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Advertising Via GPS
tebubaga writes: "Now that jamming has been turned off and GPS has gotten that much more accurate, CNN posted this story describing how advertisers are drooling over the ability to deliver ads in real time to your cell phone, pager or PDA based on your location as reported by GPS."
What do you weigh on Mars?
No Laughing Allowed!
Does this mean we could get rid of all of those ugly billboards?
For the sake of all of man kind, may I say NO NO NO NO NO, you idiots. Tv commercials are ok, free internet with them ads is pushing it, not on my Cell Phone!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are already (or will be in near future) mobile phones which have integrated GPS capabilities. See for example Benefon Esc! from "the other" finnish mobile phone manufacturer. This phone doesn't yet enable "push-style" location based services but I'm sure future WAP enabled versions will. See the rele vant specification from the WAP forum.
and also because hackers broadcast intercepted cell phone transmissions on the f'in net and at DEFCON...
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
So you like the idea of being constantly told what to consume?
1. gps works really badly in cities. 2. with gps, you know where you are, but the system does not. it's just a bunch of sats your handset uses for reference. privacy concerns are only relevant if you use the cell network. or enable the system. even then, you're just a spot. i don't think we're gonna see non-voluntary cellular cookies. 3. there's no transmit channel. they can't send you anything over gps, it has to be cellular. 4. if you gotta look at ads, it might as well be for ones that are relevant. where can i get a hotel around here?
mudweasel "and i wudda gotten away with it too if it hadn'ta been for you meddling kids."
When I receive something in the mail (countless crappy credit card offers, vacation property...) I tear up the contents, and put it back in their postage paid envelope. This COSTS THEM MONEY. I'm not sure what effect this has, but I have noticed that in recent months, I get FAR fewer of these.
When I get flyers on my car or the door to my apartment, I call the business, and tell them specifically that I will never do business with them because of their advertising methods. I think if more people did this, and they got some idea that people DON'T like this (and I think most people don't), then they might think twice.
Maybe not.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
I'm getting pretty fucking tired of these bloodsucking pricks constantly smearing their advertising feces all over any place that isn't already occupied by a physical object. What makes them think we give a shit about a Pocket Fisherman? ADS EVERY GODDAMN PLACE WE GO. Email, websites, around the rink in a sports game. I'm sure they'd tatoo ads on the backs of newborn babies if they could. It's a fucking sickness. I haven't seriously looked at anyones ads for more than 1/12th a second in a VERY long time. They've saturated my environment so much that I just TUNE THE FUCKERS OUT. You wonder why people get violent over spammers.
Screw humanity. >:S
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
The device could track your location throughout the day, then upload that in a single burst. In a single burst, the device could be sent an archive of ads, one of which is displayed when the device detects itself in a specific location. Memory is cheaper than data transfer in this situation, I would speculate.
-------
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
It *may* happen. So what if the FCC has mandated it? Big deal.
Most of the schemes that implement E911 (as it's called) rely on the fact that the handsets will be in a co-operative network. That means that the remote unit has to *want* to be located (i.e. the handset has to help the system locate itself).
There are a few E911 systems already out there now, and they all require cooperative networks. And they all use clever, but different (and, oddly, competing, and non-interoperable), schemes to implement their co-operative network.
I haven't read the mandate, but I bet that it doesn't specify *which* E911 implementation will be used. So, does that mean that *all* handsets have to work with *all* E911 location paradigms? Everybody has to replace their perfectly good handset with a new one? Hardly.
I would imagine that handsets that don't support *any* of the E911 cooperative network schemes will become a growth industry. That's all I would buy.
Moreover, most of the current E911 systms are waaaaay too expensive to any munipality to afford. If they can't afford it, they can't afford it, and they won't buy it. The FCC goofed on this mandate, and I doubt that it'll ever see the light of day.
Now, you *could* do E911 in a non-cooperative network paradigm (where the handset is just a handset, and it doesn't help itself be located, (or even know that it's being located)), but that's very, very, very difficult, especially for PCS, CDMA, etc., phones. It's being done, but very crudely. If and when this technology gets better and cheaper, we can all kiss our civil liberties goodbye.
I believe that we should start putting ads on the desks at schools, on those white suspended ceiling panels, and on floor tiles. We can sell the spots for $100 a month. What a great way to get some extra cash for the school!
Can you sence my sarcasm?
My point was, knowing location is an important ability for mobile communication. So, better ability to communicate location is a Good Thing -- provided that steps are taken to protect your location from simply being handed out to destinations without your knowledge and consent.
It doesn't seem right that they can advertise over my own cell phone or GPS...How is it that I _pay_ for the service, or i _buy_ the equipment, but I end up paying more by viewing these ads?
I would also like to know who gets the money? I think that if they are going to put ads on the cell phones and GPS units, then they should hand them out for free, they will eventually pay for themselves from the advertising money. Or, they can give us a certain allotment of long distance calling for each ad viewed? I just don't like the idea of paying for something twice.
The anti-salmon
Constantly broadcasting your location is a serious invasion of your privacy. Even people who don't pay attention to privacy issues now will probably pay attention to this.
Theoretically it wouldn't be much of a privacy issue of only the wireless service provider knew your location. As a matter of fact, by using some sophisticated triangulation algorithms, they track your cell phone to a few hundred feet now, without GPS.
The problem with that is that there'll probably only going to be a few large advertising firms (like DoubleClick for the Internet now) and so they'll get a pretty good idea of where you go, even if there are some gaps in the record. They'd be able to learn quite a bit about you: where you shop, who your friends are, where you work, etc.
Not that some multi-national corporations can't learn that kind of stuff about me now. However, it'd be a lot harder to piece together information of disparate types. Consistent location information would be much more useful.
