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Yahoo Patents Smart Billboard That Would Deliver Targeted Ads To Passersby or Motorists (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Yahoo has filed a patent for advertising billboards outfitted with a wide array of sensors -- including drone-based cameras -- which would use facial and vehicle recognition, data brokers, cell-tower information and social network information to attempt to identify worthwhile advertising targets and aim personalized ads at them as they pass on foot or in cars. The scheme, which was submitted on October 6th, anticipates using the same kind of micro-auction processes that currently determine which ads users see in webpages and mobile apps. The implementation of public ad-targeting brings up some fascinating and chilling prospects, as users find that the ads which "bloom" around them betray much about their private lives. Yahoo provides an example via its patent application: "According to one example, a digital billboard adjacent a busy freeway might be instrumented with or located near traffic sensors that detect information about the context of the vehicles approaching the billboard, e.g., the number and average speed of the vehicles. Such information might be used in conjunction with information about the time of day and/or the day of the week (e.g., Monday morning rush hour) to select advertisements for display that would appeal to an expected demographic and to display the advertisements for durations that are commensurate with the level of traffic congestion." The patent application also mentions how it will gather required information from individuals: "Various types of data (e.g., cell tower data, mobile app location data, image data, etc.) can be used to identify specific individuals in an audience in position to view advertising content. Similarly, vehicle navigation/tracking data from vehicles equipped with such systems could be used to identify specific vehicles and/or vehicle owners. Demographic data (e.g., as obtained from a marketing or user database) for the audience can thus be determined for the purpose of, for example, determining whether and/or the degree to which the demographic profile of the audience corresponds to a target demographic."
Which they certainly wouldn't just pass on to federal agencies....
Between Waze and Google Maps, Google probably knows a LOT of detailed info about most of the cars passing near any particular billboard in any particular city... they could make a killing doing a much more targeted advertisement that would directly appeal to specific individuals passing by.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yahoo!, desperate to pull out of their inverted -8 G dive into the asphalt, pitches bullshit idea about advertising.
There's no place like
as she passes by the billboard. gives a new meaning to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
With a few hundred of my like minded "get to work before traffic really sucks". Which targeted ad are you gonna show? I drive this 5 days a week and know where the billboards are, how you gonna make me look at them? Geocities type flashing and blinking? Good luck with that. I'm looking to pick a lane to get me to work 2 seconds faster, not looking at billboards..
The same thing that happens when I visit youtube will invariably begin to happen when I pass this billboard. Rolling along in my 1993 Lincoln town car, with my cellphone switched off for the evening commute as its both safer and avoids targeted advertising, ill glance at the horizon. Ahead, I'll see the new Yahoo billboard, and just as I approach, it will hesitate for a second before displaying the same Kardashian/Dr Phil/clickbait/pop topic trending at the national level and sponsored accordingly to do so.
and in the midst of a 5 lane highway, im certain this billboard will get exciting.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Electronic changing billboards should be illegal. They're extremely distracting, especially when driving at night. There's a reason it's illegal to text and drive, or even look at/hold your phone while driving in most jurisdictions. It shouldn't be legal for companies to "text" me while I'm driving either.
I can only hope(though doubt) that the person responsible for this 'innovation' is appropriately ashamed of who they are and what they have done.
There are plenty of people who are useless; but this winner is actively making the world just a little bit worse. I hope that weighs on them.
*** Internet Company For Sale ****
Price with CEO: $4.8 Billion
Price without CEO: $8.8 Billion
Precrime ads too?
John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right about now.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Price with CEO: 4.8 Billion Price with punching Marissa Meyers in the face: 8.8 Billion.
The movie "Minority Report" already did this. As have I'm sure others. "Erasure" may have also iirc.
something else to distract your attention from what's in front of you...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
These billboards are shown in the film Minority Report.
Plus a feminazi shitstorm for the second option
Auto Insurance = More crashes, more cash.
