"Smart" Billboards Debut in Sacramento

k0osh.CEOofCLIT writes "Remember the billboards in "Minority Report" that scanned your eyes and changed the advertisement based on your shopping preferences? The Sacramento Bee reports: "Soon, this sign along the Capital City Freeway will be able to change its message based on what radio stations motorists have tuned in.""Yeah, Chris can't spell. He and Rob should form a club. *grin*

wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

TWO misspellings of "Sacramento!"

Re:Privacy?

[cornjchob]

if someone can infer the radio station you have tuned in, trust me: you're going to need more than rf shielding. more like a club to whack whoever's in your back seat listening along. there's no passive way to do this at all. this has got to be some sort of hoax, or the billboards are detecting an external peripheral hooked up to your stereo. uh uh, no way.

Re:Privacy?

[jumpingfred]

Remove the radio antenna. Unfortunately this interferes with your ability to listen to radio stations. You could also design a radio that demodulates the signal in a different way than most other radios do. So that the emissions from your radio will be different than the others.

What about gridlock?

[BrianH]

I drive this section of the Cap City freeway quite often (used to be several times a day, now it's a few a week), and I couldn't tell you how many times I've inched past this spot at about 5MPH. So what happens to this thing when you've got six lanes of traffic inching by, and they're all listening to different things?

Of course, my biggest concern is wrecks. This particular spot is already a popular wreck site, with the Garden highway exit, the CalExpo grounds (location of the yearly state fair and dozens of other big draws), the way too narrow for its capacity American River Bridge and curve, and one of the biggest shopping malls in the region all located off of this short stretch of overcrowded highway. The LAST thing this spot really needs is another visual distraction :\

Downright Frightening

[GT_Alias]

"Once we know what radio station you're listening to, then we know a lot about you," Langeland said. "We know how old you are, where you like to shop, your household income, whether you're married or single."

OK, that chilled my blood. Where does this go next? Combine this with the Homeland Security, Office of Information Awareness, Asscroft, eDNA, and an administration bent on keeping an eye on each and every American citizen's buying/browsing habits...

But that's another (1984) tangent, where they presume they can know everything about you based on a few habits. It still bothers me that I can be listening to a country radio station and suddenly I am pigeon-holed into a demographic that buys jacked-up pick up trucks, loves to hunt, and hangs out at pool halls with break-bar-stools-over-each-others-heads night each and every Friday. And don't doubt that Big Bro won't be wanting a piece of this action to browse for "suspicious activity."

Of course all of this depends on them being able to connect such things as radio stations to individual consumers, but I have no doubts that they are trying their hardest to achieve just that. If you disagree, please re-read the above quotation.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[Anonymous Coward]

This is extremely offtopic, but minority report is a very scary movie to me, for this reason: After I got into some trouble w/ the computers at my school (they basically confused me of hacking their network, and I will admit I did some damn stupid things), I get the following phrase in a letter to my parents: "Admittedly, we are not concerned with what your son did as with what he could have done." That scares me. A lot.

Wow, you do not work with much radio...

[qwijibrumm]

So you're trying to tell me the billboard has a receiver so sensitive to pick up on the internal oscillator in my car radio. Not only will it pick up on this EXTREMELY low level signal, past all the noise and crap in the air, it will take an aggregate of all the cars in the area and figure the most listened to station.

No... First off your method of demodulating an FM signal is all wrong. You got the first stage right. The RF is broken down into an intermediate frequency (IF) by mixing it with a locally generated signal. But then you are all wrong. The IF is not rectified and filtered in an FM receiver. That is for AM.

In FM, the IF is run past a discriminator circuit. A change in frequency is interpreted as a change in amplitude and thus produces the audio.

Finally, even if they did have a receiver that was able to pick up the signal on my local oscillator, en-casing the radio chassis in copper shielding would then definitely keep the oscillator signal inside WITHOUT blocking the signal on the air. That's why you have an antenna.

If it was so easy to tell what radio frequency one was listening to, what would I (as a member of the US Navy) do? The enemy would know what frequencies we were listening to. That would get them one step closer to breaking our encryption and listening to our messages.

Next time do a little research before posting.

Radio

[Shamashmuddamiq]

For example, many people who listen to country music are interested in pick-up trucks and sport-utility vehicles.

From my observations, I find that a lot of ads are not geared toward anything other than which groups of people are most impressionable. That is, they often don't run commercials for those products that are often bought only by people who aren't so susceptible to marketing practices. In the area where I live, there are just as many Mercedes as there are SUVs or Mazdas, but SUV and Mazda commercials run non-stop on TV. I never see commercials for Mercedes, which ties in comfortably with my theory that people who buy Mercedes are not likely to change their opinions based on daft marketing practices.