Bah. I spend most of my time at work or at home. I have plenty of computing and communication power at both locations. Maybe I should give up all my mobile devices, or at least the ones that can transmit something. At least at home I'm behind a firewall, to restrict the information I reveal to the Internet. Will I need firewall software for my mobile phone too?
James
No, and I wouldn't use a service that exposed me to such irritations, unless I could filter them out in some way.
I guess this brings new meaning to the term target marketing:) ...imagine the new guerilla marketing tactics that could emerge from this... place your order now, no pressure, we know who you are, we know where your at... take it light
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
GPS is receive only. Yes, your cell phone could have an integrated GPS receiver, and then use the phone portion to transmit your location, but I don't think that's going to happen.
Here's why:
- The telcos still control the cell-towers. So it's gonna cost advertisers plenty of money to have cell phones that are broadcasting your whereabouts all the time, and sending down those adds. I bet the per-view cost of this type of advertising would be prohibitive for most advertisers.
- Battery power. GPS takes 10-30 seconds to lock up satellites, and it needs to be left turned on to hold a lock, so it would be activated quite a lot of the time. That adds battery drain to the cell phone, which is exactly what nobody wants
- GPS is Line-of-Sight. This isn't going to work in office buildings, shopping malls, subways, or even cars. So when exactly are they gonna target you for adds? During the 1.5 minutes it takes to walk from the parking lot to the mall entrance? GPS also performs poorly in major downtown cores, because of "Urban Valley" effect, which blocks satellites that are anything except directly overhead.
- Cost. GPS circuitry is getting cheaper all the time, but even a low-end consumer unit adds more cost to a phone than people are going to be willing to pay for.
Considering the relatively discrete nature of the cellphone, I'd imagine some people might actually pay good money for such a service.
Wasn't there something about Japanese prostitutes using Love-Getty's to attract potential clients?
Like these banner ads up top here. Who actually clicks on this stuff? I bought an O'Reilly book once, and I've seen O'Reilly ads up top before, but the two weren't connected. I needed a book and someone recommended theirs.
I'm watching the NY-Boston game, here. Who else remembers when the sign behind the plate was "NO PEPPER"? Who actually buys stuff at Modell's just because they saw the sign behind Varitek?
Are ads really effective, or are they just an elaborate scam played on wealthy corporations by otherwise useless marketing people? What would it be like to go a day without seeing them? Seriously, this isn't a Communist rant or anything (this time), but WTF are these things really doing for us?
-jpowers
-jpowers
Hello, Mr. Smith? I'm Officer Martin with the police department. Phone company records show that you were in the area when a car was broken into in the 2400 block of main street about 10 pm. Could we ask what was your business in the area at the time? Were you aware that this area is notorious for drug trafficing? As we have probable cause due to your proximity, would you mind furnishing us with your fingerprints and a urine sample? By the way, the owner of the car is planning to sue the business where the car was parked, and her attorney has issued a subpoena for these records. We'll naturally be turning them over. No doubt you'll be called as a witness. If they find out you were there and didn't inform the police, you'll probably also be the next defendant. Have a nice day.
GPS signals can still be regionally jammed by the government, for national security concerns.
What these telemarketers are drooling over is the ability to acurately track cell phone users. And the technology is improving to do this.
Disclaimer (standard for me). It is late, and I need to get to bed.
do you need an ad for it? I certainly don't
need an ad for Burger King when I'm next to it- the sign is good enough. It would seem that
advertising is most needed when what you're trying to sell isn't at hand. So how else could this be used?
-bugg
The problem with your plan is what happens when I've got a bunch of stores in a row all broadcasting their ads. Do I get the equivilent of spam on my cell or PDA with all their ads that I then have to sift through? People already drive like shit just dialing phone numbers on their cell phones. I wouldn't want to be on the road whilst they were scrolling through their cell spam reading the ad on their 3 or 4 line display.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
What does removing jamming have to do with it, surly GPS was acurate enough to send close-to-pin point ad's anyway?
Whats wrong with billboards and bus stops anyway?
Syllable : It's an Operating System
This has it's good side and it's bad side. I can see the positive applications in the from the advertisers point of view but come on do we need to be bombarded @ every instant w/ mind numbing ads!! ack...someone said earlier "just what I need SPAM on my cell/pager" hehehe so true..it's coming...our cars will be telling us to wash w/ Armor All soap and fill up on ESSO gas and be sure to buy a Mars bar while your in the gas station ug.. I was watching this tech show they other day and this is where I first heard of this new application for GPS and they were calling it Airvertising. So, I can see that it now has and acutal "name"......it's coming! Wireless ads through the air aaah! no place is safe now!
Actually, I think I would like to be first in line to break the kneecaps of anyone stupid enough to start spamming me via pager/cellphone/pda. Isn't it bad enough to _have_ these appliances, and have them interrupt you at the worst time? Aren't telemarketers bad enough? I'm beginning to think that the Internet-plug-in-the-back-of-the-head idea is a bad one... imagine being CONSTANTLY bombarded with advertising while you're trying to think...
---
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I don't think most advertisers realize that if they start beaming people adds for their product over a GPS, especially if they are trying to do something important(fly a plane, disarm a nuclear warhead) They would be most likely to NOT buy their product. Banner adds are enough, advertisers should learn some self control.
...Force people to give all their money to corporations, and eliminate all this huhu about marketing and products.
Get rid of the middle men that are advertising and the actual product. Things would be much more effecient that way...
Oh wait! That would be Human Slavery Controlled by Corporations!
And I thought you were going to say... Oh wait! That would be called the government.
-- Virtual Windows Project
Just imagine evil advertisers always knowing where you are and then delivering the "perfect" ad to you. That doesn't sound that great to me. They could also easily use this information to have a good profile of what you do everyday, where you shop, etc.
