广告，该听从于技术还是艺术

广告，该听从于技术还是艺术

广告业正快速朝着史蒂芬·斯皮尔伯格执导的电影《少数派报告》中描绘的个性化广告世界迈进。但精准定位受众的新纪元是否能让品牌卖出更多产品？吸引你购买的是定位的相关性、还是真正用心好看的广告？

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

fundamentally根本上；基础地[fʌndə'mentəlɪ]

reliant依赖的；可靠的[rɪ'laɪənt]

fraud骗子；诡计[frɔːd]

punchy强力的；头昏眼花的['pʌn(t)ʃɪ]

variable变量；可变物['veərɪəb(ə)l]

telecommunications通讯行业['telɪkə,mjuːnɪ'keɪʃənz]

Advertising needs a rethink in a brand new world（618 words）

By Matthew Garrahan

Bill Bernbach,a founder of the DDB advertising agency and widely regarded as father of the modern marketing industry,once said that advertising“is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science,but an art”.

Advertisers are having to work harder than ever to find their audience.

Technological change has made the task harder still. Ad blocking software has created real problems for digital publishers reliant on display advertising. Ad fraud is a similar worry,with the World Federation of Advertisers,whose members include McDonald’s and Unilever,recently warning of“endemic”digital ad fraud and claiming that up to 30 per cent of all online ads are never seen by real humans. The WFA is forecasting industry revenue losses of $50bn by 2025 unless marketers take immediate and effective action.

“Is it human beings seeing ads or just a machine? And if it’s a human being is it actually a consumer?”says Brinsley Dresden,head of advertising and marketing at law firm Lewis Silkin.

At the same time,there is a big shift in consumer behaviour. Smartphones and mobile devices are fast becoming primary sources of entertainment and advertising dollars are flowing there at an increasingly rapid rate.

Facebook and Google have become the biggest recipients of digital ad spending. Combined,they accounted for 75 per cent of all new online ad spending in 2015,according to the Internet Trends report published this year by Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers,the US venture capital fund. In the US,85 cents of every new dollar spent on digital went to the two companies in the first quarter of 2016.

The emergence of new digital platforms and services means brands must also rethink the way they sell their products. For example,Instagram and Snapchat have different audiences and require shorter,punchier ads compared with traditional 30 second TV spots.

Christopher Vollmer,global entertainment and media advisory leader for PwC’s Strategy& consultancy,says advertising“has always been a combination of art and science. Technology is now becoming a third variable”. Advertisers“have to get all three of these things right”.

Not all aspects of advertising’s tech revolution have been a surprise. Video has become a big driver of advertising online and on social media.“It tends to get the most consumer engagement on social media and mobile devices,”Mr Vollmer says. This was one factor driving telecommunications company AT&T’s blockbuster $85.4bn bid for Time Warner,which faces a year of regulatory scrutiny and no guarantee that it will be approved.

Criteo uses available data and internet cookies — data sent from a website to a browser — to identify shopping patterns in order to send relevant ads to the right online or mobile user.

This targeted approach means the advertising beamed at consumers on their mobile devices can be more relevant.“Consumers want a seamless experience … they don’t want aggressive advertising that is intrusive,”he says. The company recently worked on a trial with several London retailers that installed beacons sending signals to the smartphones of shoppers. The beacons collected data about how long the people spent in the shops,as well as information about the items they spent time looking at.

The most important aspect is engaging the consumer,says Mr Vollmer.“There’s no shortage of screens and there’s no shortage of impressions. But there’s a shortage of high value connection points between brands and consumers,which is the whole point of advertising. You have to create effective engagement with the consumer that gets them to buy.”

In this respect,advertising is the same as it ever was. Technology may have disrupted it but the industry’s artistic heart still has a big role to play.