No Targets, Just Vibes: Tuned Advertising and the Algorithmic Flow of Social Media

Abstract

Digital advertising’s cultural surround is algorithmically tuned. The popular narrative about digital advertising is that it is hyper-targeted and customized. In this article, we argue that digital platforms’ targeted advertising is more productively understood as tuned advertising, where algorithmic models optimize the resonance between ads and consumers in a continuous rhythmic flow of images, videos, and text. We develop the concept of tuned advertising by drawing on a study conducted with 204 young people from the Australian state of Victoria, where they sent us over 5,169 screenshots of alcohol, gambling, and unhealthy food ads they saw in their digital feeds. We identify five different “vibes” in the collections of ads they sent us that reflect different subjectivities and practices of consumption. We argue that digital platforms create a mode of advertising organized around tuning the vibe between ads, content, and users.