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Smart Billboards
djdanlib writes "The New York Times ran this story Sunday about the Mobiltrak smart billboard system. It works by detecting what radio station you're listening to as you pass by a billboard, then displaying advertisements targeted at that station's demographic. It's kind of like a real-time Nielsen Ratings system for radio. And it's entirely passive, requiring no special hardware in your car - it receives the faint tuning signal generated by your radio." We've mentioned these before.
Is the Howard Stern show still on the radio these days? That could get dangerous.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Talk about blipverts...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
While I'm sure this was a good idea 10 years ago ... it's almost 2004. Auto mp3 players are under $150, who actually listens to the radio anymore? I've not listened to anything FM for 4 or 5 years ... sounds like they're a little behind the times.
... how saucy those billboards would become if there was a Playboy radio channel!
They made them find out what satilite TV station you were watching in your car, and put on an ad for that.
I'd drive around all day watching porn
Finally a way to get back at all of those stupid SUV driver!
Stuck in bumper to bumper traffic...SUV cuts you off.
Broadcast message to billboard: "Man in Silver SUV with license plate 12345 has no pants on, is currently drinking, and likes to beat small puppies".
Sig it.
Smart Billboards, Dumb Advertising.
here
Umm..if my radio isn't on will I get a message.."Switch on your radio stupid moron! I am not getting any signal. I gotta play some ad for you"
to burn these fuckers out somehow. That would become my new pasttime, if it were possible.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Just a general Q and O...
How well would these wok in high traffic areas? I could see something like this in Kansas or some other place where you have time to hit the reciver, change the ad and such, but in a high traffic area?...would it try to pick up if you driving a Ford POS or a Beemer and then chose the ad based on that?
What if I am listening to Art Bell? Would it show me an ad for the latest book on Shadow Gov? Jim Rome? How to have a take a not suck? Kim Kommando? Your a loser and need to return your computer right now? Top 40? All you $$$ belong to us - The RIAA? (off topic rant I know)
Seriously, seeing an ever changing sign in a high speed/high traffic zone is an pile-up just begging to happen. I would hope they keep these kind of things in areas where concentration can be peoperly applied to them without the detriment to overall driving situation.
(This post too sucky to spehl cheq...)
imagine driving down the street, and the bilboard is getting signals from lots of cars, and practically turns into a strobe light from the constant changing. actually that would be pretty cool, but I could see some epileptics complaining.
I was thinking before I posted, "What happens when there's bumper-to-bumper traffic; how do you target every car when they move that slowly?"
But then I got to thinking: could you drop a radio next to the billboard and amp the faint tuning signal, so, say, all the people listening to top 40 see ads targeted toward NPR listeners?
I guess this is theoretically possible. Funny how every new advertising technology begs the question, "How can I subvert this?"
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
The way I station surf - NPR, Rock, Top 40, oldies,.... all in a span of seconds - the billboard would be flickering like disco ball!
There is no spoon or sig.
It would seem that a particular radio station or advertizer could hack the system and bias the billboard by leaving a box of cheap battery powered FM radios by the side of the road (or a weak FM transmitter). With all those radios tuned to the same station it would fool the billboard into thinking that the cars where tuned to that station. Thus the billboard would leave the same ad up and log high ratings for the station.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
What if an enterprising radio station put a powerful radio tuned to their station next to the billboard's receiever?
Then it would overpower the car radios and make it appear that all the cars are tuned to that station. This would seem like a good thing for that station's marketing department.
I am going to through this idea out to the Slashdot crowd.
I would like a similar device that would allow me to detect radio station frequencies but that would also allow me to broadcast back and that same channel with in a small radius.
Why would I want that? This way I could tell the motherfucker who cut me just off to go to hell and suck my cock!
I lived right by the one they had in Roseville, CA. It was extremely bright, annoying, and dangerous seeming. While you are driving down the freeway (especially at night) it was so bright that you couldn't not look at it. Which I'm sure is the point. But when you have thousands of people flying by at 70mph, it just doesn't seem safe.
just go get a 10$ walkman from radio shack, tune it into your local opera station, place walkman near the billboard... fun? okay, no, not really. but easily hackable it would seem...
