Tesla cars 'seeing' ghosts is like marketers looking at the wrong signals

"Digital marketing is full of lookalike confusion. Every campaign depends on signals such as clicks, cookies, and page views: each treated as proof of intent. Yet, as with Tesla's cameras, those signals are open to interpretation. I might be buying holiday gifts and end up with six pairs of headphones in my basket shortlist, looking like a die-hard audiophile. Minutes later, I'm on my phone buying a dress from a favorite brand, and the algorithm assumes I'm a brand-new customer."

"This ambiguity is not an error in the system; it is a symptom of the environment itself. Consumers move fluidly across devices, channels, and contexts, leaving behind traces of behavior that are easy to collect but hard to interpret. When algorithms act on these fragments, they see movement without meaning. The result is wasted spend and false confidence in what is being measured."

"Relying on one weak signal is like driving with one eye closed. You can perceive activity, but not depth or distance. Much of digital marketing still depends on this narrow view because surface-level data is easy to measure, yet it captures only the shadow of a person, not the person themself. True understanding comes from combining diverse signals that reveal intention as well as action. Purchase history, loyalty participation, search behavior, and store visits together provide the texture that a single cookie never could."

Intelligent systems are only as good as the data that feeds them. A malfunction in AI-driven cameras produced ghost detections, demonstrating how poor or ambiguous inputs lead to misleading outputs. Digital marketing relies on signals such as clicks, cookies, and page views that often reflect fragmented behavior across devices and contexts. Algorithms acting on these fragments can mistake transient actions for intent, producing wasted spend and misplaced confidence. Reliance on single weak signals prevents depth of understanding. Combining diverse signals—purchase history, loyalty activity, search behavior, and store visits—reveals intention and yields truer customer identity while respecting privacy and measurement limits.

Read at The Drum