New Ads That Watch You

Pandanapper writes to tell us Yahoo is reporting that if you find yourself watching an ad on a video screen in a public venue, the ad may be watching you as well. "Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer's gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity -- and can change the ads accordingly. That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens."

So...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

My dear marketing chums, what ads will people with their middle fingers extended at the camera be forced to enjoy?

Extra credit goes to the first person who gets served an NRA or Soldier of Fortune ad, if you get my drift...

Go ahead... nobody else is looking

[Adrian Lopez]

I wonder this might be used for nefarious purposes.

if (minor_is_alone)
  play(cigarette_ad.avi);
else
  play(tickle_me_elmo.avi);

Re:If this means...

[needs2bfree]

I agree. I actually prefer targeted ads. The less makeup commercials I have to watch, the better. I dont even care about the purchasing history, as long as when im with my friends, an add doesnt shout "needs2bfree, Reduced price on Viagra, next isle"

TMI?

[macraig]

At what point does Big Business learn enough about human psychology and "psychohistory" [wikipedia.org] that it's malignant and no longer arguably neutral or benign?

News like this is a reminder that we passed that threshold some time ago.

Step 4: Lawsuit!

[RyoShin]

So how long until some mother sues a company because their adbox recognized her 14 year old son as a 20 year old and offered him a discount on condoms or cigarettes?

(Yes, I know that US law forbids cigarette ads in various medias.)

Soviet America aka The North American Union

[gd23ka]

In the coming North American Union aka as "Soviet America" this may well
become a reality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii64ErBotvA [youtube.com] ,skip to 2:00 (1984)

"Smith? 6079 Smith W? Yes you! Bend over! You're not trying, watch me!
There Brother! That's what I want! Anyone under 45 is perfectly capable
of touching his toes, I'm 39 and I've had four children. We don't all
have the privilege of fighting in the front line, remember our boys on
the Malabar front, think of what they have to put up with."

In Britain people are already getting used to having orders barked at
them from surveillance camera operators. The 1984-style Televisor is only
one step further from that. Oh and the technology is already there too,
Apple just filed a patent that puts a camera _behind_ the screen on their
notebooks. You don't see the camera and worse you can't just tape over it
either.

Re:"Minority Report" strikes again

[seidojohn]

Actually, the people who made Minority Report (the movie, not the story) got their idea for the way it would look and be used from an actual project:
http://oblong.com [oblong.com]

From the page:

The similarity is no coincidence: one of Oblong's founders served as science advisor to Minority Report and based the design of those scenes directly on his earlier work at MIT.

Oh boy!

[IonOtter]

A new and amusing use for a mannequin! I bet I could keep that adboard busy until the processor or video card blows up!

Re:It could be even better...

[radtea]

Of course this will cause the advert model to crumble

The major product that advertising sells is advertising, and it does so by creating a belief in advertising's efficacy. One of the reasons why the Web is such a hard ad market is that it is so easy to measure the outcomes of ad placements via click-throughs. Now that online ad revenue is tanking expect to see more people arguing that click-throughs are a bad measure of ad performance, but I think the cat is too far out of the bag for the lying bastards... pardon me, ad execs... to recover.

The first response of ad purchasers to reactive ads of this type is to see how few people ever bother to look at what their ad is showing. The second response should be that every ad everywhere should feature a mostly naked woman and/or man, as that is all that anyone of either sex will look at.

Re:Ha! I'll show them.

[Orion Blastar]

Put up a one-way mirror. Make sure the side that you can see through allows you to watch the screen, while the mirror side reflects the camera back on itself for an infinite loop! Whooooopie!

Re:Salesmen

[Inda]

My street in the UK is a "no cold calls" street. We all thought it would be a complete waste of time when the local council introduced it. No one believed the cold callers would take any notice.

Two years down the line, I've not had one caller interrupting my dinner, not one knocking late at night and, this is the biggest bonus in my eyes, no religious callers on a Sunday morning even thought the by-law doesn't apply to them.

One notice at the beginning of the street with the police station's number at the bottom has been enough to put everyone off calling.

Now if the council could just collect my refuse weekly I'd vote them in again.

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