Most billboard business is based on renting the space. If you have to rely on a radio station's demographic to get your ad up there, how would you pro-rate that rental fee? Does the radio station get anything out of it, if you try it that way? And so on. Seems like a substantially different business model could build around this idea -- something "hits"-like.
(And more importantly, what does this mean for public service announcements? If I'm driving down the road and all the billboards are tailoring themselves to messages about the D.A.R.E. program, am I listening to Rush Limbaugh, or what? How about if all the pictures turn to messages about abortion?)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This sign doesn't react to what it detects. It simply logs what stations people are listening to, so that the advertiser on the board can look at that info and decide who to target during different parts of the day. It works exactly like Nielsen ratings. The info gets collected and people look at it to make decisions, it's not reacted to immediately.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
- Why does every radio emit a signal? Is it inefficiency? Is it really every radio or only old ones?
- Is this signal broadcasted back through your antenna or is this just a faint signal inside your radio and they have really good receivers in their billboards?
- Has anybody tried to create a radio that doesn't emit this signal?
- Is this only something with FM radio, or also with AM?
Thanks for some clarifications.I primarily listen to my iPod using an iRock FM transmitter. Its signal strength is low enough that I fear Billboards may overpower it.
If I *ever* catch a commercial interrupting the sanctum of my iPod to my car stereo, I will clip the antenna lead and install a loop around the sticky pad where my iPod sits. If that doesn't work, I'll cut radio completely out. I'll get a preamp and amp with a direct connection.
Who needs radio? I won't go back to radio until there is some kind of cellular packet radio with multicast distribution. Then I could listen to my favorite stations cross country. Even with a 5GB iPod, smart playlists allow you to randomly rotate 2.5 days of continuous uninterrupted no-repeat music from your own collection. Even a 64MB flash based MP3 player will give you 45 minutes to an hour. 256MB is easily one leg of a car trip or a two-way commute.
In my family, smart billboards would be called "a day late and a dollar short." All it's really worth is a line in the sand drawn by the Ad companies. Flip them the bird!
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
A simple oscillator would be enough to jam the thing to one demographic. I hope they put some up in my area.
this way I could get the bill board to restrict its selection to topics. If my Ad was in that rotation then I probably just improved its visibility five or ten fold. I could sell that to people who place ads.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Hmm, what's this then? Some kind of new editorial disclaimer to enable double posts?
-- james
Does it display a table of executives slaughtering a baby when you drive buy listening to a ClearChannel or Infinity station? ;)
"I'd drive around all day watching porn ;)"
Now aren't you glad cars can be driven one-handed?
Back up a little. So these Machines mentioned Before -- they're like Carriages, only without Horses? From whence do they derive their Motive Force -- some kind of Magnetikal Effect? -- Poor Dick
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
If my radio is off, will the billboard be disabled? I listen to Public Radio more than anything else, does that mean I see buildings for pledge drives all over?
I know this is /. and everyone is supposed to be predisposed to boxes and gagets etc., but I really have to question whether this product addresses a problem that really requires a technological fix. From what I see in the article and the Mobiltrak website, this localizes advertising content on the basis of the characteristics of road users in a particular area at different times of the day. For the most part, in any large metropolitan area, the advertisers and market researchers already know this, that's how they decide what billboards to put where and how much to charge for them. Presumably this service offers some improvement on existing market research products in terms of timeliness, accuracy and/or cost. Even then, claims about superior targeting of advertising translating into superior results from advertising are not easy to measure in that sort of advertising.
I've finally got around to changing my sig
How long can these ads possibly be displayed? I dont know about your town, but in mine, there is tons of traffic, wouldnt these ads be changing quite quickly? Or do they simply take a random 'signal' every so often to determine the ad it's supposed to show.
... driving is soon going to be much more hazardous with the advent of new, "Pop-up Billboards".
