Computers Make Good Ad Execs

philg sent us linkage into a really amusing little story running over at Yahoo about computers generating advertising. Its pretty amusing since it showed that patterns could be used to generate commercials that were just as creative as ones that came from actual creative people. I worked at an ad agency for a few years, so this one made me grin.

Comments

2 comments

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

First, the examples given are a little misleading. What, exactly, does it mean for a computer to be "creative"? Clearly they didn't "program human psychology" into a desktop PC and have it spit back out "bullet-shaped cars suggest speed". More likely they just created a computerized version of a madlib. Get a bunch of nouns, verbs and adjectives. Pull at random. Evaluate the "idea" thus produced.

Which brings me to my second comment: This type of "creativity" is exactly analogous to biological evolution. The ideas generated by the computer map to mutations in a genome. The humans doing the actual selecting (note the word!) of good from bad map to natural selection. I suspect the hit rate of the computer is probably on the same order of magnitude of the chances of a random mutation being beneficial.

It is well-known that mutations role in evolution is not all that big--selection does all the real work while mutation just provides (some of) the raw material. Conclusions to draw are left as an exercise for the reader.
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein

Re:These are creative ads?

[Paul Johnson]

For example, "Intel Inside" was heralded as this marketing marvel, yet I see it and think: "Ok. Great. Thanks."

The reason that "Intel Inside" is a marketing marvel is not the cheesy logo and four electronic twonk noises, its the way that OEMs are pushed into including it.

Intel provide a cashback deal (essentially large discounts) to OEMs who include the Intel Inside logo in their advertising. Part of this is that Intel get to review and approve the adverts before they go out. This lets them place the logo, but it also makes sure that the voiceover says "and its got a 400MHz Intel Celeron processor" as if that were a major selling point.

Viewers think that they are being sold a computer, so they discount what they see about the computer. But the fact that the computer company seemed to think that a Celeron is a major selling point sticks in their heads, and makes them more likely to pick a Celeron-based PC no matter which brand they buy.

It also lets Intel play fast and loose with the anti-monopoly laws. If you offer AMD processors as well, you might suddenly find all your ads being rejected by Intel, and having to pay the full list price for your Intel CPUs.

Paul.