The end of a shared truth?

Adobe and Omnicom announced a new partnership this week. The teaser video is slightly cryptic and the landing page reads like 100% AI slop, no human copywriter ever looked at that website. But underneath, the ambition is big.

Read the landing page more closely and there are three parts: Acxiom Real ID is a database of 2.6 billion verified personal profiles (including you) "enriched with trillions of cultural, media, and commerce signals". Add to that Omnicom's domain knowledge in the verticals: what works, what doesn't, how you talk to people in automotive or financials or pharma. Finally, Adobe's production agents take care of creating the campaign materials.

The promise behind it is a fully automated, hyper-personalised marketing pipeline. Take that to the extreme and you get a slightly different brand story for every single consumer. At least for every one of those 2.6 billion profiles.

Targeted ads aren't new. But what happens when we create an individualised asset for every single person we're trying to reach?

==Did we just witness the birth of a new category of tools that erode trust?== Not just in brands, but in each other.

We've already seen a shift from higher-trust environments to lower-trust ones. In the UK you can really feel it. So what happens if we add individualised messaging for every single human being on top of that? How does that shape trust? How does it shape our ability to engage with each other?

It looks a bit cobbled together and not quite cohesive yet, but if they actually pull it off, it's both the most "exciting" thing in advertising this year and another episode of black mirror become reality.