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
I don't know what its like everywhere, but in the Washington DC metro area there aren't too many billbords. Zoning has eliminated them as "visual polution". I know of a few up along I-95 in Baltimore, but I can't say that billboards are too common along my drives.
Would have been a great idea 40 years ago, though...
Sleep is for the Weak
Being paranoid is getting to be more work all the time.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This would work great down in the bible belt. Every time it detects someone listening to a radio evangelist, it could flash big letters "SEND MONEY" with a 1-800 number.
Prior Art?
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I been waiting for a sign that'll fix me up with a tuba-playin girl.
Hello, this is Harris. I'm in right now, so you can talk to me personally. Please start talking at the sound of the beep
Once we have finally achieved wall-to-wall adverts on every possible medium - and we're nearly there - the backlash will begin. It's like the PFY who comes up to you in an electrical store and starts trying to sell you stuff...why do I always want to punch him?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Ha, what about when the driver is listening to XM or Sirius radio? Or what if we're listening to a cd or something? I never listen to the local radio anymore.
not to listen to radio.
Sounds like something out of Minority Report.
"Mr. Anderton, you look like you could use a Guinness right about now!"
"John, how about a nice relaxing vacation in the Carribbean?"
NPR listeners will be presented with a blank billboard, as they prefer to donate rather than support advertisers.
(I'm a rabid, die-hard NPR listener myself)
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
"Minority Report" advestisers (maybe call it Mind Spam?) is if you trash these devices, they know who you are and can call 911 and report you.
Never to get a hold of your dean's subcuteanous transpoder and clone it.
Advertising everywhere, all the time, reminded me of my experience at a Mexican beach last week. While a sitting on the beach admiring the natural and human scenery, hundreds of [ licensed ] vendors walk by every few seconds pushing everything from blankets, artwork, tatoos, food, sexual partners, etc. 99.9% of the interactions are "not interested", but they keep on coming all day. Its much like the MS TV commercial why the Blubberfly boots the salesmen.
This is the kind of idea that sounds cool on the surface, but can't really work out irl.
How many billboards have you driven past lately where you were the only one around in a car?
Even if it does some kind of averaging. What, you're going to average Howard Stern and NPR? Is the result going to be better than the vanilla demographic they have for that area anyway?
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
I wonder what would happen if you designed your "leaky radio" signal on purpose to appear from multiple car radios. Maybe a career of driving in rush hour traffic for some unlucky bastard? Guys driving around town with special getups designed to break the threshold levels of the billboards and turn the adverts to their employer's ads? Ick. It sounds about as fun as artifically inseminating sheep for a living.
You are almost right, but not quite.
The way a modern superheterodyne radio works is like this:
You want to listen to a radio frequency at F1.
The radio creates a local oscillator (or LO) frequency of F2, such that abs(F2-F1) = F3, where F3 is a fixed, intermediate frequency (or IF). A common IF for FM radios is 10.7 MHz, and a common IF for AM radios is 455 kHz. By pulling the signal to a fixed frequency the rest of the radio's design can be better optimized and simpler.
Now, F2 can be either F1+F3 or F1-F3, it make little difference. So one way to confuse the system would be to retune the radio so that it uses "the other IF" - i.e. if the radio is using F2=F3+F1, retune the guts so that it uses F2=F1-F3.
Alternatively, replace the IF strip to change F2, and then retune the radio appropriately - if the sign's systems assume an IF of 10.7 MHz, and you are using an IF of 9.7 MHz, that will confuse the sign. The difficulty there is getting components designed for a non-standard frequency. If the radio is using the old "tuned slug" design this isn't so bad, but if the radio is using a crystal filter you are looking at custom crystals.
However, there is no need for the LO to be coupled to the world - the first stages of the radio can amplify the RF and decouple the first LO mixer from the world. It just takes a bit more work on the sheilding of the radio - you use a milled block of aluminum rather than foil sheilds. I know, since that is what I do for a living - design radios (well, radio test gear, which is a special case of the class Radio)
However, building a jamming oscillator at the needed frequencies to scramble this sign, while completely illegal, is also trivial - buy a cheap FM transmitter kit and retune it slightly. Of course, by causing interference you are in violation of FCC part 15 rules, and will get nailed if you get caught, so don't, 'mkay?
