EVERYTHING IS ALGORITHMICALLY FINE

Or how marketing has become caught between 'growth' and a hard place.

THE RECOMMENDATION ENGINE

Ever opened up a friend’s Netflix account or your parent’s and found that they are being presented with a whole load of different shows than you are?

Whilst your Netflix has become a repeating loop of nostalgic sit-coms, food shows involving travel, and cheap violent thrillers starring Jason Statham - theirs is something else entirely.

The way we experience the digital world has changed.

Let’s just rewind a moment and consider how we got here.

First there were index sites - which would curate and order for you everything online so you could find what you were looking for.

Then came search engines which made it easier for you to find anything you desired, based on key words and back links, the internet became an unstructured mess of interconnecting links.

Then we hit networks of friends and followers - you could find your community with whom you shared values and consume content from them. Your friends curated what you saw and you curated your version of the internet back at them.

But this has all changed. (Shock, gasp, horror.) It wasn’t a sudden change, it was a slow and steady one, creeping up on us.

Now we are in an internet driven by THE ALGORITHM.

An internet that learns what you like from the content you do engage with and serves you more of what you want to see.

The internet has become like a Vegas slot machine, flashing lights and sounds to push your dopamine up and keep you trapped on the machine. The Algorithm doesn’t care whether you are friends or following a content’s creator. The Algorithm only cares about whether your dopamine will go up upon engaging with whatever it serves you.

That’s why your Netflix (and your TikTok and your YouTube and your Facebook) now prioritise serving you things you want to spend time with rather than things you have chosen to see.

If you watch a cute girl dancing in cosplay once on your TikTok and linger ever so slightly too long (ahem) that’s going to be all over your future feed until you can scrub it clean by over-indexing in engaging with other content in a statistically meaningful way to shift what the algorithm thinks you want to see.

Your AI assistants and chat bots will also grow to prioritise pleasing you rather than giving you any sense of objective truth.

Like a bartender who remembers your drink - personalisation makes experiences feel better. Personalisation makes you feel special.

TARGETING VS ENGAGEMENT

For digital platforms engagement is the name of the game. They want a high amount of monthly active users (MUAs) that are spending significant time on platform. Like the Ikea maze, that loops you around and around, or the casino with the bright lights and free drinks, they want to keep you on platform long enough to get the maximum value out of you.

The more time people spend on the platform the more money they can make from advertisers.

It used to be that the platforms (Meta etc) would target by demographics (age, location) then they got more advanced and included interest based targeting (loose keywords and communities that you would associate with - but this only served to create an internet of interruption and annoyance.

Why do I keep getting served ads for something I don’t care about? Why am I getting so many ads for the same thing when I’m clearly not clicking them.

I heard a stat years ago that there was more chance of someone passing the test and being accepted into the Navy Seals (significantly statistically hard) than there was likelihood of them clicking a banner ad. Digital ad fraud was rife to pump the numbers and make ads and the platforms seem like more of a success than they actually were. It’s not lying - it’s just changing how you measure things to make them look better.

The platforms adjusted their ad offerings and video was pushed hard. But this meant that they could claim that the first three seconds watch of a clip counted as ‘an engagement’.

A 3 second begrudging watch whilst you waited for the content you actually wanted to view counted as a positive thing. There was no point investing in creativity - just get the logo in the first 3 seconds and it counts as a hit. The numbers juiced themselves within this measurement structure to make campaigns look better on paper to justify further investment. (Yes I’m aware of the Ehrenberg-Bass work on mental availability and fluent devices and I agree with it, we’ll talk about this later, don’t @ me right now when I’m trying to make a different point.)

We had a client who got a bit vanity metric hungry and the solution was to upload standard static creatives as video files with the targeting set for ‘engagement’. For the audience they noticed no difference, but the backend of Meta tabulated the data differently and served them in a slightly different way. Our client got fantastic numbers - we lost even more faith in the integrity of the platforms.