Besides, even without advertising on my PDA/cellphone the screen is still small enough, so please spare me that.
"It may be your sole purpose in life to serve as a warning to others."
if its free, suck it down?
...
Don't 'swipe' - use cash.
Get it from your own bank's ATM, as your bank already has all of your purchasing info anyway.
Hmm, Cell phone/GPS Maquerding?
its not paranoia when they really are out to get you
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So does this mean when I'm walking in certain parts of town I'll now get XXX ads from the nearest prostitute? Loooovvvvely.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
...Force people to give all their money to corporations, and eliminate all this huhu about marketing and products.
Get rid of the middle men that are advertising and the actual product. Things would be much more effecient that way...
Oh wait! That would be Human Slavery Controlled by Corporations!
Guess we will have to keep the marketing/consumables buffer in place to retain the illusion of a Democractic Republic and Freedom.
Why must everything always be so complex; Guess it is true, TANSTAAFL.
--NightHawk
Tyranny = Government choosing how much power to give the people.
___
Go near a Frye's and you get an advertisement for COMPUSA. Many even a 10 minute special.
Head towards a McDonalds, get an ad beamed to you that gives you $1 off your next purchase at Wendy's, good for 20 minutes.
Fight Spammers!
oh, was that first post??? I can never tell on this damn thing.
Not to mention that a judge issuing a restraining order will mandate that the restrainee must carry one of these phones at all times to track his/her whereabouts.
There was a greater spirit of community "helpfulness", too. A few years back, you could find a page that would have diagrams and downloads for whatever (case in point, patterns for medieval-style clothing, for SCA people). Nowadays, all you'll find are price lists and Sales Associate links to Amazon & co.
Five tons of flax.
If they actually start advertising to GPS equipped cell phone users why don't we
a) put something around the GPS antenna that would block the GPS signal, but not the telephone signal.
b) get some sort of device that transmits random noise on the frequencies that GPS uses, but only with enough power for it to effect our phone.
c) something else that could disable the GPS
This would have the effect of denying the advertisers knowlege of where you are so that the best the could do it feed you generic ads.
I can also see businesses jamming the GPS signal around their establishments to prevent customers from reciving ads from competitors.
Yes! that's it! Of Course!
Patent things that you don't want, such as 'A Novel Method of Informing Drones that its Time To Buy'.
Then we'll have the corporations trying to dismantle the Patent System. Beat them at their own game - and turn the patent over to FSF.
.
Not that I can see this working affordably at present, I don't doubt that it would happen, and even at all the privacy concerns, I think one of the biggest one is that sometimes you just don't want to be bothered. I know a couple people who work as EMT's, so they constantly have beepers on them, ready to run off to aid anyone that requires immediate medical attention. If these people have advertisements running inbetween important messages, who knows.... an ignored message could equal the welfare of another human being? Although I am being a tad drastic, problems will arise from this system, and I can't see what good will come from it.
This is a bit off-topic, but where are you getting this from? 999 is used in the UK (IIRC), and quite possibly in other places too, but in general each country has its own emergency number(s). The EU is trying to standardize on 112 for its members, and 112 is already working in some of them, and on all GSM phones. Other than that, I believe that you'll find a variety of numbers used throughout the world.
Isn't position tracking inherent in the idea of a cellphone? Or do they just not have the infistructure.
Its still weird though, I know most americans are lazy, but I still doubt that many of them will go for something that both sends them more adds and reports their position to people or whatever
Just stay away from the Real Media(TM) brand Pager MP3player/pager....
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
AFIAK, GPS could really only tell you what city you were in, not your exact street 'location'. And if you want to send really targeted ads...
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
So soon K-Mart will know where I am, and many other corporate and/or government interests who I'd much rather have just leave me alone. The world of targeted advertising is reaching the disgusting point of being able to carefully profile and document your actions and infer your like and dislikes.
:)
Heh, now since the accuracy of the GPS is no longer and issue, K-Mart will also know whether I'm in the bathroom or livingroom, of standing outside a smoking...
Or maybe I'm just paranoid... 36hrs of coding does that.
Spam is Spam, what's the big deal ? Won't we just ignore it?
this is mostly from memory, maybe someone can follow with numbers..
:) Mine gets at best 4 meters epe (estimated position error). Unless you'ce got a high grade reciever, you're not gonna get much better. 4 meters is a big swerve. :)
1) accuracy depends on signal strength, how many satatlites you're tracking, and their relative position to each other. 5 sats in a triangle type formation will give you more precision than say, 6 in a near straight line across the sky. There's also a ionsphere induced error, which can be corrected but is normaly not on lower cost commercial units like mine. Avaition units can correct for that error, or military units can use a seperate encryped signal to correct.
2) On a descent recivier, (ie it can hold good sat signal strength while in motion) speed doesn't make much difference. Unless you go faster than 250mph, iirc, where civilian units shot down.
3) I'd not try to drive down the road with most gps systems.
David
bash: ispell: command not found
This sig left intentionally blank.
TANSTAAFL was integral to the plot of RAH's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".
A virtual beer to anyone with an earlier reference.
I'm cool like a fool in a swimming p-p-pfft-pool
This doesnt concern me, and coule be useful, but as long as I can turn it off, or sue the relivant company for unsolicited SPAM, just like you can now over internet spamming companies.
Thats what it comes down to, they have to give you a way to turn it off, else they're gonna get sued like nothing else, it wont take long, either.
You would seriously think they would have better uses for GPS, eg. finding someone with a mobile phone who is lost in the woods, rather than having a 'general' idea and launching a seach & rescue team. But then, that would be useful, and not give the coporate giants money, now wouldnt it.
