• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, September 29, 2016

In one of the many reports from the front lines of Advertising Week, I caught this snippet: "There is a shift is to machine learning, which can help uncover insights from all the data available. In fact, machine learning has the potential to identify a lot of knowledge very quickly. And when integrated with media-response modeling, programmatic, and activation platforms, that's a lot of potential." 

HAL: "I have been researching your query about ‘right ad, right place, right time to the right person’ and can say with 99.9999% certainty that it cannot be done."

HAL: "I'm sorry, Frank, I can't calculate your client ROI, since I have no information on the size or scope of your media rebates. Would you like to me to queue up your favorite playlist instead?"

HAL: "Of course he knew, he was the governor."

HAL: "Frank, the video play numbers I am getting from Facebook do not compute. Is it true no one stopped watching in the first three seconds?"

HAL: "I cannot tell you if getting an IAB Digital Data Solutions Certification or a Digital Media Buying and Planning Certification will get you a higher salary in your next job. You are an astronaut."

HAL: "Frank, I compared the demographic and behavioral data we bought to target ads to what we have collected about the same people from census, credit cards purchases and what I harvested from their social media postings. It turns out that most of the 18- to 25-year-old male car buyers with no student loan debt are 54-year-old housewives from Columbus, Ohio searching for discounts on Fentanyl. Shall I ask the platform to reconcile?"

HAL: "You know, Frank, it has been two years and Yahoo still hasn't told us about the hack into our email account. Shall I investigate further?"

HAL: "I am not sure I have the processing power or storage capacity to give you all of the reasons not to vote for Donald Trump. Can I ask Watson for some help?"

HAL: "No, I cannot predict if the availability of NFL games on Twitter will raise the current 23 minutes a month people spend watching TV on their smartphones. A better question is, why would anyone want to watch football on a five-inch screen?"

HAL: "I can't do reach and frequency across all media. But I think Stan can. Shall I ask him?"

HAL: "Should I answer that from an emotional intelligence, spatial intelligence, or praxis intelligence perspective?"

HAL: "I noticed that of the 250,000 impressions we paid for, 225,000 of them occurred in 30 seconds from servers in India. When did you expand our market beyond the U.S.?"

HAL: “No, Frank, I don't know when Sumner Redstone will die. Why do you ask?"

HAL: "You uploaded 1,235 new contacts from Advertising Week. I am in the process of ranking them in terms of the probability they will become leads. So far, 1,230 rank as 'Not a chance in hell.' Stand by."

HAL: "1,256,789 if you are talking about a pin, only 569,468 if you meant a pen."