There weren't any new
bombshell findings in WPP Media's release of the second installment of its "Advertising in 2030"
benchmarking and tracking report since it teased the statistical findings as part of its mid-year forecast update
in June, but it is chock-full of color, texture and context drawn from verbatim comments by the same panel of 60 industry experts who were the basis of its statistical survey.
I'm featuring a
few pull quotes from some of them below, focusing on what I believe to potentially be the most disruptive shift for the advertising industry going forward: the emergence of agent-to-agent marketing,
in which consumer agents mediate with brand agents as a proxy for human engagement. (If you think about it, we're almost halfway there. I mean, really think about that.)
advertisement
advertisement
As you may recall,
that finding ranks third in terms of statistical probability among the 20 not-too-distant future advertising scenarios polled, and when I interviewed the project's author -- WPP Media Global President
of Business Intelligence Kate Scott-Dawkins -- she said her overall takeaway was her own surprise about how much more pessimistic all of the experts have become about the futuristic scenarios since
WPP first benchmarked them five years ago.
Regarding the Whole Foods palm print reference in the headline, that came when Scott-Dawkins briefed me on the most statistically probable scenario
in the new report, which is the likelihood that biometric data will be widely used to access, personalize and secure services.
When I suggested that we're already partly there, thanks to
consumers becoming accustomed to unlocking their phones and accessing their most personal data via biometric fingerprints, facial or eye scans, Scott-Dawkins quipped, "but have you given Whole Foods
your palm print at checkout?"
When I replied I have not, she pointed out that everyone will have to make those kinds of choices based on the "level of friction and frequency of friction" that
biometrics can unlock more frictionlessly.
"Everyone has their own point of what feels comfortable and worth doing," she said, noting, "Like how many times do you open your phone every day vs.
how many times you go to Whole Foods?
You can read the verbatim comments in WPP Media's report, but I'd like to leave you with one more between Scott-Dawkins and I that I don't think industry
pros have fully conceived as we move on the path toward agent-to-agent marketing -- the notion that consumers might gain more power and leverage as new generations of AI assistants work directly on
their behalf to mediate their relationship with brands, or more likely, a brand's AI agent.
"It's almost like everyone potentially having their own cleanroom where they get to decide who can
see their data and how it gets used. I think there are lots of benefits like that could come along with digital assistants being on the consumer side," Scott-Dawkins responded, adding one caveat to
that potential scenario.
"When models are allowed to negotiate with other models, they sort of end up colluding," she explained, adding: "You have to watch out for that, because it always,
always comes back to incentives, reinforcement learning, and how are we maintaining transparency and accountability for these tools and technologies."
Scott-Dawkins said she doesn't know
whether WPP Media will have another update before 2030 actually arrives, but she's toying with the idea of extending the project to advertising in 2035 or 2040 and instead of polling human experts on
those scenarios and outcomes, "maybe we'd ask the AI itself."