But my point was just that Slashdot (apparently) gets some significant amount of revenue from the ads, and I like Slashdot, thus I have to accept the idea that the ads (though I may never see them) may be providing something I like. Which is a lot better than most banner ads I run across, on sites that just plain suck.
No Laughing Allowed!
--
This space left intentionally blank.
I may be vastly misunderstanding, but wasn't the former innacuracy enough to still do basic navigation? .5 miles away from a store (say you're going 60 mph, that gives you 30 secs to make up your mind), and sends you an ad, does it make a difference if you're .51 miles or .49 miles fro mthe store? Surely they don't expect closer than that to be effective?
The point being, if Advertiser X knows you're
On top of that, I believe someone mentioned that GPS is a passive sorta thing, you odn't broadcast where you are, you just triangulate... seems much better ways for advertisers to tracker your every goddamned move (annd at least in the good ol' US, there doesn't seem to be a damned thing stopping them!) than GPS... why not some mod to your car, cell phone, implanted ID (that'll come out soon as a protect the children/increase the peace/some dangerous criminals wev) that isn't restricted by the military's whim??
between those cards every major store uses to track your purchases and those dmaned doubleclick ads, why use this? How much more do they need to know? If they know every thursday you go to Safeway at 9:48 to by ice cream, why not just send you an ad for 30% of fat 9:00??
Anyhow, i've already sent out one e-mail I'll regret tonight, hope this isn't post #2 that shouldn't have been sent...
---
I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age, nerds are in.
They're still in, aren't they?
---
I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age, nerds are in.
They're still in, aren't they?
just slightly off the topic for a second: Just before Christmas my wife was getting her hair done. The time of her appointment was 11:30 AM. As she sat in the chair and her stylist was hard at work. A man walked in asked for a manicure and was told he needed an appointment (everyone was painfully aware at this point that this guy was very out of place) He said he would go somewhere where he didn't need an appointment and walked out. Moments later (according to my wife the door had barely closed) he ran back in, pulled out a gun and stuck the gun against my wifes head. He then ordered everybody to get down on the floor or he was going to kill her (my wife). In the terror of the next three minutes this guy ordered my wife to collect everyones wallets and jewelry and kindly place them in a purse. In fear for her life and everyone elses (there were 14 ladies and stylists there) she complied. What the guy didn't know was there was a cellphone in the purse. Surprisingly most people are completely unaware that their cellular phone in the purse was trackable. Many law enforcement agencies have these capabilities. The police tried to track him down and within the hour recovered the phone and the empty purse, no bad guy or my wifes wedding ring but... My point being that the capability to hunt you down and follow you is already here and in use and most of us voluntarily carry around the transmitter without thinking about it. ... the wheels of justice are sometimes too slow... they still haven't caught this guy and suspect him in 14 other similar robberies...
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Honey, I don't know why the phone keeps inviting me back to the Pussy Cat Palace. And I certainly don't know why we keep getting ads for low airfares to Tijuana.
There's scarier stuff around, though. Under the guise of better 911 support (emergency services calling in the US; most of the world uses 999), the FBI is pushing the FCC to require the next generation of digital cellphone standards to be able to locate you within ~50 meters. (Some cellphone standards can get pretty close to that by triangulating sites through the network; it's interesting if your phone can do it as well, especially if you don't need to buy GPS to do it. And better GPS makes it easier for cell sites to get precise timing and know where they are precisely so they can do this much more accurately, which is especially important for microcells that you might deploy lots of.) They'd really like to be able to ask your phone where it is without notifying you or asking for permission; there are some people in the cellphone standards committees who are quite annoyed about this, and many who don't see what all this privacy fuss is about and of course it makes it easier for 911 to find you if you're hurt. The interesting trick is that if there's a GPS in the phone, they can ask it where you are without having to leave it on full time, though it does take a little while for the GPS to locate satellites, especially simpler sets that don't locate them in parallel.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Think about it... Every time you use your credit card, or ATM card, or "shopper card", the (hypothetical?) central database knows that you were at some fixed location at that time. My debit card bill already gives a pretty good history of my travels. It doesn't tell you everywhere I've been, only the places where my card got swiped... but then, that's really what advertisers are interested in, anyway.
MSK
GPS-pin-pointed ad near Bally's:
GPS-pin-pointed ad near Starbucks:
There's a lot of potential there...-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
While I don't necessarily agree with the tracking of the user via GPS, I think it can be useful for guiding users to a certain location (eg, Yahoo! Maps) or advertising that XYZ company 3 blocks away is having a 50% off sale on penguins.
But the problem is... how do you direct the user? Telling them "go 2 blocks north" is going to get people lost. Sure, it's their own fault they don't know which way is which, but none the less it will be a problem. Most people have trouble getting a map right side up, let alone knowing which way is north (without a compass -- or maybe even with one!).
I can see it now:
...
...
driving in car...
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP: (phone) 32 New Text Messages received... : Make money from home fast...
{vibrate}: (pager) Congratulations! You have been selected to receive a free subscription to..
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP: (phone) Dear Valued pets.com customer, we just noticed that you're near our affiliate store that sells catbox liners...
{vibrate}: (pager) Hi! This is jiffy lube reminding you that you're overdue for you oil change... we're right on the next block.
{vibrate}: (pager) Safeway is your low price headquarters and we have cantaloupe on sale for
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP: (phone) We've lost our lease! Everything must go! Sofas on sale from $999
{vibrate}: Dear Macy*s Valued customer: Don't miss our semi monthly extra 10% off sale! Take the next exit to get to our store.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP: (phone) \/\/e 0wN J00, B1AtcH!
Yeah, cool. I can't wait. Whoopee.
It happens now, to some degree.
