Summary
This comprehensive open access book provides a deep-time perspective on the origins and evolution of data-driven digital advertising. Through a detailed historical analysis tracing back to the 1950s emergence of computerization, it examines how technical specialists in advertising and media progressively blended computation, quantitative methodologies, and calculative logics into a powerful ideology of marketing optimization and efficiency. The book offers crucial contextual understanding of how these enterprises of automated data collection, algorithmic targeting, and pursuit of measurable returns through management science techniques predated and ultimately helped establish the defining architectures and behavioral conditioning of today’s personalized programmatic advertising ecosystems.
Detailed Overview
A series of illuminating case studies explore how practitioners navigating at the intersection of data processing and managerial techniques came to dominate industry centers of power by advocating reengineering advertising through mathematical and technological means. The volume thus provides an indispensable foundation for comprehending modern “adtech” infrastructures by chronicling advertising’s formative adoption and refashioning of automation, data extraction, and targeted influence as strategic imperatives long predating widespread digital connectivity.
Citation and Licensing
McGuigan, L. (2023). Selling the American People: Advertising, Optimization, and the Origins of Adtech. The MIT Press. https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5610/Selling-the-American-PeopleAdvertising. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. The license can be viewed here: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .
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