Right now, if I look in my personal inbox, I will find at least one advertising suggesting I go shopping for some women’s clothing. I don’t particularly want any, even if their current deals on blouses are pretty spectacular – over 50 per cent off, they shout to the heavens. I’m just not the right market for them, being a bearded fellow whose wardrobe consists mostly of variations on plaid.
So why do they think I want their clothing?
I actually know the winding path that lead here. It began when, while waiting for my better half to finish shopping in a mall, I spotted a shirt that looked okay in a menswear store nearby. Even better, it was a mere $15, on clearance, so I bought it. The man at the counter asked for an email address, and I gave mine, not thinking, because at this point my email address is absolutely everywhere so one more place doesn’t make a difference.
That store is part of a larger chain, but apparently not the part that actually gets the email list, so from buying a men’s shirt I now get advertisements for a women’s shirt. While all clothing is unisex if you’re brave enough, I must admit I am not.
This, at least, makes a degree of sense. However, what is quickly apparent is that with advertising getting steadily more targeted, we are suddenly in a situation where nobody really knows how or why anybody buys anything, having given up that role and given it over to robots. Those robots, as it turns out, are insane.
For example, on my computer at home I get an advertisement from eBay, a place where I mostly buy old film cameras, film and video games from 2003. Which makes it extra confusing when it suggests I buy a novelty radio that plays bible quotes or memorabilia from the second world war. I get that the robots think I have enough old cameras or video games for 2003, but their suggestions seem completely out of left field.
My product recommendations aren’t the weirdest, however. I know someone who somehow now gets recommendations exclusively for wine and coffins. Â
The problem is that we’re trying to get extremely targeted advertising, while recognizing that people don’t generally want to buy what they already own, so we have put our trust in artificial intelligence. Sometimes it works – a pharmacy actually worked out when customers were pregnant based on their purchases on a loyalty card – sometimes it very much doesn’t – such as when they try to sell me women’s clothing.
What we are seeing when we go online is a very scattershot attempt to figure out what people are all about without knowing them very well. An attempt to prove a point to Calvin Daniels lead to months of my work computer attempting to sell me a Chinese electric car. A joke at home lead to a full year of ads for silk sheets.
I think we actually need to go less targeted, because trying to be excessively targeted has actually closed a lot of people off. Online, there are very few moments where you genuinely discover something you didn’t know you wanted. But there are plenty of those opportunities outside of that excessively targeted sphere. I didn’t buy those shirts because of an online ad, they were not even aiming at me. Now they’re just aiming at me with the wrong gun.