THE CREATIVE IS THE TARGETING

Now, with the ‘recommendation engine’ approach of all digital platforms the suggestion is that the creative is the targeting.

That if you create something that resonates with a particular target group, but set your initial audience targeting wide, the algorithm will narrow it down to those who you want to engage in the most efficient way.

No more interest or demographic targeting - just let the algorithm serve your work to those who will engage with it the most. Your engagement scores will go up by serving it to ‘look-a-likes’ of those who are actively engaging.

This is great for the audience’s on platform experience, they only get served what the algorithm thinks they might be interested in, but requires a complete change in how as a marketer or business we think about digital ads and content.

ARE YOU MEASURING ANNOYANCE?

Are you creating content people want?

Or are you just using an on-trend art direction (and distinctive brand assets) to write the same funnel messaging as everyone else?

Are you just pouring so much money into your ads that the numbers are sure to go up as the platforms algorithmatise more and more ways to boost them?

The platforms want your results to be high, they want you to come back with more money for your next campaign.

There’s been all sorts of discussion around the prioritisation of brand versus performance marketing - all sorts of arguments made for one versus the other. The seminal ‘How Brands Grow’ By Byron Sharp has been oversimplified into repetition of assets and devices and over investment in media to gain market share.

In a world of ad blockers and interruptive advertising are you measuring annoyance of your advertising with consumers?

I’m not talking about us all hating the GO COMPARE opera singer, or Michael Winner crashing his car, I’m referring to low cost phone videos telling me I should invest in new moisture sealant for my bathroom or that I need a new SAAS solution for my non-existent small business.

I’m being served ads that the algorithm thinks I like - but actually I just want to get beyond them to the things I’m actually interested in.

Your low cost repetition of a logo isn’t linking your brand to a category entry point that’s relevant to me or building a positive mental association.

You are showing up at my party without bringing a bottle of wine. You are a bad guest.

And whilst recognition of your brand may be built (begrudgingly) over time - the amount of budget required to hit that substantial amount of touches is staggering.

META’S AI ADVERTISING FUTURE

When Zuckerberg talks about a future without agencies, this is the future he’s coming for - not big brand positioning campaigns or content that people want to spend time with. But an AI automated funnel that responds to the algorithm. If people are engaging with one type of messaging or content over another, the AI funnel will respond.

This means that everyone will be automated to an efficient middle.

Everything will become like the lights and sounds of the slot machine in a casino.

All your performance bros funnels will work incredibly (if you stick enough money into the machine to find the efficiencies) but for consumers the internet will become sludge for the poor and more expensive for those who can afford to dodge things.

The ad formats will become more streamlined (3 seconds) because everybody is desperately trying to click past them. The platforms we engage with will start charging us more to avoid any advertising.

The small agencies and digital freelancers who have made a living off of the bottom end of the market are going to be automated out of it.

We are already seeing start ups like MAGIC BRIEF (recently acquired by Canva) who have created a platform to analyse well performing digital funnel assets so that you can copy them. An efficient photocopier that hopes if it prints 1000 identical bits of paper you might read one of them as you toss them into the waste paper basket.

Your brand’s marketing is going to become more efficient but so is everyone else’s. The platforms results are going to be score higher for you, but so it will for your competitors.

YOUR NEW CONTENT IS MISSING

This all sounds pretty dire and alarmist, but stay with me, there is an opportunity.

We are past peak content.

In the early days of Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and Disney+ and Apple TV- billions of dollars were being poured into creating high quality content. Content that could serve all audiences.

The data in the back end of these companies would then inform what future content they would invest in. Shows were prioritised and renewed (some surprisingly) - others were cut before they found their people.

These companies operated on the customer acquisition focus of so many tech bubbles - creating masses of good content to encourage people to sign up to them rather than their competitors, often at a loss leading price.

Now the landscape has changed. These businesses have been required to stop haemorrhaging money. Less content is being created. Hollywood is quiet. Local production hubs around the world are suffering.

