Speaking Sensis

So, you think the advertising industry is changing? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

There used to be two certainties in life – death and taxes.

Now, thanks to technology, there’s a third – change. Sweeping, relentless, accelerating change.

A couple of years ago, I came across a New Scientist article that put today’s evolving advertising industry into sobering perspective.

In “Human 2.0”¹, the celebrated inventor and writer Ray Kurzweil² mapped the evolution of computer power against good ol’ grey matter. He found that, in the 110 years since the first electromechanical ‘computers’, all we’ve done is make your garden variety PC slightly faster than an insect’s brain³.

When you put it that way, it hardly seems inspiring stuff, with all due respect to the computer industry (and insects).

But it’s what Kurzweil points to in the future that really makes you stop and think.

“We won’t experience 100 years of technological advance in the 21st century; we will witness… about 1000 times that achieved in the 20th century.⁴”

Kurzweil’s point is that technology evolves exponentially. Computers are now advancing so rapidly that by 2020, US$1,000 will buy you processing power about as fast as a human’s brain.

And a few decades later, that US$1,000 will get you the same number of operations per second as every human brain on the planet.

So, what’s this got to do with advertising?

Everything.

In recent times, technology has driven unprecedented changes in advertising.

A decade ago, who would have picked that more than nine million Australians would be so reliant on the web that they now use it every day⁵?

And who (Dick Tracy aside) would have picked we’d be advertising on video-enabled mobile phones smaller than your palm and as powerful as a Pentium computer?

But these are just baby steps; taken on the back of computers as fast as insects, dial-up modems and an industry that’s still coming to grips with what is possible.

The upshot is this. In the next decade, consumers will begin doing things with media we couldn’t possibly conceive today.

Which means advertisers will too.

So, for now, a closing thought.

If you’re thinking of slowing down sometime soon, forget it.

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1. Ray Kurzweil, “Human 2.0”, New Scientist, 24 September 2005, pp 32
2. For more information, go to www.kurzweilai.net
3. Ray Kurzweil mapped the number of operations per second performed by US$1,000 of computing power (based on 1999 dollars).
4. Ray Kurzweil, “Human 2.0”, New Scientist, 24 September 2005, pp 37
5. Roy Morgan, Single Source Australia, April 2007 – March 2008. Base: Australians 14+.