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British Colleges Selling Screen Saver Ad Space
gotroot801 writes: "The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that eighteen British institutions plan to generate income during the coming academic year by displaying advertisements on the computer screen savers of students, professors, and staff members. Why does this remind me of that Simpsons episode where Troy McClure is teaching a Pepsi-sponsored class?"
I hope these adds are as succesfull for colleges as pop-ups and banners are for dot-coms!
I'm the unofficial tech for my residence hall, and make a lot of "fix my computer" calls. You'd be suprised how many "Absolut" and other such products are featured prominately on my neighbors screens :)
If you "bin" the screensaver, they withhold your degree?
I am a student. As such I have NO MONNEY! These kinds of ads will directly bennifit me. Tell me what student is going to complain about $100 bucks being knocked off of his/her tuition? Ya sure I don't apreciate the ads that are now everywhere in our lives. However, most of those ads bennifit someone else. These are for our financial(or quality of education) bennifit. Besides ads are already everywhere. I think for the most part we just ignore them. A few more are not going to make a major effect on our spending habits.
thats just my 2 bits.
Who can tell me the atomic weight of Bolognium?
Especially in areas where funding for schools is absolutely horrible. I know you anti-advertisement-nazis will jump all over this, but there is NO harm in showing some pepsi ads on the screen while no one is at the computer. I mean, hell, they might not even HAVE those computers if it weren't for the advertisements.
These schools need funding, they get it through showing advertisements in a non-obtrusive manner. I say that all underfunded schools should do this. Some school systems need as much money as they can get...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I can just imagine when Microsoft gets a hold of this idea:
IEXPLORER is not responding
When part of you is not responding, try BioV MultiVitimin.
Cultural note, people. British universities are effectively free - government funded - with comparitively tiny student fees, if any at all. Their alumni associations are small, and don't raise anything like the amounts their US counterparts do.
So...
They need the money, advertisers think it's a good idea, and students won't notice it after a week or two (even if they had cash to spend, which most don't).
Sounds like, Win/Win/Win to me, especially if the money goes on more books, computers or teaching staff.
It's not entirely clear whether they intend to do this only for university-owned computers or for student-owned computers as well. If this is only for the school's computers, I don't see too much problem with it. (I would see a problem if it turned into anything more than a screensaver, though). After all, it's the school's hardware, and a screensaver really can't interfere with work.
If they're talking about putting it on machines that belong to students, then this is objectionable in the extreme. Students have the right to control what software runs on the hardware they pay for, and I can imagine bad things happening when faculty demand to install it on incompatible platforms such as Linux.
"Why does this remind me of that Simpsons episode where Troy McClure is teaching a Pepsi-sponsored class?"
Why does the Submitter remind me of a few friends of mine who can relate *any* event to a Simpsons episode?
Obviously this is a good thing as many colleges are under funded in the UK (my dad works at a college where they are facing redundancies like several others here in Scotland) but there must be control as education should not be too dependant on companies. For example microsoft sponsored computer science departments serving up propaganda from the evil empire.
----
Emacs is a nice OS - but it lacks a good text editor. That's why I am using Vim.
"Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule." -- Nietzsche
...of letting commercial interests take over a part of your computer network, I would like to know a few things:
- Are the computers counting how many times the ads are viewed? Wouldn't this constitute a privacy violation on their part?
- Are the ads going to be "click-through" to Internet sites, like the ones used in Bezerk's games? If so, wouldn't the university be concerned about the productivity lost?
- How do they plan to keep the software installed? Unless these are highly-public, short-term use terminals (i.e. email checking between classes) it will just be a matter of time before some clever employee or student removes the annoyance, permissions or no.
- If they've got all this space to spare, surely they'd be better off developing some SETI@Home-like software and using it for research. Is this really the best use of their computing resources, to bring more advertising to the campus?
Somehow, this seems like yet another brilliant idea by a marketing major.
Of course, we already know what direction the MBA's took 'eCommerce'.
