AI isn’t getting great PR right now. Depending on the headline you read, there’s a 10% chance it’ll wipe out humanity, invent a bioweapon, hack a government, or spend its spare time chatting with other AI systems in a plot to bring us down. But, and this is important to note, this is also the same technology that insists there are two Rs in “strawberry”, so we probably shouldn’t panic just yet.
I work in out-of-home, so I have a stake in what follows. But the more interesting story here isn’t about my industry – it’s about what happens to the physical world when AI starts making more of our decisions for us.
Where we are seeing quite a lot of impact is in how it has changed the way we navigate information, evaluate options and make decisions about where to go, what to buy, which route to take or what to do next. That has significant implications for brands, because the path from curiosity to decision is starting to look very different.
Much of advertising has been built around a simple journey: see something, search for more information, then decide. This has been particularly relevant to out-of-home. A billboard or digital screen captures attention, sparks an idea and increasingly prompts us to reach for our phones. People behave differently when they’re out of home. Their search and social behavior becomes far more action-oriented – closer to doing something than idly browsing.
