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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.
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.
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 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.
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.
- 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 listen to the radio. NPR. I commute and get my news on the way to work each morning.
-Sean
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.
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Prior Art?
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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.
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
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.
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
No, it will probably not react to XM or Sirius radios, unless you are using a modulator with it (to listen over an FM station preset in your car) in which case it will read garbage.
That last statement probably needs more elucidation. If you have your sirius/XM radio being rebroadcast on, say, 99.3, then the billboard will detect your LO at 99.3+10.2=109.5 and correctly conclude that you are listening to a radio tuned to 99.3, and it may also detect the modulator's carrier at 99.3, and conclude that you are listening to 99.3-10.2=89.1. If there are stations on neither of these frequencies, it won't be able to make any sense of it.
As a practical matter, you shouldn't set your modulator to the frequency of an existing local station, as you will probably not get very good audio.
On the other hand, XM and Sirius have the potential to sell info, since the radio is entirely under their control. That is not to say that current models transmit this info, but since ALL models are manufactured under supervision/license, future models may have the capacity to store/retrieve/forward that info.
Then we would have a Sirius problem :-)
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