In addition to that, it's probably a well-researched fact that people who listen to certain radio stations are much more impressionable than those that listen to other stations, or to those who don't listen to radio at all. If you have just as many people driving by the billboard with classical music playing as there are top-40 tuners, you'll probably see lots of Noxzema ads on that billboard, simply because it's much easier to sell something to someone who listens to Britney Spears.

These are mostly just ramblings, but before I'm modded down, I just want to make the point that this is probably a good marketing move. It's easy to figure out which groups of people are most susceptible to advertising, and it's easy to figure out what they're susceptible to. But it may be harder to figure out what to put on a billboard based on that information. Now they have the answer.

Re:Hang on, before you Troll...

[dubl-u]

Integration of higher and higher technology into daily life isn't one of my goals, bucko. Making each day better than the one before is, of course, and sometimes technology helps that. But the mere technology for its own sake doesn't improve anything, or the people in server rooms would be the happiest motherfuckers on the planet.

This goes double for advertising technology. The point of a billboard is to make you think about something other than what you're thinking about when you're near it. Improving the ability of people with money to distract me from my life might benefit somebody, but it sure as hell isn't me.

Combine with license plate recognition...

[eduardodude]

and things start to get scary.

People assume they have privacy in their cars. The article above points out that the stations passers by are listening to are gathered in aggregate, and not linked to an individual.

But could the same info be linked to individuals by optical license plate recognition? Tough in a traffic jam, but maybe source of the signals could be triangulated.

A car radio's RF leakage, if you can call it that, could become another criteria for buyers.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[cperciva]

If it reaches a point where the possibility that an enemy might act becomes sufficiently real, and the danger posed by that enemy's capabilities become sufficiently great, then the only reasonable course of action is to respond with military force.

In that case, it's time for the rest of the world to declare war on the United States of America.

It's hype.

[kitzilla]

Methinks the billboard company is gilding the lily a bit. Tools to forecast driver consumer preferences already exist, and they're no less accurate than electronically peeking at your radio dial.

Animated boards are expensive. That means the outdoor company will only be putting them in high-traffic locations.

Hundreds of cars might pass the board in a one-minute period. It takes about four seconds to absorb a well-contructed outdoor display. Obviously, the data isn't going to be targeted at individual motorists. It'll be an average of traffic flow over some given period of time.

That makes the radio tuner data much less useful. All the billboards will be doing is determining localized listening preference. I gotta tell ya: it ain't gonna be much different than the Arbitron radio ratings already available to the industry.

Properly programmed radio stations have very predicatable listener compositions. Take a Classic Rock station, for instance: the typical listener will be between 35 and 49 years of age. He is 70% likely to be male. He is about 45% likely to be married.

You can take this further, computing the possibility he has kids and his approximate ages. More importantly, you can interpolate this data against retail databases which qualify the likely incomes and buying habits of people in these demographic cells. There are plenty of industry tools which do this, such as Scarborough Research's databases.

That's how the billboard companies will pitch their clients. They'll merge the radio listening data against something like a Scarborough study and--boom--we can see that a certain number of drivers during a given hour will make a car purchase within the next month. The billboard chooses a Chevy ad. If you know where most of the traffic is heading, you can even tag it with dealer info. Awesome.

But the billboard company really doesn't need the gee-whiz realtime radio snooping. It's a gimmick. Their sellers can already work out the data with existing desktop tools.

Imagine that: hype from advertising execs. Who would have figured?

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[marsonist]

I equate it as such. If a formerly convicted criminal, on parole, is running down the street pointing weapons at police officers, must the officers wait until the trigger is pulled to respond, or should common sense be used. This is the situation we are in with Iraq. We have seen his past actions and know that he cannot be trusted. There are many who feel that any potential threat from Sadam could be dealt with via international political pressure. The U.N. has been trying this for over 10 years, with the only result being the suffering of Iraqi people. There are only so many ways to appoach such a situation with most options having been already axhausted.

Re:Parent is a fraud

[LucVdB]

If it isn't good old Samir. Little has changed in nearly a decade - Slashdot, I give you this wonderful Usenet post of February 1994 by Samir Gupta, Ph.D. [google.com]:

Hello, non-SEGA gamers! I am DR SAMIR GUPTA, PH. D, head of SEGA's New Technology research department, and I would like to tell you about some of the wonderful accessories that my department is researching, and will be available in the near future! We will be issuing a formal world wide press release in a few days, but we are posting this announcement to all you USENET users because you are some of our most loyal customers! I hope that this makes you consider SEGA as a gaming choice. This is technology that will forever change the face of video gaming, which is why I am posting this in non-Sega groups as well. I hope that this does not create any flames, but appreciation for video gaming technology as a whole and how far it has come since the early days.

