The Australian Ad Observatory: Key Insights and Future Plans

Launched in 2021, The Australian Ad Observatory project at the ADM+S has pioneered a way to observe the targeting of social media advertising across populations of users. During phase one, the project generated the largest known collection of targeted ads that people encounter on Facebook in Australia – 328,107 unique ads from 1909 participants --and built world-first research infrastructure that involved citizens in doing so. 

The project led to significant findings and impact across advertising in harmful industries including gambling, alcohol, unhealthy foods and consumer finance and misleading advertising practices seen in scam ads, political advertising and environmental claims.

Responding to significant recent and ongoing developments in automated advertising (including Generative AI), Phase 2 of the Australian Ad Observatory will develop approaches for studying contemporary media and information environments, where there are no longer either shared flows of content, nor stable texts. In the second phase of the project we will focus on particular 

groups of Australians who we will work with to donate ads and participate in co-analysis of their experience of automated advertising.

As automated advertising evolves, Phase 2 of the project will examine the integration of generative AI into ad creation and targeting. It will also explore new ways of approaching the study of automated advertising, not only in terms of individually targeted, discrete ads, but as ongoing sequences of ads that are ‘tuned’ to work in tandem with people’s identities and daily rhythms. 

In this webinar, researchers and partner organisations involved in the Australian Ad Observatory discuss findings from Phase 1 and introduce Phase 2 as the project expands on data collection to include the full range of platforms accessed by mobile devices.

Event program 

This event will be held on Zoom