Facebook’s new move to dominate advertising by expanding its audience network to non users got me thinking about its interest based approach, and in contrast Google’s intent based approach. While both approaches have their place in the scheme of consumption, it reminded me something I posted a while back on a completely different context – choices.
We live in an era of (relative) abundance and are spoilt for choices. Consequently (to generalise) it has become more difficult than ever to stick to conscious choices. Increasingly we consume more because we can (largely influenced by our social network) than because we need. I see this as a parallel to interest & intent. I also think that the more data Facebook collects across its properties about users (and non users) the closer it will get to making intent an even lesser part of our consumption than it is now.
But as I mentioned in my last post, Google probably realised this a while ago and is focusing on its AI to create the most accurate and relevant narrative from all the contextual information it can gather. It is also trying to figure out how best it can surface this in all of the new interfaces that are already popping up. This battle is bound to get even more interesting!