First, we have SMELL-O-VISION. This is a innovative accessory which connects to the modem port of your SEGA Genesis system! This device can synthesize any smell known to mankind, and will greatly enhance YOUR enjoyment of SEGA with special SMELL-O-VISION software! The first will be LEISURE SUIT LARRY SMELL EDITION, by Sierra On Line. (Whew! check out that bathroom smell!) SMELL-O-VISION will be available in late 1995. (We still have to iron out some bugs in the molecular synthesis unit.)

Next, we have HOLO-GENESIS. HOLO-GENESIS is a 3-D laser holographic projection device for your Genesis. It can display 3-D rendered images, in full-color, in real-time. It uses a special Intel/SEGA HGX-1 3-D graphics coprocessor. Coming in mid 1995!

Then, there is SEGA COCKPIT. It is a full-sized replica of a standard jet fighter cockpit, complete with working gauges. The best part is that it will have a hydraulic system, like that found in our arcade games! So you can move n' groove with the action! It is R-360 based, so you
can rotate along all 3 directional axis, and can generate forces up to 8 Gs! Barf bag is not included! First game will be FALCON 3.0, ported directly from the computer game.

Next is SegaTalk. This is a HIGHLY ADVANCED SPEECH RECOGNITION DEVICE, which can recognize voice in real time! It can distinguish context, and can distinguish almost any accent. Preliminary tests indicate a 0.000001% error rate. The secret is based on a secret US Air Force device to let pilots control aircraft weapons systems by voice. We have adapted this military technology for entertainment use. (NOTE: This device is subject to export restrictions by the US Defense Department and will not be available in all countries, due to the sensitive nature of the technology used) Available in fall of 1995. The first game will be Ultima 7. But, in this version, you can actually carry on full conversations with the characters, using your
VOICE! And they talk back to you! The game will have a dictionary of about 500,000 English words, and can recognize very complex grammatical structures.

Well, that's all. I hope I have whetted your appetite for SEGA games, and I hope you look foward to the best SEGA has to offer you in radically new technologies for your gaming enjoyment.

Dr. SAMIR GUPTA, Ph. D
Head, SEGA New Technology Research Department
Tokyo, Japan
[e-mail]

Re:Parent is a fraud

[0x0d0a]

Even more incredibly, from the thread you linked to:

Newsgroups: rec.games.video.nintendo, rec.games.video.advocacy, rec.games.video.3do, rec.games.video.atari
Date: 1994-02-20 19:50:41 PST

Oh brother. I remember seeing basically this same post, by this exact same author, a couple years ago before I quit Prodigy and found the 'Net.

You'd think he'd be able to come up with some better material...

Robert
[e-mail]

Incredibly, this troll has been working on his thread for *over a decade*, and has spanned three different tech discussion forums (Prodigy, USENET, Slashdot).

BTW, I believe Prodigy was only offered in the United States. So, if we assume that both the Slashdot SG, the USENET SG, and the Prodigy SG are all the same guy, he definitely lives (lived?) in the United States. Still no tack on his age, though I'd still place him as an undergraduate college student in the US.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[fatboy]

Did you miss the part where Hussein Kamel Hassan fled that country and told us that Iraq had a crash nuclear weapons program in 1990? Iraq later confirmed it.

Or what about Khidhir Abdul Abas Hamza, who defected to the US in '94 and gave us lots of juicy facts about Iraq's biological weapons programs, programs which Iraq at first vehemently denied ever existed, and then admitted to in the face of overwhelming evidence. The stockpiles found by weapons inspectors included over 100,000 gallons of botulinum toxin, anthrax, gas gangrene, aflatoxin, and ricin, and a side order of almost four metric tons of VX gas.

It's just easier for the "Hate America" crowd to set aside the reality of Iraq and simply take Iraq's word on what they have.

Re:It's hype.

[GospelHead821]

What this allows them to do is change the targetted demographic in realtime. They're allowed to change it as often as every four seconds. If the majority of the sample (60% of passing motorists, according to the article) are listening to a classic rock station, as you suggested, the appropriate ad may be for an automobile. On the other hand, if it's ten at night and the majority of motorists are listening to pop music, then the billboard can be changed to advertise Old Navy or Noxema. The gimmick here is not that the sign accurately targets any particular demographic. The gimmick is that a single sign may accurately target the most prevalent demographic currently looking.