The story of advertising in the 21st century might be summarized in two words: lost control. This is, at least, the conventional, received wisdom among industry professionals who view the technological, economic, and cultural upheaval wrought by digitization through such a narrative prism. In their reckoning, the mass media of the analogue era offered a comparatively predictable model of audience habits, platform monitoring, and content output; accordingly, advertisers functioned as ‘top-down communicators, in control of what information is released, to whom and when, as well as the channels of communication themselves’ (Spurgeon, 2008: 1). Marketers’ confidence and sense of authority within this traditional model might well ...