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Net Radio Returns, With Targeted Ads
Mike Hicks writes: "Looks like some of your favorite (*cough*) stations owned by Clear-Channel communications will get their streaming audio back on the web shortly. The new streams will use Internet-only ads targeted at you -- they will ask for your age, gender, and ZIP code." I would love to have the ads for laxatives and pregnancy tests replaced by ones for fireworks and local restaurants -- think they can get that from my age, sex and ZIP?
i've never really listened to online stations...however there is a market for them:
1) people at work who can't bring a radio to their office
2) people who listen to unpopular types of music (most forms of metal, for instance) there's rarely any local radio stations that play real metal, so the only options are listen to cds or online radio...
3) people who are out-of-town and want to get their hometown news...
I don't know what the granularity of zip codes is where you live, but my UK postcode narrows my address to just 11 houses, and some are even more specific.
And you wonder why I hate unions and RIAA.
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It is that which fertilizes the soil, and none can abide the odor thereof.
1) You say you're a 70 year old woman.
Result: You get adverts for bladder control products and funeral homes.
2) You clam you're a 3 year old boy.
Result: You get adverts for Barney and Time Life Warner's "Favorite Childrens' Songs" CD (If you haven't encountered this ad on FoodTV while watching the Iron Chef, it's enough to make you seriously consider slitting your wrists.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
When someplace I don't want to give my address to asks, I have a simple answer
George Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
(Of course, it used to be "William Clinton" until January - I wonder how many Radio Shack catalogs he gets )
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Why not just ask me?
why not? cause they don't have a clue.
If you value your privacy over getting ads that don't interest you, by all means lie. That's what I do. After all, one of the great things about the Internet is that it's pretty close to anonymous as far as marketers are concerned -- for all they know, you really are a 100-year-old woman who lives in Zip code 90210.
They think the right way to segment the population is by age, sex and zip code. It might eliminate some of the most irrelevant ads, but it doesn't change the junk-flooding nature of radio advertising.
Media corporations like Clear Channel view music as a 'product' to be dispensed to 'consumers' and it shows. The lack of interest leaks through the cracks in the shiny facade constantly. They'll put an ad for the Rolling Stones or some such dinosaurs on an alternative rock station. Or an ad for a disco that plays top 40. More importantly, the tone of most ads shows that they are aimed at 'the mass of drooling morons' rather than fans of a particular music. They'll use a music bed which could be expected to evoke nausea from the listeners of that station.
I know someone will claim that these things are inevitable, for economic or other reasons. But in the mid-80's, alternative stations really did reflect their own style more consistently. And AM radio (on the rare occasions I listen to it) does seem to cater more to the mindset of its listeners, with a focus on money, insurance, stocks, etc.
I really look forward to the end of commercial monopoly broadcasting. And I hope that Clear Channel's attempts to extend their tentacles into the internet are utter failures.
4) people who search listings for out-of-town talk shows on their faborite obsession, so they may call in.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
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Well, thanks to x-treme radio station merging, the ads are pretty much the only content not uniformily broadcast to everyone in the country.
Doubtless some people simply have buzzworditis. But it is certainly a viable alternative if there is no local radio station that meets your needs and you have something better than a modem. With DSL I can listen to the one radio station that has a good "americana" program (http://www.wets.org/ spends several hours a day playing music I like that I just don't hear anywhere else, and certainly not on any local stations) without any noticeable affect on my bandwidth for other things. I think that's pretty damn cool, personally. The hype factor will probably (hopefully) die off fairly soon, but the technology will still be useful for niche audiences that often aren't served by local stations.
"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
The good side is that you can avoid ads. targeted to teenagers. They all have that teens-are-stupid-so-lets-make-it-sound-stupid or we-try-to-sound-cool-even-though-we-are-old-and-ha ve-no-clue-to-what-they-want sound.
So say that you are 65 years old, then all you will get is quiet ads. for retirement homes in a low soothing voice. ahh.
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Why not just ask me
Because you are the product being sold to advertisers. Because advertising as it is practiced is a coercive.
Some people I know who work on the technology of personalized ad delivery claim that it will empower the consumer. I'm skeptical that this can be realized anytimes soon given the interest that the ad industry has in being able to have tight control over the choices that consumer's have. Yes, its anti-market but why play fair when you can cheat and rake in the dough?
Why not use live365? Very good selection, and hardly ever any ads. The ads last for like 15 seconds and are only like every half hour. Check them out at www.live365.com
Or listen to Radio 1, good music and no adverts.
