If you’ve ever signed up to a mailing list, liked a post on Facebook, or shared a link, then you’ve handed your data over to the ‘Mad Men’ and ‘Math Men’ of the internet. But just how much of your data are you giving up, what the powers that be are doing with it, and what you can do to protect your privacy?

You’re Soaking In It is a chilling look at advertising in the age of algorithms. Brands are getting deeper into our heads than ever, much more than Don Draper could have ever imagined. The seismic shift from old school, gut instinct ads to the data driven campaigns of today are threatening our private lives in ways few of us understand. We’re all soaking in it, whether we know it or not.

Advertising as we knew it is dead. What used to be quaint is now quantifiable. Best guesses and creative leaps have been replaced by precise, targeted surveillance and ‘Big Data’, rooted in hard science, complicated math, and advanced computer modeling.

The data is often very personal information, used to design advertising specifically tailored to influence you at the precise moment you are most ready to spend. Depending on your personal view, it’s either the height of convenience … or the end of a private, respectful society.

As an entry point and linking device through the film, the documentary joins a grade school classroom where the most impressionable among us – young students – ponder the issues of big data, privacy, freedom, creativity, loyalty & informed consent. The film also looks at the changing social culture of those who’ve become the most important influencers of our time – the 2-martini lunch ‘Mad Men’ to the computer and math scientists of today’s advertising world, the ‘Math Men’.

From Madison Avenue to Silicon Valley, by way of Cannes, we discovery that no matter where you happen to be, or who you happen to be….YOU’RE SOAKING IN IT.

CLASSIFICATION

*This film has been exempt from classification and is restricted to people over 15 years. People under 15 must be accompanied by an adult.