You are paged to call some number, maybe it's flagged urgeant, or some sort. but it's really a scam, or someone making you call to listen to an ad on your nickel, or call extra long distance for a big phone charge.
sounds like it is time to expand the anti-fax advertising law to include pagers, cell phones, and the like.
too bad I can't set up my cell phone to charge the caller for incoming calls, unless I hit a function key or enter a pin on my cell phone.
actually, that sounds like that would be a good idea for another service to offer. I would not mind having it right now. sort of like a 900 option for regular home phones, that you can turn on and off as needed.
certainly within the technology the telcos offer these days....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If you lived here you'd be spammed by now ?
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
Think of the huge marketing databases that are going to be built around this if it ever becomes a reality. They're going to know where you drive everyday, whether or not you are stopping for their ads, what else you bought when you purchased the item advertised (if you use your credit card), where you normally shop, your travel patterns, and a whole pile of other things that we can't even begin to imagine.
Marketing people look for that magic connection called the Beer-Pampers theory. Wal-mart keeps one of the largest marketing databases ever, over 300 terrabytes. They found that customers that buy pampers usually buy beer also, and vice versa. So they put the beer and the pampers in the same aisle and increased their sales on those two products by over 80%. This will be a goldmine for companies like Informix who make one of the best databases for Data Warehousing.
What happens if the government gets ahold of this data, which they will. It'll be like playing SimNation for them. Make some changes in propaganda, or laws, or whatever else and observe the changes. This is pretty scary actually, welcome to the world of the high-tech Gestapo and ultra-effective targeted marketing.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
PIZZA HUT AD ACCIDENTALLY SENT TO CHINESE EMBASSY
Beijing Reportedly "Furious" Over Uninvited Capitalist Intrusion
BELGRADE, SERBIA (AP) - In what the US State Department is calling an "unfortunate mistake", the Belgrade embassy of the People's Republic of China was the target for several Pizza Hut advertisements earlier this evening. Originating from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth at an altitude of several hundred miles, the advertisements had been ordered by Stanley Blyleven, Pizza Hut's vice president of marketing. The messages were received by an on-duty secretary who forwarded them to her immediate supervisor.
"We are so sorry," explained Blyleven. "We thought that we had targeted the Swedish embassy." Blyleven blamed the targeting snafu on "an outdated map that had tomato sauce smeared on it." "It was certainly not our intent to intrude on the Chinese embassy," said Blyleven. "We did not want to intentionally inform the Chinese people about our fresh, plentiful, mouth-watering toppings, our heaping pounds of zesty cheese, or our tantalizing variety of crust styles. It was a mistake; it was simply an honest mistake."
A spokesman for Chinese president Jiang Zemin stated that the incident had "upset him deeply, and could possibly represent a near-irreperable rift in US-Sino relations." State Department spokesman James Rubin had been in contact with a representative of Zemin, but little progress was made in the quest to quell the outrage in Beijing. "The Chinese government views this as a capitalist intrusion into their governmental affairs," reported Rubin. "Although we have explained several times that this was a mistake made by Pizza Hut, we feel that this incident may have been a serious setback."
President Bill Clinton appealed for calm and a mushroom/pepperoni combo with extra cheese.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Sure, advertisers could do evil things with access to cell phone/PDA GPS info.
But it could also be useful for individuals. Especially drunken ones. Ever pass out and forgotten where you've been? just retrace your GPS coordinates! No, it won't tell you all the stupid things you did while you were drunk, but at least you can retrace your path of chaos.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
47 USC Section 227 seems to apply to GPS-triggered wireless advertising. If it does, then what the CNN article describes may be illegal.
In particular, section (b)(1)(A)(iii) says: "It shall be unlawful...to make any call using...an artificial or prerecorded voice...to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call."
This paragraph also applies to an "automatic telephone dialing system", but it doesn't appear to me that a GPS-triggered dialer would fall within the definition of that term in section (a)(1). So the marketroids could escape this clause by using real people.
Section (b)(3) establishes a right of private action "if otherwise permitted by the laws or rules of court of a State", with statutory damages of $500 or actual damages, whichever is greater.
--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
As it is at the moment, I cannot walk for more then three minutes in any direction without stumbling across an advert, a Nike sign on someones shoe, a fly poster on the wall, painted Taxi Cabs, radio ads, sides of buses,TV ads,massive poster ads does it not seem a little extreme to you?
If this does become a reality then it will invade what little time we do have away from these major company slogans. Imagine sitting at home tapping away on your computer *beep* "you havn't moved in 2 hours, you can nip down the road to get a cheeseburger for £.80"
Its getting too extreme, surely having such a flood of marketing lowers peoples attentions of it, we dont need the constant stream of adverts where-ever we go, allow us to use out own free will to choose items for God sake.
Whats next? Sending adverts into your head while you sleep? (Taken from a Futurama episode...)
Regards.
If we can't play God, who will?
Under the guise of better 911 support (emergency services calling in the US; most of the world uses 999)
Actually, Most of Europe uses (or will be using) 112. The UK used 999, but i think they're using/going to use 112 too.
Advertisers are probably not the only ones excited about GPS tracking of cell phones.
Since many of us have cell phones assigned to us by companies we work for, I imagine some companies would be interested in tracking employees who have phones as well. Companies already have considerable rights in recording phone conversations, tracking web usage, installing security cameras in premises, and collecting various bodily fluids. I wonder how long it will be before they make a deal with their cellular service provider to provide a log of where employees have been Monday through Friday from 8 to 5.
I suspect within a few years we'll hear of someone who was fired for inexplicately being away from the office during business hours, courtesy of their cell phone records.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
(This was on Dave Farber's list.)
..."U.S. patent office has conditionally allowed Cell-Loc to claim the
:-)
If the press release is to be believed, it's a patent on
using a wireless handset to deliver information that's
dependent on where you are, such as telling you the nearest MacDonald's.
- handset-based services granted now, network-based pending.