All paid for by the British license fee, of course.
...But that doesn't mean I'll tell.
I refuse to use any service that does not explicitly state privacy policy that is acceptable to me.
My personal life is too important to me.
...the article doesn't mention, but I bet they can even get a patent on that "replacing terrestrial advertisements with commercials targeted specifically at Internet audiences."
Unless, of course, Amazon has that one too...
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- A.P.
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"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
first they kick arbtotron out so they have no valid basis for ad rates. Then they start up their own "ratings"company now they charge for for internet ads.. What a good buisness model how do I invest............
If the "internet-only ads" are on a different server at a different IP, like banner ads, what happens to the radio part when the ad part screws up?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
"Online" is a buzzword. Since it's cool to have an online radio station, everyone is doing it. There are more practical reasons, but just like digital radio, the big push is the fact that it's new technology.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
AP - Internet streaming giant RealNetworks has announced that it is working on a new server technology it calls RealSpecific Streaming, which allows servers running the software to serve advertisements based on the IP (internet address) of the connecting party, its connection speed, the referring web site, and other information the server transparently receives from the streaming users. Streaming content allows end users to receive continuous broadcasts (either audio or audio and video) without having to download a large file.
Philip Rosedale, CTO of RealNetworks, says "We are very excited about this new technology. It makes a lot of sense to serve very different content to someone connecting from a T1 (which indicates they're at work) and to someone on a 56K dialup. People on the AOL subnet can be served very different advertisements from people coming off the slashdot site [a forum for expert professionals in the information technology field]. It is a very sensible way of targeting ads, and is good for both the company, which gets more profit from the higher click-through rates, and for the consumers, who get interesting ads without needing to give up any personal information."
Rosedale also said that the new technology should make consumers less uneasy about receiving custom advertisements than when they are asked to give up private information directly. "Consumers are very wary of sharing private information with companies, and frequently would rather not receive custom content at all than give up private information."
When asked whether this new technology was a strategic defense against upstart Clear Channel Communications, which has recently announced that it will be targeting ads based on demographic information supplied by users, Rosedale replied "Who?"
There is no release date scheduled yet for the RealSpecific Streaming server. More information can be found on RealNetworks's web site, http://www.real.com.
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This is not a `giant leap forward' ... it's a little step. They don't even know what to ask yet, so they're asking for the kind of information that they already know how to use.
Give them time, and they'll probably give you a questionaire to fill out, with a lot more specific questions than just a/s/l (age/sex/location) -- but the odds are that it'll *still* ask those three questions.
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Actually age sex and zip are the determining factors for a well known traditional marketing concept called a "PRIZM Cluster".
PRIZM is a geodemographic system that helps marketers find groups of people who exhibit similar demographic and behavioral characteristics-- making it possible to identify and locate marketing targets.
This is based on the concept that "birds of a feather flock together", or in other words, that people with similar cultural backgrounds, needs, and perspectives naturally gravitate toward each other. People choose to live in neighborhoods that offer affordable advantages and compatible lifestyles.
PRIZM Clusters are usually useless in online marketing since you can rarely know where your customers are coming from unless you've already sold them the product. However, if you are giving the ad company a heads up by letting them know what cluster you belond to, they can serve you ads that their marketing research indicates you will be most interested in.
Obviously, PRIZM isn't perfect-- your daily junk mail should be a good indication of that. One of the big flaws in PRIZM is that its data is only updated every time there is a US Census, making it very slow to change. For instance, I receieve a lot of junk mail advertising things in Chinese, because the area I live in was until recently full of Chinese immigrants.
Being able to serve ads to you based on your PRIZM cluster will probably help you more than it will hurt you. If you live in an affluent area (for instance, a "Blue Blood" cluster), you will probably get ads for high-end electronics, sports cars, and high-limit credit cards. If you are identified as coming from a college-town zip code, you may be served ads for beer and textbooks. I really don't think this is something for any of us to worry about...
Targeted advertising has been used now for decades. Mass mailers can't afford to mail their crap to EVERYONE (it just seems like they do). Instead, they target based on Zip code, houshold income, if you have a phone or not, etc. Dominoes Pizza, for instance, does everything it can to avoid mailing coupons to housing projects and "bad" neighborhoods!! :o)
The main difference here is that you have an opportunity to mess with their demographic data. I made up all kinds of wierd crap for the Neilson Ratings bastards. They think I have 4 radios going at once all tuned to NPR.