Life Insurance = More deaths, more cash.
Funeral Homes = More Bodies, more cash.
It's a trifecta!
PS. Obama and EPS Love it Too. More dead American = Paris Climate Change Deal!
Ha ha
I'm sick of ads evading our time and space with no respect for people.
When are people going to realize this excessive greed has to stop.
Could we just ban ads already for once and for all instead of allowing them to visually pollute our physical and virtual places.
Does this mean people walking near me will also be able to see that for some reason, Yahoo is targeting me with ads for Oxycontin, pornhub and pork rinds?
This makes me a little uncomfortable.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm going to buy a ton of pornographic material (for research), then take pictures and sue these companies when they see my face and change their public displays to NSFW ads. Driving to the park with my kid? You just displayed porn to a minor. Give me $$$.
Yahoo, get a competent CEO!!!
The World's Fourth-Largest City Outlaws Billboards, Calls It 'Visual Pollution' (2007)
Sao Paulo: The City That Said No To Advertising (2007)
Quote: '... all forms of outdoor advertising were to be prohibited, including ads on taxis, on buses -- even shopfronts were to be restricted, their signs limited to 1.5 metres for every 10 metres of frontage. "It is hard in a city of 11 million people to find enough equipment and personnel to determine what is and isn't legal," reasoned Kassab, "so we have decided to go all the way." '
Can cities kick ads? Inside the global movement to ban urban billboards (2015) Quote:
Quote: "First it was Sao Paulo, then Chennai. Then Grenoble, Tehran, Paris and now even New York have spawned movements to replace or ban outdoor advertising."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Table-ized A.I.
another bad patent. BS and obvious.
I thought I saw this in a movie (Minority Report). Though it was accomplished by a retina scan, but same concept. Would this be considered prior art?
a case of Coffiest?
Mostly random stuff.
I wrote about this years ago in a Blogspot post, might have to dig it up...
How is this a patent? Advertisers have been targeting motorists for decades. Digital billboards are old news. What's wrong with this picture? How is this original? What am I missing?
If this technology was any good, it would be able to tell how much I loathe being advertised at, and stop trying to pimp the tat that some moron has stored in their parent's basement.
It can't, so I reserve the right to express my opinion on the advert using a suitable sledgehammer.
She's probably got saggy flaps.
She sure deserves to.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I have been appointed by the entire human race to inform you that you don't know what you are talking about.
Car-insurance companies very much want people to pay their premiums like clockwork, and never get in an accident.
Life-insurance companies very much want people to pay their premiums like clockwork, and live long and happy lives.
Funeral homes? Well, they do serve the dead, but they're run by caring human beings who very much want all of us to be on this earth as long as possible, and then take care of us after our One Bad Day.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Take your "smart" billboards, and go fuck yourself with them.
... we'll know for sure the system is rigged
because miniority report had it all, back in 2002:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ
according to US patent law,
> (...) an invention cannot be patented if: ....
(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention
The US patent office explains:
> In patent prohibition (1), the term “otherwise available to the public” refers to other types of disclosures of the claimed invention such as, for example, an oral presentation at a scientific meeting, a demonstration at a trade show, a lecture or speech, a statement made on a radio talk show, a YouTube video, or a website or other on-line material.
So clearly this "invention" of yahoo's was available to the public much before the effective filing date.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ka...
You could use a Guiness right now..
So if I drive with a Miss Piggy mask as adblocker, they'll show me frog-legs ads?
This is beyond Yahoo's capability. They could barely make a competitive search engine or email client. They couldn't keep it going without allowing full access to spy agencies. There's no way in hell anyone believes that Yahoo is pitching this idea. This is a surveillance states wet dream under the guise of marketing. This type of tracking should be illegal. It's domestic surveillance no matter how you try to paint it.
The sign starts swapping ads so fast folks with epilepsy start seizing....
