Slashdot Mirror
Google to Track TV Viewers More Closely
GalacticNoob writes "According to this post, Google is about to launch a TV advertising program that will let advertisers target audiences based on demographics including their household income. A satellite TV company called Echostar is working with credit-reporting company Equifax to cross-reference shows watched with income and buying habits (based on using Equifax's data)."
"Why yes Tina, that was a commercial for Ferrari, followed by a Tiffanys spot. What was that.., oh, your panties just semeed to have fallen to your shoes."
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
...or debt management, or car finance, or "cheaper insurance", I'm gonna fucking throttle someone.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
LEELA: Didn't you have ads in the twentieth century?
FRY: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio... and in magazines... and movies, and at ballgames, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written in the sky. But not in dreams, no sirree.
I think I'm going to call Dish support and have a conversation about this.
Have fun.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
That's almost exactly what I was thinking.
Do no evil should probably include not getting all snug with a company that designs network topologies as inverted pentagrams for the summoning bonusus, I mean, 'customer data referencing enhancements'.
I mean, taking a look at Equifax's codebase, you'd expect to see calls to functions but CalltoCthulhu("fhtagn",DATABASEID) and PetitionMammon(CustID,MiracleType) are just plain uncalledfor.
I don't think this was thought through so well. Imagine if your household is made from more than one surname, meaning that credit and buying history will be different, perhaps vastly different. Woe be unto the poor sod that lives with his wife and 3 18+ daughters. The only thing he's going to see is tampax and menopause commercials and of course, every other pill advertisement with QVC and Oprah ads smashed in between them.
God help the person whose dogs were just killed in a freak pesticide accident who now gets pet grooming/product commercials 24/7 to remind them of their now dead pets. Or maybe the guy who borrows from his 401k to pay for the burial of his wife and then starts getting ads for retirement planning.
If Google wants to do no evil, they better work pretty fucking hard to make sure all those poorly placed ads on websites don't start showing up on television and phone messages. I'm certain that there are serial killers who had less reason to do their killing than what these people are capable of stirring in the souls of the unwashed masses.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Would you rather see ads about things you have no care for, nor afford?
Yes. They're very easy to ignore that way.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.