If it bothers you, just don't listen to the radio.
www.eFax.com are spammers
this way I could get the bill board to restrict its selection to topics. If my Ad was in that rotation then I probably just improved its visibility five or ten fold. I could sell that to people who place ads.
Yeah, and you "improved" your marketing expenses five to tenfold. Ads are charged by exposion - radio and TV ads by the (expected) number of viewers/listeners, outdoor ads according to how many it is estimated will pass by. That's how Times Square is more expensive than Hwy 149, Beaumont, Texas - surely the point of these new billboards is to charge relatively more per exposion, but level it out on serveral ads, thus increasing the total income from the board.
What you COULD do, however, is to tune your leaky radio to the local conservative channel, and sit and watch the money flow out of Bush's campaign funds...
to put a 5 dollar solar powered transmitter 20 feet from the billboard dialed to the classical station.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
doesnt the melboure yarra river tunnel have this or something similar?
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
If they are able to scan your brain as you drive towards the billboard, they could possible determine something about you, and use that to select custom advertising for you....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
So, what will the billboard think when it not only gets the news that I'm listening to a radio station that doesn't really exist (91.9MHz), but also gets blasted by the 91.9MHz FM signal my car's emitting? Will they use Tuneprint to figure out what song is playing? Will they simply categorize me as "geek" and display ads for computer stuff?
Nah, they'll probably be too stupid for that. They'll probably think "Wow, this guy's listening to bumfuck cornfield radio!" or whatever the 91.9MHz station is that sometimes leaks through and interferes with my music. I'll probably get ads for Bibles or manure.
Exception: I listen to a college radio station show on Thursday afternoons: Guerrilla Radio, on WRUW 91.1 FM, 1630-1730 Thursdays. Unless I forget.
We get radio signal,
billboard screen turn on.
Ceci n'est pas une sig
What would be interesting are billboards that send out ads. For example, you are driving by a heineken ad, and it says on it "tune your radio to 89.7" or something like that and you could listen to the ad that went along with the billboard. Might be useful if you wanted more information about an the subject of the billboard. Kind of like a drive-by movie theater where when you are in the right range, you can hear the movie audio.
-Vib, videogame freelancer for news0r.com, videogame.net, and vnorby.tk
I have a HERF gun that will fix this...
iPods retail for $299 (us) in their cheapest form. I you can tell me where to get one (other than eBay) for 200, do tell.
Just thought we might discuss the tech this time last time the posting went a little something like this. Of course you might think I was trying to get this started again, but I wasn't. I was just pointing out the nature of Slashdot.
When we last left our heros they were saying........
Re:Minority Report - RUINED (Score:2, Offtopic)
by Twirlip of the Mists (615030) on Sunday November 24, @09:48PM (#4747951)
(Last Journal: Friday April 04, @02:24PM)
havent you noticed Dubya's war on Iraq is about what Iraq might do
Sound defense policy is always based on capability, not intention. You can't read the enemy's mind, so you have to act on what he could do if so inclined. Any student-- even an armchair student-- of military history can tell you this.
If it reaches a point where the possibility that an enemy might act becomes sufficiently real, and the danger posed by that enemy's capabilities become sufficiently great, then the only reasonable course of action is to respond with military force. To do anything less is to... well, is to be Poland circa 1939.
If, on the other hand, you feel okay about the thought of another Pearl Harbor-- one involving nuclear or chemical weapons-- then carry on.
Re:Minority Report - RUINED (Score:2, Insightful)
by cperciva (102828) on Sunday November 24, @09:55PM (#4747992)
(http://www.daemonology.net/)
If it reaches a point where the possibility that an enemy might act becomes sufficiently real, and the danger posed by that enemy's capabilities become sufficiently great, then the only reasonable course of action is to respond with military force.