Possible Arguement : I was just at a 7-11 and came up with a brilliant idea! They are making money by allowing someone to place ads on a monitor placed right by the check out screen. Can you imagine the income we could produce with all the monitors we have around our campus???
Has anyone else thought about how stupid this is? Screensavers come on WHEN NO ONE is at the computer!
without the banner ads that you all hate you wouldn't have this site...
... nor many open source projects hosted at sourceforge.
Infact, we have banner ads to thank for the growth of the internet (and many of our jobs) - without ads many web sites would not exist, because they would not make any money (bandwidth, servers, and above all - sysadmins aren't free!) - no google, yahoo!...
Advertising is a lose/lose game all around, because it increases costs without increasing value, yet if a producer tries to opt out they lose market share. It's a cognitive-environmental turn on the tragedy of the commons.
By the way, has anyone considered that advertising isn't effective unless it's distracting? Insofar as much learning is subconscious, isn't there an inherent conflict of interest as the material being advertised competes for "mindshare" with the material being taught?
Sell ad. space in open source tools:
% gcc foo.c -o foo
This compile brought to you by Jolt Cola. All the
sugar and twice the cafeine.
%
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
n/t
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Add placement is just one step closer to advertorial. Once schools become dependent on this revenue, advertisers will be able to dictate their policies on the threat of withdrawing it.
Will the screensaver time be forced to a certain value? Forbidden to be changed thru Windows system policies? What about turning off the monitor when you live? What about blacklisting the companies participating in the annoyance and starting a boycott? (College students ARE of the activist type, you know.)
It seems that (I guess not just in the US anymore) that we are moving toward a time where every "public" service is paid for by ads. At some point, it seems to me, that you'd reach a place where there are so many messasges hitting someone that they aren't effective.
Who in the world thinks of their screen saver as some sort of compelling mini-series they must watch (apologies to Scott Adams)? A thought that strikes me as a bit unsettling would be to go into a computer lab with 100 machines all extolling the virtues of Pepsi (instead of the 3D Flower Box).
I suppose it's not true anymore, but it seems that labs, classrooms, etc. should be places reasonably free of corporate sponsorship. It is inevitable that once something has a corporate sponsor, the message gets influenced (anyone remember Microsoft donating money with some strings attached to universities?), and schools, especially publicly funded ones, should be free of that type of "influence peddling".
My Fortune 100 company has propoganda screensavers running everywhere that encourages employees to meet our ship dates, with phrases like "let's have a blitz to get it done!".
I can't put my finger on why it bugs me so much.
I'd worry about the benefits of paying attention in English class instead of the money you'll be saving. It's not going to have much of an effect on your spending habits, but just think of all the benefits you could get with a good college education!
I mean, it looks like you're working so hard at it!
This will provided some well-appreciated incentives for students in IT security classes to discover firsthand the process by which systems are compromised.
Imagine how fun it'll be for the students to plaster their own deepest thoughts (tasteful mix of cursing and swearing, no doubt) instantly across every public computer screen on campus!
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
At Virginia Tech, a required management course. It was sponsered by Virgin records.
I dropped the class after a whole lecture was devoted to a recently signed local band playing a set and some useless career advisor wasting my time telling me about internships.
College is more and more just becoming a scam for the suckers still willing to pay for it.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
> British universities are effectively free -
> government funded - with comparitively tiny
> student fees, if any at all.
Yes, tuition fees were only bought in for students applying for entry in 1998 and are currently about £1000 per year, which I guess is very small compared to the US situation.
However, it should be noted that some Universities have also been proposing 'Top up fees' i.e. extra payments that the University thinks it needs to maintain high standards of teaching/equipment for courses.
Obviously students have opposed top-up fees, although I'm guessing that the issue will re-surface soon.
Perhaps this advertising (wrong as it feels) will be a way to avoid taxing the students?
-- Mike
Of course, the loss of "editorial" independence of the college is a serious peril.
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
At least they don't rename their Electrical and Computer Engineering program to the local cable company!
And you thought that Disney webpage prank MIT pulled a while back was all for laughs!
