Reko Mäkelä Product lead for AI-agent development, search and UX
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Signum Decoder

AI reads an ad the way a semiotician does: what the ad shows and what it tries to make the viewer believe.

What changed

Before A reading is an opinion Now A reading you can check

  1. The ad is read on a local machine

    A local vision model reads each ad. Nothing leaves the machine.

    89 decoded ads

  2. From observation to concept

    Every reading moves from an observation to an interpretation and then to a concept chosen from a controlled vocabulary.

    145 concepts

  3. Checked before the archive

    Interpretations are versioned and pass a validation step. Each is presented as a reading that can be argued with.

Problem

An ad builds meaning with signs, cultural codes, values and identities that viewers rarely notice. An AI reading of an ad easily ends up as an opinion that cannot be checked.

Value

The archive holds 89 decoded ads and 145 concepts. Every interpretation is tied to what you can see in the ad, so you can check it and argue with it.

Role

Personal project. Reko built the method on Judith Williamson’s analysis of advertising (Decoding Advertisements, 1978): sociology and psychology applied with AI, and designed how interpretations are justified and checked.

  • Every reading moves from an observation to an interpretation and then to a concept chosen from a controlled vocabulary.
  • A local vision model reads each ad through llama.cpp. Nothing leaves the machine.
  • Interpretations are versioned and pass a validation step before they enter the archive.
  • Material: 89 ads from the Meta Ad Library and Reddit’s r/AdPorn community.

Limits

  • An interpretation is presented as a reading that can be argued with, not as fact.
  • The code and archive are public on GitHub. Ad images are not shown on this page because they are other people’s ads.

Sources