In that case, it's time for the rest of the world to declare war on the United States of America.
Re:Minority Report - RUINED (Score:2, Insightful)
by marsonist (629054) on Sunday November 24, @11:23PM (#4748519)
I equate it as such. If a formerly convicted criminal, on parole, is running down the street pointing weapons at police officers, must the officers wait until the trigger is pulled to respond, or should common sense be used. This is the situation we are in with Iraq. We have seen his past actions and know that he cannot be trusted. There are many who feel that any potential threat from Sadam could be dealt with via international political pressure. The U.N. has been trying this for over 10 years, with the only result being the suffering of Iraqi people. There are only so many ways to appoach such a situation with most options having been already axhausted.
Re:Minority Report - RUINED (Score:2)
by Twirlip of the Mists (615030) on Monday November 25, @12:05AM (#4748722)
(Last Journal: Friday April 04, @02:24PM)
Best analogy ever. You, sir, kick ass.
Re:Minority Report - RUINED (Score:1)
by sydlexic (563791) on Monday November 25, @01:18AM (#4749064)
If someone is running down the street pointing a gun at you and you have time to figure out it's a formerly convicted criminal, on parole, then you probably have time to figure out a lot of other options, too. You might also be able to figure out that a) the gun isn't loaded and/or b) it's a water gun and/or c) the person isn't pointing the gun at you, but instead at that the big puppeteer standing over you pulling your strings.
Re:Minority Report - RUINED (Score:2)
by arivanov (12034) on Monday November 25, @03:26AM (#4749609)
I somehow do nopt remember Saddam in the war tribunal dock at Hague....
Or did you mean the specialist in ordering the shooting Afghan weddings and blowing up vehicles on the territorty of friendly states by drones?
Re:Minority Report - RUINED (Score:2)
by arivanov (12034) on Monday November 25, @03:22AM (#4749601)
The moderator who moded this down as troll is a redneck dubia hugging idiot.It is correct, to some extent on topic, in reply to the previous post and exactly what the rest of the world would do if they manifested dubia thinking. Thanks god they do not.
Re:Minority Report - RUINED (Score:1)
by martyn s (444964) on Sunday November 2
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Seriously, what if the majority of riders are listening to truly non-commercial stations like student stations e.g. ones with voice id's like "WCBN 88.3 FM - at the far left of your radio dial" or "Radio Free Ann Arbor". Would the billboard show an ad for a state or city park or a free concert? Or just tell people to bike to work?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
So what businees need is this filling? Did the Clearchannel radio execs wake up one morning and realize that 20 minutes of commercials per hour was not enough?
Coming soon: Revolutionary new smart e-boards create customized, targeted advertising across multiple mediums to provide a fully immersive, multimedia marketing opportunity which responds in real time to complement FM radio advertisement, maximizing penetration to target demographics. Consumers can now receive 2 hours worth of advertisements every hour, and still get fifteen minutes of today's top hits (as determined by a small focus group with vaguely similar demographics to the region I live in) as well, sandwiched between inane local DJ blather intended to make the locals feel like their music is "customized" for their area.
This just reinforces my tendency to not listen to the radio at all. My car CD player handles mp3 CD's, so I really don't listen to the radio anymore, and on the rare occasion that I do, it gets turned off at the first commercial break (usually less than ten minutes).
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Good God! Who cares about the ads for public radio - imagine the hell of pledge week!
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
If this can make billboard ads more interesting to me (which is what it's about, really) then I'm all for it.
[1] I have doubts about that though. Problem 1: I don't always listen to something interesting, just whatever tuned in first and wasn't horrible. Problem 2: what if there's lots of cars close by, even on a reasonably full highway they'd have real problems figuring out which car is listening to what and flic the sign at high speeds. And in a gridlock?
[2] Of course, the guy behind you might figure out which channel you're listening to by watching "your" sign. Big deal...
"An object declared as type _Bool is large enough to store the values 0 and 1." -- 6.1.2.5, C99 standard.
