God know I’ll probably change my tune about this when I’m an even older geezerette than I am now, and want to visit my doctor through the miracle of telemedicine, rather than creep over to MGH on slippery bricks after an ice storm. But for now, I am so not liking the invasion of the webcam, as chronicled in a recent Economist article.
They may not be able to do any body snatching quite yet, but online ads that can catch your eye and “read your mood” are coming,
…thanks to the power of image-processing software and the ubiquity of tiny cameras in computers and mobile devices.
That means that an ad that you’re looking at can decide just how interested you are, and start (virtually) following you around with companion ads, special offers, etc. (And I find the ads that seem to pop up because of some search you’ve done were annoying. Can’t wait to see what’ll come from the Nazi memorabilia auction I stumbled across while looking for Graf Zeppelin ephemera. (Don’t ask. You’ll find out soon enough.) I do hope that nobody out there actually thinks I’d be interested in a Graf Zeppelin cigarette case that belonged to Herman Goring, or a swastika-engraved set of silverware that von Ribbentrop used. Seriously.)
Not all the uses of the new eyes-wide-open technology are soul-sucking advertising-related. In addition to health care, there are security, education, and other applications.
But admen are among the first to embrace the idea in earnest. That is because it helps answer, at least online, clients’ perennial carp: that they know half the money they spend on advertising is wasted, but they don’t know which half.
WWDDD?*
Today, this sort of ad-reaction emotion gauging is done in research settings, not in the natural, real-life world that’s just you, your computer, and its webcam. But it’s moving online.
Realeyes, which is in the UK, is one of the companies making this possible. Their technology is used to:
…gauge a person’s mood by plotting the position of facial features, such as eyebrows, mouth and nostrils, and employing clever algorithms to interpret changes in their alignment—as when eyebrows are raised in surprise, say. Add eye-movement tracking, hinting at which display ads were overlooked and which were studied for any period of time, and the approach offers precisely the sort of quantitative data brand managers yearn for.
Yes, and precisely the sort of information I really don’t want them to have.
I really, really, really don’t want anything to do with ads that interact with me. Let alone – and this is no doubt coming – ones that do a retinal scan, identify me, sort through data on every thing I’ve bought online from Peapod and L.L. Bean, every URL I’ve ever gone to, and decide that I’m the perfect candidate for a miniature harmonica or tax forgiveness. Let’s hope that those URLs are so diffuse and crazy that even the most powerful data-crunching engine won’t be able to categorize someone who, in a five minute period, searched for SMEG refrigerator, Rick Perry dye job, bad Boston accents, and Graf Zeppelin ephemera. (By the way, that last one yielded an auction item listed as a “piece of Graf Zeppelin skin”. I do hope that is a piece of the Graf Zeppelin airship’s skin, and not a piece of the eponymous Graf Ferdinand Zeppelin’s skin. Ewwww.)
I find the idea of these sorts of “I know what you’re thinking” ads an incredible invasion of my privacy. Sure, we’re assured, you’ll have to give consent to Walmart and P&G using your webcam to have their way. But I say, hah, hah, to that. I’m sure when this all gets revved up it will be you’re having to opt out, with implied permission given by your having a webcam sitting idly by. When it could be put to a more productive use by spying on your reactions to ads.
All I can say is that Post-it notes have a habit of falling off, so this presents a very good use for the common household Band-aid.
Here’s not looking at you, kid.
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*What would Don Draper do?
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