Artificial intelligence and automation are transforming the profession, giving rise to new disciplines such as programmatic and next-generation advertising.
However, whereas smart machines and intelligent algorithms are shouldering more responsibility for advertising processes and tasks, they’re also making advertising experiences more intelligent and better suited to our needs. This is because technology provides a means by which we can know ourselves better and cater to our human behaviour with a greater degree of precision.
Take the way we view content. The human eye is actually a fairly limited piece of equipment. While we have a relatively broad field of vision, only one per cent of it is high resolution – the rest is blurred. When it comes to advertising, that means we can only focus on small portions of a screen at any one time.
When it comes to processing visual information, we’re similarly limited. Around half of the human brain is dedicated to visual processing, but the various parts are not that well co-ordinated and we can struggle to pick out important pieces of information when they’re presented in a visually “busy” context. Putting too many visual elements in an advertisement can therefore make it difficult for viewers to find the really important information, such as calls to action.
It’s in this field that AI is finding a new and powerful application: helping us understand the capabilities and limits of human perception, and to design accordingly. Take, for example, Accenture’s own Visual Content Optimiser: an artificial eye that uses AI to mimic human vision and perception.
The Optimiser, which was incubated at the Accenture Interactive R&D Centre in Sophia Antipolis, France, uses what we’re calling “artificial imperfection” to show advertisers in advance how effective their content will be in presenting information in a clear and engaging way. Through the Visual Content Optimiser, designers can see a heat map of their adverts which indicate where the human eye would be drawn, thus helping them improve the design.
Here, AI is being used to make adverts better suited to the way humans view them. The implications are clear: people will be able to interact with ad content more easily, and get more meaning from them. This is a better experience for the viewer and makes conversions more likely. This latest piece of technology will be showcased for the first time at WIRED Live 2017, so join us and come take a look.
AI is what we make it, and at Accenture Interactive we’re using it to make the best ad experiences on the planet. These are increasingly driven and informed by machines, but in such a way as to make the industry and its content better suited to the human world.
If you would like to see other ways in which AI is helping to make advertising and marketing more people-focused, join us at WIRED Live 2017, where we’ll be demoing a wide range of innovations around programmatic and advertising automation.
View the agenda: http://wired.uk/wired-live-agenda
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
