Can marketing be associated with art? Many people will disagree, thinking of marketing primarily as a tool behind various capitalist and consumerist mechanisms, which certainly has nothing to do with art.

Or does it?

There are those who think that marketing principles and methods can contain some art after all. That was one of the main ideas behind the project called “Click Click Sale“ – an audiovisual piece which presents a different side to marketing. The piece was created by Gordan Kreković, AdCumulus CEO, and Antonio Pošćić, a software engineer at Enghouse Interactive. “Click Click Sale“ aims to show the beauty hidden within the profit and metrics-oriented field that deals with, after all, social and socially-connected experiences.

Online advertising system as the source of aesthetics

Data for the project was collected by an online advertising system, Affiliate Software – a digital advertising solution for affiliate programs and networks developed by AdCumulus. The software automatically enriches each click and conversion with various properties relevant for the understanding and optimization of marketing performance, such as users’ geographic location, device information, tracking parameters, and different identifiers.

The data set collected from Affiliate Software consisted of ad clicks and conversions tracked during the period of one day in all campaigns of a selected advertiser. The information was audiovisually represented through sonification and dynamic visual representations. It was done directly and objectively, without significant interventions.

Turning data into art

The sonification process relied on the mapping of each data record into a grain of sound whose timbral characteristics (dynamic changes, spatialization, duration, etc.) were directly derived from the attributes of the sonified click or conversion. Therefore, clicks and conversions produced different sounds. The resulting soundscape was synthesized by summing all particular elements in the microsound time scale.

The visual part of the piece was implemented as a dynamic representation of conversions and clicks, whose direction and progression were determined by the data associated with users’ actions. In other words, conversions and clicks that shared similar values, such as geographic location or the type of electronic device used, were grouped together and pushed towards similar areas.

In the same manner as users collectively shape market demand, small and individually inaudible grains blend together in a rich cloud of sounds. A chronological order of clicks and conversions shows that collective online activity results in a lifelike constant evolution. Moreover, it shows the dynamics and the life of people who never interact directly, yet continue interacting in an intricate dance of information usually visible only to the marketing system.

As a side effect, the “Click Click Sale” project once again showed that intimidating buzzwords such as “big data” and “market metrics”, often associated with dehumanization and manipulation, can be interpreted in an artistic manner and experienced as the impressive and captivating phenomena they really are.

Another side of marketing

Data collected from Affiliate Software pose meaning, indications, and commercial value, but only after they have been systematically analyzed within a given context. In the same manner, this audiovisual piece, its aesthetics, concept, and form, become complete only when faced with the observer’s expectations, prejudices, and personal aesthetics.

Although “Click Click Sale” precisely represents abstract data, it also represents individuals – real people who have interacted, clicked, and converted. However, the project does not attempt to analyze associations and connections in the data, search for meanings or come to judgments or conclusions about the data. Similarly to the system that we are observing and projecting, the value of “Click Click Sale” will be determined by its own “consumers” and their discussions.