Forget Minority Report, the real future is re-purposing surveillance technology. This is car-plate readers driving advertising. I expect to see 'Stingray' devices re-purposed to send adverts to your phone. The big problem is, all advertising on personal devices eventually sinks to porn. That might cause US congress to put some limits on advertising, for once.
Maybe the Unibomer was right. Technology is evil
The first time I heard about this it was being used on a freeway-adjacent billboard in Sacramento CA, around 2003.
I've always assumed the idea was being used lots of places, since it would explain why
I see so many ads for Bail Bonds when travelling with my brother in law.
Must be manned by a bunch of idiots.
Why do they continuously award patents for obvious and non-unique "inventions"?
You can't patent something that somebody else thought of first; the trick is to prove it. --- Of course, ANYBODY who saw the movie Minority Report has seen this technology demonstrated years ago. --- So, this will stand for about 30 seconds into the first court challenge.
___ I don't respond to Anonymous Cowards, and I Never Mod them UP.
So now every time I pass by a billboard it's going to display ads for extra extra large condoms... ... how embarrassing.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
... Normally I hate these kinds of stupid patents, but if this helps prevent others from implementing this nonsense, I might be able to get behind this...
How is anyone looking at a billboard when they have to look at the road?
Technology based on violating your human rights.
Imagine a cop car is parked near said billboard and a wanted criminal drives up - ad for a bail bondsman appears, and the cops stop the traffic :-)
Hey, Joe Smith! Yes, You in the Blue Ford F150, This Bud's For You!
For that 16 year old kid who figures out how to hack into it and outs a dancing ass on the billboard all day.
This was obvious, it was already done in movies even. The one I remember the clearest was minority report.
I'm stealing your tagline.
This is a feature from a tv-show from the 90's. Ironically one of the main characters is also a lawyer in Boston legal.
I clearly remember scenes from the show that presented this.
Prior art fail..
There's several sci-fi films that demonstrate targeted ads like this, like minority report and several others, so how can they claim a patent on it?
Identifying passing people existed well before Yahoo or even the internet.
Targeted ads existed well before Yahoo or even the internet.
Ads near travel ways existed before Yahoo or even the internet or even the car.
This is NOT an invention!!!
Hahahahaha! Next swingers' club just down the road and then turn left.... This will never work...!
I'll stop private browsing and allow all cookies and trackers. Then, as I drive down the road...... porn-ads as far as the eye can see.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Posted in 2010
It says, "... New York have spawned movements...", not actually banned ads.
Billboards should be illegal.
Indeed, we can assert that in most cases they already are.
The right to not be forced to be part of an audience is certainly a fundamental human right. Audience rights are every bit as important as the rights of speakers and publishers. Freedom of the press is not an unlimited right. Just as a person's freedom to wave their fist around ends when it enters somebody's personal space, so to must a person's freedom to publish be limited when others are forced to endure viewing or hearing the publication.
A right to view scenic natural beauty undisturbed by excessive signage can also be asserted.
I could see making an exception for the government owned signs near highway exits, so long as they are not overly large (as with any business related sigh, the signs need to be large enough to be readable, even by the elderly, but no more - and to not have distracting elements such as changing lights or pictures that could cause accidents).
For those nations whose Legislative branch is limited in its authority over freedom of the press, such as the USA, these rights could be asserted under a higher level of law, such as the Bill of Rights itself.
Obviously governments that receive funds from Billboard owners - including campaign contributions and other forms of lobbying, property taxes that are increased by the presence of the signs, sales taxes associated with the signs - are in a position of ethical conflict of interest with respect to allowing Billboards. Officials of such governments can be presumed to violating the right to ethical government - another fundamental human right - and thus disqualified from holding any position of public trust or responsibility. Similarly, legal professionals who have sworn oaths to uphold fundamental rights or laws guaranteeing fundamental rights are violating those oaths when they help billboards be used in an abusive manner - including helping people get patents that can lead to such abuse.