I'm not sure how broad their patent claims are,
as opposed to their marketing PR (:-), but it sounds like it's
way over-broad, steps on lots of things that should be obvious enough
to anyone skilled in the trade, and sounds like Yet Another
Stupid Patent Office Trick.
Their Press Release www.cell-loc.com
delivery of handset-based wireless location content and services over
the Internet as its property, regardless of technological method employed."
Unfortunately, after downloading the half megabyte of animated Web Designer Candy
that serves as their main web page, it wasn't possible to get to any
real information, but YMMV...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Consider the other possibilities of highly accurate GPS, some of these already in place in various forms.
1. Digital travel guides that automatically load the information for the landmarks near you. You could adjust the scale, so if you're standing at 42nd Street and 7th Avenue in New York you might get entries for the US, New York State, New York City, Manhattan, Times Square, the Zipper, or Achmed's newsstand on the corner.
2. You're an architectural student. You've got video goggles and a strap-on computer (not rod-shaped, people). You walk around the city seeing what is an exact digital representation of what you would ordinarily see, all in 3D, except you can choose to view the steel structure, cut-aways, the 33rd floor, the bedrock, textural details, or even a time-lapse video of the building being constructed. All live, on the fly, on the street. As you walk, the video adjusts. Buildings could be marked with little icons at the entrance to indicate their compatibility with the technology.
3. Big-ass games of blind man's bluff. Cover your eyes with a backwards ski mask. Turn on the speaking function of your GPS device. Have it give you instructions on how to get where you're going.
4. Real-time traffic monitoring: in a dense city, GPS devices could be installed in municipal vehicles. Time and rate of those autos could be reported via other radio link to central computer, redistributed to everyone else's GPS and overlaid on a map telling them where the best routes might be found. Of course, this might turn into infinite game theory iterations.
5. Auto-tuning of radios (kind of like RDS) to your favorite type of preset music choices. GPS devices don't have to be attached to maps and expensive equipment.
6. An excellent source of new stats for golf aficionados: GPS in golf balls. How far off, exactly, was he? This, of course, goes well with my idea for a transparent basketball with a camera and transmitter inside.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
You left out the best part of the scene...
After you buy your beer, open the can, and head down the road, in the next block you get pulled over, because..........
The ad was paid for by the City and the police were automatically notified when you stopped for a certain period of time to respond to the ad. The city manager has noted a 1000% increase in revenue from fines since the new advertising campaign went into effect.
So will your GPS receiver or cell phone also tip the cops off to the fact that you're driving with an open beer in the car?
--
They can triangulate your cell phone's position from the relative signal strength measured at nearby towers. That's accurate to about a hundred meters. Closer than that, they can simply detect your phone as a radio source.
Remember, your phone transmits periodicly, so the cell system knows what tower you're near, to route incoming calls.
"It's a bit of a marketer's wet dream," says Kyle Shannon, cofounder of Agency.com, an Internet marketing consulting firm.
What a wonderful phrase, just the level of couth and wit I would have expected from an advertiser. I bet he uses phrases like "let's run it up the flagpole and see who salutes" too.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
But the cost of cel phone service is still expensive enough (especially since some plans also charge your incoming calls as well as outgoing) that if you signed up for service without any mention of ads, would this be comparible to the Unsoliciated FAX law?
I wish there was something that we could do as a nation (or united world) as private citizens to contest the increasing invasive advertizing. Companies think it works, but when you advertize for common necessities, people are going to buy them anyway, and a boycott is probably impossible since the items are required.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Hope you don't drive on the same roads as I do.
That technology adds no cost to the phones themselves. GPS adds cost and complexity to the handsets, so I don't think the GPS solution will take off at all.
Carry a cell phone? How long do you think it's going to be until it's going to be a sub-dermal chip? First for parolees, and people under restraining orders, and then, well, we just need to make sure that the general populace is being good... Then again, we just need to use cell phones if we want to know where in the wide brave world our citizens are...
Didn't we just have an article about how "targeted" advertizing had never proven to be cost-effective?
:P
How much does it cost to put in place a system that tells you a McDonald's is just around the corner? Per user?
How much does it raise sales at McDonalds? Targeted email advertizing makes a 3-5% difference, which isn't nearly enough bang for the buck. Traditional mass adveritizing, pure and simple, creates more results per dollar.
Of course, it doesn't give marketing guys wet dreams about their billing rates
"You currently have 30 credits on your Doubleclick Shop&Talk(tm) account. To add more credits, please take offramp #75B and purchase a tasty Extra Value Meal at McDonalds #87734."
Just what I've always wanted.
Bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh, bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh!
Bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh, bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh!
7th Design
From what I've read so far (and I haven't read all the comments) Everyone seems to be overlooking one basic fact. GPS signals are a service of the US Defense Department and as such are forbidden to offer commercial advertising, ie. if you check out a military website you will notice a absence of advertisments. This is because if there were advertisments it would appear to the average user that the products or services were endorsed by the military. Working for the military in the Middle East, I have access to the DOD television service, AFRTS, there are also no commercial advertisments on it, because it would imply endorsement. The GPS signals would fall into the same situation.
No, I haven't given in, and I don't like it... but if it turns out that they know exactly who I am and exactly what I've purchased everywhere I've been, and they've figured out already what I need, they might as goddamn well know where to deliver it. I can picture it now: as each of us drives around, we'll be chased by UPS and FedEx trucks.
Does it creep out anyone else that your wireless provider is going to be able to track you as you go about your daily business?
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Maybe the bright side of this is free, add driven cell phone service?
Let's say that we want to find a street corner is Seattle, do we have to wait an extra two minutes while it downloads an animated banner at 9600 bps?