The as the poster is thinking of has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R. The advertisment has a second name, it's M-A-Y-E-R:
Principal Skinner: We can buy real periodic tables, instead of these promotional ones from Oscar Mayer.
Ms. Krabapple: Now, who can tell me the atomic weight of bolonium?
Martin: Ohhh... delicious?
Karbapple: Correct. I would also accept snacktacular.
----------
I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
PBS went commercial many years ago, and my donations, and volunteering, ended. If they are getting money from big corporations, then they don't need mine.
I think the same thing applies to colleges. If they are going to go get money from other sources, then IMHO, they don't need as much from the government in the next budget cycle.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
but there is NO harm in showing some pepsi ads on the screen while no one is at the computer
Has it occurred to you that any intended impartiality (and thus quality) of education is immediately placed at risk when the interests of a third-party are involved? Consider: (1) Do you think an education should be questioning and impartial? (2) Do you think that your education will in all cases remain questioning and impartial should a conflict of interests arise between the educators and the sponsors? (As an example, we already have educational institutions that ONLY teach Microsoft software, in exchange for donations of computers from Microsoft.)
This sort of thing happens, and will happen more and more in the future, particularly as more advertisers (and universities) start to realise that they get much better results from a highly targeted audience - that is, companies specifically related to some field sponsoring education of students within that field. That of course is nothing new, but in the past the sponsorship has been quiet and behind-the-scenes, while currently the trend is towards not only more overtly visible sponsorshop, but editorial control of the content of lectures by the sponsors. So Pepsi is not a very good example, as they probably don't have much interest in whether Linux or Windows gets used in the labs. But other sponsors will; and the Universities will accept those sponsors above Pepsi because more targeted advertising means better results which means more money.
Schools do need money of course, so this may in many cases not be a bad thing. Where do you draw the line?
Regarding the "nazi" comment: although I realise it was probably just hyperbole for effect, I kind of resent the noxious implication of an immediate association between being "anti-advertisement" and being a nazi. As I have explained, there can be valid reasons to be against this type of advertising; its a lot harder to justify the kind of fanatical white supremacy associated with nazis :)
We need the the money to pay our electricity bills.
The shareholder is always right.
Forget the screen saver, just set the sleep mode timer to 5 min and put a yellow sticky on the screen that say, "Give your money to the GAP."
Microsoft could make a killing putting ads on the blue screen of death.
EVERYTHING here is Coke. All Dining Hall beverages are made by Coke (Barq's, Fruitopia, Minute Maid, POWERaDE, Sprite, Dasani water, Crush, Dr Pepper, and Schweppes). All vending Machines are Coke products. The university student centers are home to different franchises such as Wendys and Steak Escape, but only those who sell solely COKE as beverages are permitted to lease this space. The Coca-Cola logo adorns University clocks, Sports Uniforms, campus scoreboards and Student Orientation shirts. We are used as a testing ground for new Coke products like the ill-fated CITRA and such.
Finding a Pepsi here is like finding a copy of Debian in Redmond.
But for all the advertising blitz its not that bad. Coke almost directly sponsored our new University network. They keep tuition down to almost bearable levels. They get direct beverage reign over 40,000 caffiene hungry college kids and we get cheaper tuition. Im all for it!
Hoorah for advertising efficiency!
Advertising is, in and of itself, deteremental to the freedom of thought, whereever it exitsts. The sole purpose of advertising is to change the opinion of those advertised to towards the desired opinion of the advertiser. Pepsi wants you to think two things: that consumerism is the path to happiness, and that consumption of Pepsi is the ideal path to consumer bliss. The first of their tenants is the most significant; the consumer culture is the dominant culture in the Wester world, making institutions of higher learning very significant places vis-a-vis societal decisions regarding said culture. If the consumer culture is ever to be altered or removed, it is the institutions of higher learning which will be instrumental in effecting that change. Thus, to have private interests on _either_ side of the consumerism debate press their views within the school environment, and press those views through the medium of advertising, is detremental to society's future direction vis-a-vis consumerism, if only because it limits the ability of important members of society to choose freely where they stand on the issue.