I wonder if the police are using this technology to profile drivers? I have had police cars swing around or drive up close enough to see me when tuned to the local hip hop station. Maybe it's just because I drive a crappy car...
What did you buy last in the shop ... show some adverts that relate to that so you might buy some more.
So you just picked up your hot date, and being a health concious sort of guy dropped round the chemist (== pharmacy for US readers) before meeting her - so what gets flashed up on every billboard as you drive her home ?
"... and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting ..."
Have a look at Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent."
Et tu, NPR, et tu?
And I'm an NPR fan. Just what I need, more ads for Viagra and Sleep Number beds.
IM6100 already hit the points I was goint to hit, but it also dawned on me that operating a jamming signal would be something the FCC could track down. But $5 radio's from Target? You really think they'll spend the effort tracking them down? There's not a damn thing you can use to identify them with. Sure, you could go around town and see who's been buying up Radios, but at that point you're wasting more money than is neccessary for a petty crime (if, as was pointed out, it is even a crime at all).
fs
....one listens to country and the other rock, will the billboard compromise and show some Rock-a-Billy stuff?
On,
A humorous note. Early one Friday morning in L.A. my wife was driving by one of those monster billboards that are essentially big video terminals and it had a BSOD, a bunch of hex/binary/error codes, etc., and a MS logo floating in the lower corner.
She found it quite humorous.
Caution: Contents under pressure
Maybe if you just paid up quickly the begging season would take less time... :)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Oh, yeah. I can just see what this is going to be like during rush hour on the New Jersey Turnpike with a thousand cars streaming pass, all tuned to different stations, as the billboard flashes maniacally to keep up and cars careen off the road while thier drivers fall into epilleptic fits.
As if my commute wasn't difficult enough already.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
All the billboards are bad enough, now they want to do this?
I'm sorry, this is a stupid idea!
I dread the day goatse gets its own radio station...
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
people with rfid tags who are blacklisted will be displayed on the billboards when they pass by, sure, it'd work well for people who were known sex offenders, but the way the FBI has been marking people as terroristic threats because they partake in protest, peaceful or not, even if it's not in this nation.. they get put on a blacklist.
;P
a nun in colorado (or was it utah?) had a mysterious police record of being a suspected tetrrorist, and this showed up after she attended a peacful protest in mexico.
and before you grab your tin foil hat, I dont think the government can read your minds. they can just beat that out of you.
No, that's a smart billboard!
http://www.club977.com/ - The 80's Channel!
Your source for commercial free 80's music!
You know those crazy guys who like to wear tin foil on their heads and say that they are being monitored all of the time? I think they may be right.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I'd hate to see what they would show on the billboard if they see a lot of Howard Stern listeners driving by.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Privacy issues aside, I'd hate to see ads related to the content I listen to. When I'm not listening to the news, I listen to rock. And believe me, I in no way like or subscribe to the culture that seems to go along with it.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
What happens if I'm listening to Phil Hendrie?
Considering the wasteland that radio is, this is hardly good news, in fact, it's way worse than what we have to deal with now.
They should just do away with billboards altogether, they're an eyesore.
To all the EE geeks out there... How can I block these billboards from seeing what radio station I'm listening to? Is it possible to jam them out without disturbing my or other drivers' radios?
You wouldn't want to transmit on the IF, but on the 1st LO freq - so you'd want to transmit somewhere between 70MHz and 125 MHz.
If you have an aviation band HT you could use that, or if you have a military rig, but otherwise your HF rig won't do any good.
www.eFax.com are spammers
And here I was hoping I'd have to add hardware to *MY* car in order to make things easier from some smelly ad executive somewhere!
--- Ban humanity.
The headlines are all the same anyway...
Unrest in the Middle EastWildfires Rage in Western States
Economic Woes Hamper Bush Re-election Effort
Sean
That was the first thing I thought of when I saw this article.
Personally, I found the advertising techniques in that movie to be a hell of a lot scarier than the whole Future Crime stuff. Probably because the advertising could happen. As I watched the movie I was picturing advertising execs having wet dreams, and board meetings saying, "We need this!"
