The AI = automation hype cycle is coming, and it gives me prog jà vu

Back in 2011-2014, programmatic made promises of automation, efficiency and precision. It also gave everyone job loss anxiety - but in the actual reality that played out, more humans had to end up sitting there and fixing the botch jobs 'automation' created - mainly because of us humans paying more attention to sales decks and underestimating technical reality. That doesn't even mention the huge influx of early day pretenders & opportunists storming in and taking a quick cut, making it a moot effort trying to be a good independent actor. 

And we haven’t even mentioned the really sad one - the invention of programmatic ended up being the direct cause for publisher assets being diluted, data misuse, photocopying and overall value dilution. It was supposed to be the engine, instead it became misused artillery for opportunists to make a quick buck. Scale ate quality for breakfast, but we were still literally needing to open up targeted campaigns that were sold in to run of network, that’s how bad it got.

All of this points towards an investment VS payoff problem which will be how programmatic will be remembered to now. So much so that most of the largest global publishing houses are so pissed at programmatic’s failed promises that direct sales are BACK BABY!

This is why walled gardens kept and keep winning, as in reality interoperable automation struggled to be accountable across open web complexities.

Programmatic = ‘Automation’

Back in 2011-2014, programmatic advertising was sold as ‘automated trading’ that would eliminate tedious manual tasks​. No more faxing IOs, no more getting people wasted at Cannes to do business - algorithms would do it all! In theory, robots were replacing people and making ad buying cheaper and faster​. I had to literally run seminars at Nine assuring sellers they still had a job in 2014.

I was one of the first programmatic traders at Microsoft in 2011 and 'automated trading' was hilariously counterproductive and manual. Having recently ducked behind the scenes of a trader’s day job, not a ton has changed. Optimization and reporting is still similarly botchy 14 years on. I did an actual audit 2 years ago and found that the average programmatic campaign takes nearly 3x more human hours to run when you compare it to a similar fully managed service, when all parts of the campaign construction and optimization are considered. 

So in practice, everyone quietly built larger teams to babysit the algorithms. Programmatic ad ops specialists found themselves glued to their seats “on the platform all day, tweaking pacing, adjusting white lists, making real-time adjustments” just to keep campaigns in line​.

The irony was hilarious: robots needed humans help to tie their shoelaces.

And that was fine in a world where you could pay adtech workers more than they were producing in profit, but we’re seeing a lot of humans be shunted from adtech businesses right now in the name of profit. The doers are all being let go. Which begs the question, who babysits and fixes the next round of misguided tech tools until they’re ready to walk?

It’s groundhog day, AI is here to save the day.

AI is the latest savior on the scene and it brings a familiar sense of deja vu. AI writes your media brief! Our product is based on machine learning, don’t you know? I can hear the joyful cries of a thousand product marketers whose slides are now full of new fresh promises.

If you’re chuckling, you’ve seen what I’ve seen. We’re already seeing big media businesses use AI tools to headline the upfronts. We’re seeing them brag about using OpenAI to create a new breed of product when we all know how that’s going to end. As per my last post, we’re even trying to replace first party data with AI in some cases. But AI and emergent data technologies are infinitely more capable at ‘thinking’ than the first wave of platforms were, that is not in question.

So here we are, it might just be groundhog day. The names have changed – DSPs and SSPs will give way to supply curation agents and bidding agents – but I am torn on what happens next. Will we be able to use automation totally differently this time and bypass all of these issues, or is history likely to repeat, but this time with fewer humans in the loop and more unchecked hallucinations in tow?

Will AI actually just outright replace people and do it really well, or are businesses about to end up having to sift through AI lemons they’re got sold to be reliant on?

I consult and help media/content businesses build defensible moats using AI, data, identity and tech across multiple geos, and I’d love to hear your thoughts. DM me if you want to chat at [email protected].