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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."
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.
...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.
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.
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
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
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)
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