And now, here is the beginnings of it.
WWJD?
JWRTFM!
Does anyone know if TVs have the same kind of leaking? cause more and more cars these days are coming with TVs in them, and TV schedules are more scheduled (i.e. i drive past a billboard at 7:15 watching FOX, so it shows me a ad targeted directly at the kind of person who watches simpsons... like maybe a ad for slashdot
Heck, the poster (and the moderators apparently) didn't even read the freaking blurb at the top:
"It works by detecting what radio station you're listening to as you pass by a billboard, then displaying advertisements targeted at that station's demographic... [a]nd it's entirely passive."
All this thing does is aggregate which signals emitted by all the tuning oscillators in everyone's radios are strongest and then change a digital billboard to display an add which is most appropriate to the most drivers on the road. Your iPod/FM adapter plays your iPod's music over some frequency that no one else is using. You would be a statistical anomaly on the billboard's system due to having to use a different station from everybody else and would be irrelevant to the system.
It does NOT override the FM signal in the area with new ads. That would be a severe violation of FCC regulations as well as cause a ton of road rage.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
So, if you illuminate the billboard with non-standard frequencies, will 'Easter Eggs' be found?
Right. Someone else already pointed that out. My mistake. And you may have also missed where I said I was having a "big-brother" moment.. Thanks for teaching us about doing our homework before we post...
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
What happens during rush hour when dozens of cars can pass in a few minutes?
into the aux. jack and the fact that the tuner has done nothing for months, I am not even sure it still works to tell ya the truth.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I don't get it. Why not just buy advertising on the radio station you want to target?
Give serendipity a chance.
For those who haven't read the article (from the looks of things, everyone, including the person who posted the link): the billboards only detect what radio tuners are being tuned to over periods of time. It's up to the owner of the billboard to aggregate the raw data and decide what ads should go up when. As amusing as it sounds, you can't play twiddle-the-billboard by spinning the dial continuously. Remember, marketers still want themselves to control what you see. Maybe you could frustrate the system by leaving your radio on quietly and tuned to silence/static as you go by, but that's probably about it.
The parasite signals emitted by the radios are very weak. An oscillator producing signal of suitable frequency is a trivial thing to do. If the billboard would employ Doppler effect recognition, or measure passing cars, add amplitude and frequency modulation, which will move the frequency up a little, raise the output power from zero to max, shift the freq down a little, then lower the output level. Then repeat the cycle in random intervals; a microcontroller will do. The whole assembly may be powered from a solar cell, for long life, and if equipped with a directional antenna, may be quite far away from the offending billboard (or a group of them); the required signal intensity is so low that the likeliness of interfering with anything other than the intended target is low even over lower ranges and relatively high power outputs.
Maybe we should give a culture jamming hint to Adbusters crew...
...you insensitive clod!
In Canada, we have a national radio broadcaster called the CBC which has several radio stations for different regions in the country, and doesn't have sponsorships, advertisements, pledge drives or anything else. Of course we pay for it with tax dollars, but it's nice to be able to listen to interesting stories and music without ads.
If they can monitor the station you are listening to in your car is it possible to monitor what TV station you are watching at home? Is this how the cable company can determine if you are stealing channels?
So, go buy yourself a cheap $5-$10 transistor radio, add some nice fresh batteries, tune it to SuperTejano 108.2 and dump it on the side of the road next to the sign. Enjoy the ensuing inexplicable rise in tamale flavored snack goods suddenly being tested out in your neighborhood.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
So does that mean I'll get a blank billboard? One can only hope . . .
Nathan's blog
This same technique of listening for the faint signal was invented and described by Peter Wright Author of spycatcher who used it during the cold war to look for Russian Agents in the UK who were listening to transmissions from moscow. (If you read the book u will see why it was banned) The man was a genius and he also stopped a very early defeat for the UK in WW2 by inventing another technique for deguassing ships to stop them from triggering magnetic mines. ok not 100 per cent relevent but amazingly readable.