On the issue of funding; while schools may be short of money for chalk, blackboards, or CRTs, this is no excuse for the erroding of the very purpose of the school. As I have outlied above, advertising is counter-productive the program of a school in general. Thus, if a school finds itself short of money, it should and must raise the funds it needs from legitimate sources; in the case of the United Kingdom, this is very clearly the state (if you do not know already, the state funds schools in Great Britian to a very large extent, nearly- or completely eliminating the need for student fees). If the stone of government has run dry, tell the student to wear sweters in winter; reduce expenses; be inventive. Do not, however, fundamentally comprimise the purpose of the institution on the alter of the e-classroom.
Does this mean that every student will be required to install the universities screen saver program? What kind of consequences would a student face if he/she refused to do so? And since the computers of these students donot belong to the university, do they have any right to demand so?
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
Durham (my University) was doing this in 1999/2000 when I was in my final year. The screensavers were ads and then when you logged in there was a floating window with smaller ads with no close button or minimize button. The only way around it was to use taskman to kill it, which of course most people didn't know about or to use a unix box. They didn't do it on student machines, but it wouldn't surprise me if they started to. To get a student machine on the network you had to submit it to the IT department for a day for them to install some "useful" software and a NIC if you didn't have one. So it wouldn't be too hard for them to add a screensaver with advertising to every student machine and most people wouldn't know how to remove it.
I think this is excellent for all schools except grade schools (K-12) where it's advertisers are Pepsi and Coke (as it is in some Northern Californian classrooms). These kids are too impressionable and drinking sodas all day isn't too good for them or the teachers. But when it comes to colleges I think the students have enough knowledge to know better. I wouldn't buy Laramie smokes because my monitor told me to.
if common sense was common, wouldn't everyone have it?
http://www-building.arct.cam.ac.uk/westc/cl/cl.htm l
The new CompSci building is partly funded by Microsoft, who are also putting an MS Research building on the site.
I'll hopefully be studying there soon, and _AFAIK_ it won't make any difference who it was funded by, though it does make me shudder slightly to think I'll be studying in the "William H Gates building".
Not to say you don't have to accept it, but *do* look it in the mouth, and take precautions.
The real concern with these agreements is not the advertising, but future censorship/blackmail from the sponsors
Yes advertising is intrusive, that's it's purpose.
But don't be distracted by the advertising, beware when the sponsers make "requests" for things from the schools, such as changing student behaviour, changing school policy etc.
I'm waiting to see who buys out the Blue Screen space: Can you imagine it if RedHat bought it out. "Well, another BlueScreen: Don't you wish you were on RedHat Linux today?"
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
So what the heck is the deal? I read through the article, and couldn't seem to find anything that told me how they are going to get the screensaver onto the students computers. How the heck are they going to do this?
Is part of the internet connection that you sign up for in your dorms going to be a requirement that you put this screensaver onto your machine? I would be royally pissed if my university would make me put a screensaver onto my computer, just so that they could a load of money off of me. That would just seriously....argh!!! Just the thought of this aggravates me.
Would it be a forced install over the network? If so, I would just install ZoneAlarm or set up a firewall under Linux or Win2k. I'll be damned if someone is going to install software on my computer that I don't want. And even if they do get the software on my computer, just shut your screensaver off (they are essentially pointless with many of today's monitor anyway).
So yeah....anyone have more information on this, or things like this? I would be really interested in reading more on this....
These schools need funding, they get it through showing advertisements in a non-obtrusive manner.
The grad school I attended (in the UK) sold space on the "Active Desktop" to advertisers. Now that was annoying, when logging in you had to wait a minute or two before the ads would arrive, and the machine would be bogged down until they did.
Fortunately, my class almost never used to undergrad labs, but I pity the poor students who were stuck with this.
The Church of Bob wouldn't have ads that say "be nice to everybody"... their ads would look more like this.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
hawk, esq.