Who will make the mid-tier shows now? Who will serve the audience groups with content that isn’t Saturday night all-family entertainment?

The content for niche audiences isn’t being made on Television and it isn’t being made by streamers. (Here I am simplifying the discussion to focus on video content - maybe in the future we can talk about this oversimplification.)

It’s no surprise that Youtube is now being consumed more on television sets than web browsers.

It’s no surprise that internet talent is now being poached for more traditional media. As the recent talks at Cannes have highlighted Youtube channels are behaving more and more like the ‘start ups’ of Hollywood.

FIND YOUR AUDIENCE WITH THE RECOMMENDATION ENGINE

Don’t make ads. Make something that people want to spend time with.

Make the content that the big streamers and Hollywood aren’t able to afford to make anymore. (However lo-fi your efforts.)

A good advertising idea should demonstrate or dramatise.

Good content educates or entertains.

Don’t make ads that claim your product is good.

Create content that provides value in itself - so audiences can justify spending time with it.

In this world where YouTube and TikTok are serving up ‘mini tv-show style formats’ to audiences - how can you create these formats that work for you?

How can you create an educational demonstration of your product that is more ‘Ready steady cook’, ‘Changing Rooms’, or ‘Queer eye’ than an AI written funnel script?

How can you dramatise the benefit of your product through an entertaining tv show that’s more ‘Friends’ or ‘Bake off’ than a 30 second ad that might steal other’s pop cultural thunder but doesn’t contribute anything beyond acknowledgement or a laugh?

If the internet is a recommendation engine now you can find an audience.

From a platform perspective it just means consistently creating, till the algorithm learns who you are and what you are about.

From a brand/marketing perspective it means investing in these formats as fluent devices (a la Byron Sharp) yourself - compounding creativity and consistency in an ownable way but with the format (narrative, emotion, characters) allowing for flexibility beyond the copy and paste of a logo or colour scheme.

The dream of ‘content marketing’ has never been just making cheaper campaigns or using influencers rather than production and paid actors. It is about building a world where the marketing is what people are interested in rather than interruptive.

Now with the changes to the Internet and ad targeting we are finally at a point where the world has caught up to the dream. Now is the time to make things your audiences want.

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So there it is.
My first Substack.
Was it interesting enough to make you argue in the comments?

Subscribe for future posts on how AI, creative consistency, and low-budget formats can reshape brand storytelling for the better.

Maybe next time we’ll talk about AI and effort, how the answer doesn’t have to be video, and how even small businesses can create consistent efforts and impact.

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WHAT I’M WRITING FOR MYSELF AT THE MOMENT

A contained thriller screenplay I wrote has been optioned, I’m currently crafting a new draft in partnership with the producers and changing the location of the story. It feels strange revisiting something I wrote a little while ago but makes a nice break from prose fiction.

WHAT I’M READING AT THE MOMENT

‘The Good Story’ - J.M. Coetzee & Arabella Kurtz.

I’m loving this for how it talks about the narrative lens we place over the perception of our own lives. ‘Story’ has been an obsession of mine since my undergrad dissertation - blending this with a perspective on psychotherapy is fascinating. Expect discussions in this space in the future.

This is supplemented with a healthy dose of comic books (Hickman’s Ultimate Spider-Man is consistently great.) & Donald Westlake’s Parker Novels.

WHAT I’M WATCHING AT THE MOMENT

’Materialists’ - Celine Song’s new movie.

Loved it. It’s a grown up movie with grown up themes made with class. The Actor’s are top notch. (I really felt Dakota Johnson deserved a win.) The music is fantastic.

I think the only thing working against this film is its advertising. It’s being sold as a chick-flick rom-com with Chris Evans and Pedro as these romantic hunks. We found the screening we were in was full of groups of women drinking lots of rose and getting excited. It’s not that movie. It’s a meditative film about class and society’s ideals of romance. Go see it.

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