Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/01/ad-copy-written-with-ai-outper.html
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I’m betting our copywriters aren’t going to be pleased to hear about this.
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“If you go to any marketing creative out there and you ask, ‘How did you come up with that, why did you use that word and not that word,’ they cannot actually answer. With Persado, there is a mathematical answer.”
Bullshit. I am not a marketing creative, but I can tell you why I use each word I use. And the phrase ‘mathematical answer’ is a tell.
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Many consider using “You” and “Your” more compelling in direct marketing. See Claude C. Hopkins. 
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I have this urge to acquire cash from the equity in my home. Which is really weird since I don’t own a home.
Man, that bot is good.
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I keep seeing all these ads for HELOCs and the last time it was like this there was a huge bubble and crash.
Maybe borrowing against your house is stupid. I certainly don’t want to trade in my living space if I default.
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How many members of the focus group were AIs ?
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How many of the clicks were generated by bots?
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They probably weren’t pleased about A/B testing either. But metrics trump gut.
Until you realize your metrics weren’t measuring what you thought.
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True, all too true.
Now that AIs can write ad copy, and test the metrics, I wonder if AI will eventually write the most clickbaitiest headline in the world, making a headline so irresistibly clickable that nobody can resist, leading to deadly consequences - the clickbait equivalent of Monty Python’s Funniest Joke in the World.
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Soon-to-come sequel to “Mad Men”: “Mad Machines”.
Hard-drinking, like Bender, but they wear impeccable suits.
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What a name.
I’m imagining their strapline:
“Persado. We take ‘u’ out of ‘Persuade’.”
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It’s kinda what capitalism does. Innovation to hack consumer demand. in food it’s sweeteners and salt and artificial coloring. Here it’s using machine learning to tap into other sorts of emotional reactions in our brains. This is a depressing but really inevitable innovation.
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I don’t think that the promise of some unemployed advertisers really makes up for the risk of more effective advertising.
Is there any way that the not could gut the industry while only appearing to be more effective?
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“a New York-based company that applies artificial intelligence to marketing creative,”
Was it an AI’s idea to use “creative” as a noun? Just get out.
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BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
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If human copywriters are drafting copy like this, the robots deserve to win.
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Boils down to the difference between the clinical sounding nouned command verb “access” and the more accessible (sorry) and engaging “you can unlock”. Plus the clickbaity but effective “it’s true” line.
It’s true — Persado’s AI outperforms a copywriter who should really know better
What does that mean though? Is it some kind of bayesian analysis or probabilistic calculation? “ABC is x% more effective than XYZ according to metric y” is still better than most of the cargo cult advice I get about writing