--Nicholas
You have ads all over the place, tv newpapers radio etc. They are to support the costs of running these things. Makes tv basicly free makes radio free and a paper cheaper to buy. What is the reasoning to getting ads on a cell phone? You've already payed for it. Does it lower your monthy bill
First, why do Beer and Pampers get sold together? The theory is that the wife picks up the groceries in the sedan, and leaves the bulky stuff for the husband (often driving the SUV). She asks the husband to pick up the Pampers, and while he is at it, he also gets the beer.
Wal-Mart uses their datawarehouse as a HUGE competitive weapon. K-Mart uses the same technology (see below) and have not gotten much competitive advantage off it. The reason is that Wal-Mart analyze detail data, but K-Mart analyzes sample branch.
Wal-Mart uses extensive research to open new branches. This includes demographic, driving distance, average household income, ...etc. They know that the average customer drives 17 minutes to shop at a Wal-Mart, and passes two K-Marts and a Target on the way!
By the way, the visionary behind their datawarehouse (Randy Mott) left them after two decades, and joined another company.
By the way, their datawarehouse is probably the largest commercial database, and it runs on NCR Massively Parallel hardware (Worldmark), and the really unique Datawarehousing Optimized database called Teradata
I know, because I used Teradata, and work for NCR :-)
Recently, Travelocity and E-Trade joined the who's-who list of Teradata users (British Airways, Bank of America, Wal-Mart, Delta Airlines, Royal Bank of Canada, and tons more).
Basically, if you have a large amount of data to analyze, (specially 500 GB or more, the more the better :-), don't use Informix, nor Oracle nor IBM DB2: Teradata just shines!
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
This is an example of using the wrong technology to solve the problem. If the actual goal is to deliver targetted ads to a consumer based on his/her location, the right thing to do is to use a local solution, not a global one.
If all stores acquired short range transmitters that continuously broadcast their advertisements, and phones (or other PDAs) were equipped with simple receivers, then simply being in proximity to the store would allow the PDA's owner to get the messages. Each store would be able to provide custom messages without having to bother to send ads and location information to some sort of central server. This would give much greater flexibility for stores, as well as removing the need to broadcast fine-grained location information to random advertisers.
I imagine technology like Bluetooth could easily be adapted to do this. It almost seems like the only reason to use GPS is to make use of an existing (centralized) infrastructure...
Both cigarettes and cellphones cause cancer. Shouldn't we make laws against cellphones identical to cigs since they are a known to do the same thing? How long will it be before people start dying of second hand cellphone radiation? Smokers get harrassed because of laws that were made because of the knowledge of the effects of secondhand smoke. Harrassing cellphone users with spam is the wrong way to go about this. We should just make them have thier own section of the restaraunt, ban them in malls and have separate breakrooms. I suppose its also a big coincidence that you have to be 18 to buy either a cellphone or a pack of cigarrettes?
Delivered straight to your cell phone or GPS receiver...
"We know where you're going today."
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Does anyone remember when the web was useful? i.e. when you went surfing from home and you got lots of stuff that you were interested in? Now do you see what's happened when corporations move in and plaster banner ads all over everywhere?
Do you think that your mobile phone is useful?
nal 11
This is dumb. You could easily do the same with existing cellular technology. In most modern cities, a cell covers only a street or two at the most so it's not like it would be any less effective.
I can see this being genuinely aggravating. Wouldn't it just suck to run out of TP in a public restroom, only to have an ad for Charmin pop up on your palm pilot? oh... the irony..
Why, we'll make Rock Ridge think it was a chicken that got caught in a tractor's nuts!
I love powers of 2. 128th post!
Speaking of which, this is a pretty frigtening story. I hate the idea that, like computers, it's getting to where you have to have a cell phone, much like a computer, and now it's almost going to be like a national ID card. Dear god. How long before the sub-dermal implants become a requirement?
How many nuyen was that phone again?
I can see it now:
"Dear Consumer, according to our GPS data, you've been commuting 1.5 hours every day. ... Enjoy your longtrip home
We have a new house for sale coming up here.
*beep* You're 1 mile from it
*beep* You're 0.5 miles away
*beep* Driving by now, c'mon take a look
*beep* Your loss
Hi,
would someone please so kind to post some specifications for GPS? How accurate is it exactly? On what physical effects does this accuracy depend? What are the limits and what are the reasons for these limits? How does accuracy decrease with the increase of of the receiver's speed?
I wonder if cars can keep themselves on the road by using GPS... if not, maybe by using some local/terrestrian GPS senders?
Regards,
Mark
Those bastards, why can't they just leave us alone?
--ikedidawg, proffesional eater of cheese
What a world we live in!! How awfull can it be that people send us ads wherever we are, on our computers, when we drive down the road, as we watch tv, as we work everyday....
Perhaps the advertisers should pay for the right to send us adds on our cell phones/pagers. I see free cell phone / paging service on the horizon because of this.
... I mean, for one thing, selective availability did not introduce *that* big an error margin. But more importantly, for a long time people have been able to reomve selective availability themselves. Many GPS receivers supported a "correction signal" which told the receiver exactly what the current error value was. This signal was available from places like the coast guard and other sites that broadcast it. By catching this signal and feeding it to your GPS, you could get non-SA-accuracy GPS.
So have things really changed that much?
kugano
If you don't like the idea of people knowing where you are, JUST DON'T USE IT !
That will work as long as you can find a cellphone that doesn't broadcast your position. That also assumes that those that do will make that clear before you buy and sign up.
I'm no an expert, but doesn't GPS receive only? This would require the pda to constantly transmit your location, as gps doesn't do that.
I think.
pls define?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
This could be VERY cool! You could get coupons on the fly. And imagine walking by a store, thinking about going in, but deciding there isn't anything you'd really care about in there. Then your phone vibrates, you look at it, and there's an ad for a really good deal on say, some sunglasses you might be intersted in at the store. If you hadn't had that ad, you would have never known.
