, we don't value rarity. That is changing, we are still going to be sold products that mass produced but sold as something special only for us, we will not see any ads that have no relevance because ads will be matched to our keywords.
The Bespoke Ad
If you are online, there is enough information to tailor an ad specifically to you. Instead of being inundated with car ads when you cycle, you will get ads about the latest carbon frames. If you look close enough you will see your privacy chipped away keystroke by keystroke.
Where we are headed in marketing is where we design for a few, for a niche, because the world has moved towards keywording and tagging, where we are all digital assets that can now be sold an item that speaks to us alone. We will each be given a bespoke piece that is handcrafted to our tastes, and your Facebook ads is the harbinger of that new wave.
*The words or phrases used in a Web Page that will be noticed and indexed by Search Engines. Keywords are the terms that you enter into the search field of an online library catalog, database, comment field, web page or Web search site.