DON'T PASS UP THIS OPPORTUNITY TO SCREW WITH THEM!!!
I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy.
Heh. I have run into the 12345 syndrome before. I worked on a product where one of its' functions was to deliver local weather, and the forecast you were delivered was based on zip (inserted as a value in the URL when it calls the CGI). All we required in the registration app was for the user to enter the zip (all else was optional). Many, many people registered as 12345.
;)
I almost died laughing when tech support escalated a bunch of tickets that customers were not getting the proper weather forecast. Not surprisingly, the vast majority were complaining about getting Schnenectady weather instead of their own city's weather. I looked up the zips for Schnenectady and noticed they were in the 123xx range and deduced the cause pretty quickly. Needless to say, most people corrected their entry over time and front-line support was able to handle this one by themselves in the future
On a related note, I could never figure out why anyone would care about providing an accurate zip code. The ability to violate privacy with that info is pretty limited (at least here in the US where a zip narrows you down to tens or hundreds of thousands of people). All I ever used that data for was to provide Marketing pretty maps they could add to the thier Powerpoint presos. Had we had inteliigent marketers (we did not) they could maybe do some cross-referencing to advertisements and whether they were effective or not. Seems pretty harmless to me, maybe I am just not devious enough to see the dark side to this.
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
Try substituting "news" for "radio". Do you understand the appeal of online news? You must, to some extent, since you're posting your musings in Slashdot, which provides 'news for nerds. stuff the matters.'
What brings you to slashdot? Maybe it is because it is a more specialized source for news than the sludge they pump out for the mass consumer at CNN. Maybe your interests are more particularly bent towards technology concerns (chip advances, IP law, LINUX news, etc.)
As you have more specialized tastes than mainstream news media may be able to satisfy, allow that many have more specialized musical interests than top-40 radio can effectively cater to.
My dad would find the news stories noteworthy to slashdot to be "superfluous", as well the music being pumped 24/7 on specialized radio networks like the "Progressive Rock Channel". Consequently he's missing out on a lot of breaking news in the tech space, and a lot of extended, self-indulgent instrumental noodling by pretentious drug-using art-students... (lucky him, actually!)
Fans of progressive art rock aren't likely to live in a city with a large enough population to have a progressive rock radio station. It is because 'the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few' in the marketplace. Yet, they don't obviate the needs of the few. So if an alternative channel exists to satisfy the needs of the few, why be surprised if people want to use it, even if it is currently subpar.
Give me a break!
Stereotype advertisements... I smell insult.
Screw 3...
Doesn't matter; you know that whatever your profile, 95% of the ads targeted at you will be for pr0n.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
I suppose to be fair, online radio is useful if you follow a certain station for some reason or live somewhere totally isolated, but for the masses, it seems like extra baggage.
On what Age, Sex and Zip I report to them. Anyone know what type of ads you'll hear if you put yourself down as a transgenre 70 year old from Northern Alaska?
Seriously here, the data is only as good as you tell them.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Clearchannel doesn't even use local DJ's half the time...and their 200 stations are all using pretty much the same payola inspired playlists, so now we can have lots of crap on the internet that sounds exactly the same as the crap everywhere else.
You want innovation? go to www.radiok.org - Real college radio. Screw corporate radio and their crap once and for all.
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
Because the good stations are not clear in my area. Not everyone lives in a city with a million different radio stations catering to every possibal taste of music. Every radio station I listen to anymore has a lot of static (am, and fairly far from the tower), which is okay for talk radio but I don't listen to much talk radio.
I have friends who can get one radio station at their house. (They live in western canada, so that is the local goverment required french station)
Why not go one better and let you select the categories of ads you want to see (like you can do for some online advertising agencies)? Ad agencies are making a big deal about how to determine the ads I want to see.
Why not just ask me?
If it means I wouldn't have to listen to ads for breast enhancement drugs, proescription drugs over the phone, sports games that I really couldn't care less about, etc., I'd be quite willing to tell them what I'd rather see, and what I would be more likely to buy.
think they can get that from my age, sex and ZIP?
Here's the ads they can provide:
if male:
under 13: can't show any ads
13-17: local resellers of Sports Illustrated, Swimsuit Edition
18-30: local bars
31-40: local strip joints
41-60: the mall (to take your wife)
60-80: local golf courses
80+: local cemetaries
for females:
all ages: local malls