People think that it would be an annoyance and that you'd be forced to recieve those ads. I don't think you'd have to worry about it. There would be many people who didn't like it, and if all companies make you use the ads, a new company will pop up and offer service without the ads. And imagine if the companies offered to say, take $5 a month of your service to agree to accept the ads. I guarantee that would NOT hurt any companies that offered that. It'd be really cool ifyour phone would actually read the ads to you. That way you could use it while driving and not really endanger anyone!
One last thing...this actually is another step in a possibly good direction with advertising. That is, advertising thats tailored for each person. For example: You've chosen that you will take the ads-on-demand through your cellphone. You also agree to allow them to track your responses to those ads. That way, after a month or two, you're only getting ads about food, computers, and electronics, but nothing that you aren't interested in. If this trend continues, then more people will be more responsive to ads, simply because they are about stuff they care about. How many of you are like "Damn....another freakin' commercial!" when its about a computer? I know a lot of you do that, but I'm guessing most of you don't. So it ends up being better for us, and the advertiser!
So maybe its not all that bad! Gotta look at the bright side of things!
Blake
Seriously, man.... if you get these creative impulses often, write 'em down and share 'em with the rest of the web. I'd -love- to see a site of short stories (or even snippets thereof) with this sort of insight. Hell, I'll give you space on my server for it! :)
Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
When I do see a banner ad that attracts my attention (maybe one out of the hundred thousand I see a month) then I make sure I stay away from clicking through the banner ad, and instead browse directly to the site. Kinda my way of fighting advertising..
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
I searched the comments and no one seems to have mentioned this yet, so I hope this is relevant. But adveristment/information through mobile phones based on your location (known via the closest cell broadcast) is already done in some countries like Hong Kong. Instead of displaying your location (eg POST CODE is UK) it sometimes displays special discounts in the area. If it's short enough you can just scroll it, or sometimes you have to phone a free code (eg #88) to get more info. The scenario is similar to the comment below.
http://slashdot.org/commen ts.pl?sid=00/05/26/124207&cid=34
He started a cell phone provider, and it now has somewhere around 80% market share in Zimbabwe (really, how many cell phone providers can there be?).
And as it was time for presidential elections to be held, guess what started popping up on all of the cell phones? Political messages endorsing the revolutionary candidate. It started as a message from one user to another, and it kept getting passed along until everyone in the country with a cell phone had gotten the message.
The guy who owns the company claims not to have started it, but he certainly didn't do anything to stop it, even if it was taking up his network's bandwidth.
I would post a link, but the WSJ is for-pay-only, sorry.
WHY:From the eshilon style monitoring system on your cell phone (logged to give advertisers better feedback on their adds effectivness)
:-)
Wow - you mean someone will actualy know why I do what I do?
Do you think they would tell me if I asked?
--
So how much will this slow "update" times?
Let's say that we want to find a street corner is Seattle, do we have to wait an extra two minutes while it downloads an animated banner at 9600 bps?
Hey, if you want a nightmare scenario:
May 27, 2002; Monday
Hey Bill!
Late for work again. The traffic lights were jammed.
I'm beginning to agree with your post on Slashdot: let's hire sacrificial hacker felons to take down the WorldWide Advertising Net!
I can usually tolerate the extra ten seconds per intersection as the electronic billboards optimize themselves for the viewing audience, but at rush hour, there's just not enough bandwidth, and the billboard delays throw the entire traffic system out of sync.
We should never have let Time-Warner subsidize our traffic lights. (Good thing my boss never knows when I'm late. His wife made him move to a fancy suburb -- they have Microslack, poor bastards. Now his commute is total obstacle course. They even rig cars to crash for the rubberneck factor. MS doesn't even pretend their crashes are accidental anymore)
Speaking of Microslack crashes, that's why I was late. The Advertising Networks servers went down. I was stuck staring at those damn 'sponsored' BSOD's for over an hour.
(BTW, I have to find a commuter route with a more compatible demographic -- if I have to see another Viagra ad, I'm getting a gun and doing some natural selection on those Viagra delivery boys on their little blue bikes and blue tights. I don't care if impulse purchases are up, I'm sick of them banging on my window. I mean do I *look* like I have that kind of problem? Heck no! I told them it was a one-time thing, because my wife was curious, but do they take me off their database? No! Instead they put my wife in. Man, when she found out I let that datum slip, I didn't need Viagra for a week -- because I was sleeping on the couch.)
Well, I gotta sign off. The phone's ringing. God, I Miss the days when I didn't have to answer! But half the office has that GPS Callee ID now, so they know damn well I'm sitting right here.
_____________
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
I don't want advertisers to track my location. Will their privacy policy allow them to sell this info to anyone? the government?
If I ever buy a wireless PDA, I'd gladly pay extra to disable GPS-tracking/advertising. If I opt out of this feature, how will they guarantee it's disabled?
The problem with this technology is it closes the "last mile" of the privacy gap.
WHO:From the data on your frequant shopper card
WHAT:From your caller ID number and credit card information.
WHAT:From the data on your shopper card
WHERE:From the GPS information triangulating your position with a time stamp.
WHEN:From the time stamp in the GPS signal.
WHY:From the eshilon style monitoring system on your cell phone (logged to give advertisers better feedback on their adds effectivness)
___
Other uses...
1. Tracking bracklets for parolies
2. Tracking for traveling employees
3. They are aready using it in cars,
It won't be long before you will find them
in radios for ad use.
4. Cell phones for kids that track their
movements.
AdFuel
Perhaps companies would offer free cell phones with monthly and calls included for smart-GPS advertising. Hey, it may be more annoying than... anything else out there... but it's free.