Slashdot Mirror
Curated Advertising Is Coming To Highway Billboards (technologyreview.com)
Curated advertising may be coming to a highway near you. "A startup called Synaps Labs has brought it to the physical world by combining high-speed cameras set up a distance ahead of the billboard (about 180 meters) to capture images of cars," reports MIT Technology Review. "Its machine-learning system can recognize in those images the make and model of the cars an advertiser wants to target. A bidding system then selects the appropriate advertising to put on the billboard as that car passes." From the report: There is a lot an advertiser can tell about you from the car you drive, says Synaps. Indeed, recent research from a group of university researchers and led by Stanford found that -- using machine vision and deep learning -- analyzing the make, model, and year of vehicles visible in Google Street View could accurately estimate income, race, and education level of a neighborhood's residents, and even whether a city is likely to vote Democrat or Republican. Synaps's business model is to sell its services to the owners of digital billboards. Digital billboard advertising rotates, and more targeted advertising can rotate more often, allowing operators to sell more ads. According to Synaps, a targeted ad shown 8,500 times in one month will reach the same number of targeted drivers (approximately 22,000) as a typical ad shown 55,000 times. In Russia, Synaps expects to be operating on 20 to 50 billboards this year. The company is also planning a test in the U.S. this summer, where there are roughly 7,000 digital billboards, a number growing at 15 percent a year, according to the company. (By contrast, there are 370,000 conventional billboards.) With a row of digital billboards along a road, they could roll the ads as the cars move along, making billboard advertising more like the storytelling style of television and the Internet, says Synaps's cofounder Alex Pustov.
Somehow, adding "storytelling" by actively trying to distract drivers sounds like it's likely to decrease road safety.
I drive a pimp mobile, what type of ads am I going to get?
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
See a billboard in the distance. As I get closer, it changes.
"YOU! DRIVING THE IMPALA! WE SEE YOU ENJOY HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY!"
Picture of me from facebook is displayed.
"PLEASE CONSIDER CHATURBATE THE NEXT TIME YOU SPANK IT!!"
The picture of a monkey being spanked by a large hand was overkill.
Thanks Advertising!
Spray-paint. Bolt Cutters. And "Hey, Look! Free Digital Camera!"
It's then about time, that cars drive themselves, so we don't have to watch that crap.
Doubt it will match a 2015 Honda Fit to a multimillionaire Republican. Thus it fails.
and software to "curate" your ads, why not go further and identify you by licence plate?
Tie your licence plate to your vehicle's onboard 3G/4G account, and via that to your social media (a fair assumption that you've been silly enough to use your social media gmail/hotmail address to activate your vehicle's 3G/4G access when you bought it, or even used that gmail/hotmail address as a recovery email if forced to use a 'customer@gm.com' address), and you've got access to a wealth of information.
And don't believe that {social media} wouldn't sell the contents of your profile to the highest bidder. Do any social media accounts ask for vehicle licence plate number?
Maybe it won't be long before social media start to ask you for your vehicle's account details "to serve you better", perhaps in the guise of "if you have an accident, we can notify your friends!"
Hell, that'd be a damn sight more accurate for curated ads than just the car make and model.
My next car will be pre-1980, european, manual, and two-seater. I will of course upgrade it if necessary with radial tyres, and decent brakes.
And replace all the poor-design or faulty components with something more modern - but it won't have a computer in it.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
Call me stupid, but when there is lively traffic, the billboards are in full view of several cars at a time. So the update may be slow, so that e.g., ten or twenty cars see the same advertisement that is triggered by the first car? Or does every car get its own advertisement, so that you see a constantly flickering of different ads?
Paai
i take the train..
A lot of states require license plates in the front of a vehicle. A photos of your plate numbers and driver/passenger photo gets sent to advertisers. Get ready for the junk mail to pile up, let alone less privacy in the world.
Bullet holes in those things. Your CIVIC duty!
Yours,
The NRA
This has to stop somewhere. Make a fucking law to stop this shit. And what a stupid fucking name.
Digital Burma Shave signs.
It's been done... ... and everyone knows... ... targeted billboard advertising blows.
-... Burma Shave
Steve -- If you have to call it a system, you don't know what it is.
Send More Money: Fuck you buddy
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
... who responds to advertising in the opposite intended manner? Ignoring a very very few products that offer no choice alternative,
when i see ads for shit that does have alternatives, the ads make me put the product they are advertising on the shitlist.
The shitlist of things i will not buy on principle and will seek alternatives for. Say hygiene products for an example.
I like to think of it as "choosing the competition over the ad, and helping competition".
Ads makes me want to switch to competition as a middle finger.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Fry: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee!
Bender: Quit squawking, flesh wad. Nobody's forcing you to buy anything.
#DeleteFacebook
Hmm, I drive a 1998 Toyota Tercel (subcompact). It's not fancy, but I love it, and I see no reason to get another car. I wonder what the billboard software would think of me, based on my car.
You've been seeing curated ads in the train and station for decades.
I think I speak for all of us when I say, "Yay, more advertising!"
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Am I the only one who looks at an electronic billboard and thinks "What a sweet target!"?
And not just for shooting at- they'd probably be satisfying to hack into or paint over with some kind of thick, durable coating.
But either way, every time I see one I'm filled with the urge to destroy or vandalize it.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The only place I can think of where I've seen billboards is in Las Vegas. Most of those were for strip clubs. Would there really be a market for these?
There are entire countries where billboards are illegal (Brazil), countries where they are illegal outside of cities (France), and many cities where they are forbidden (like my own). Why ? Well, it breaks down to this: either they work or they don't work. If they don't work, then what's the point ? Get rid of them. If they work, then it means they steal some of your attention span while you should be paying attention to your driving, so they should be illegal. And they are ugly.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I don't think curated means what you think it means.
This just sounds – to me – like targeted ads.
And for really targeted ads, use that camera to look at my license/number plate, and show me a really targeted ad. Maybe you could do what google does and show me more ads for things that I shopped for and already bought last week. Because I really need a second kitchen stand mixer. While I'm driving on the highway.
There's no reason to estimate from the make and model of the car.
Just admit you're going to read the license plate, and match it to the owner's marketing profile from axcom or similar?
Or better still, facial recognition of the driver.
It's clearly where you can and will go with this technology
The "dumb" electronic billboards already are changing fast enough that imo, the message is missed. A second look at one and it's already changed, for better or worse.
Billboard advertising closer to print and broadcast advertising.
Persistent to content or time and location.
It promotes brand recognition and building.
Built in repetition.
Built in redistribution to additional eyes.
Turn it into current set of eyes advertising and...
You lose repetition.
You lose free redistribution.
You make it easier to push counterfeits.
You make it easier to gain from fear.
I enjoy print advertising. It's consistent. It has to sync with the print content I'm reading. Sometimes its more fun than the content (Ala Computer Shopper).
I've seen broadcast advertising go from complementary and congruent to discordant and jarring. And I've heard some radio stations go from discordant and jarring ads back to ads spoken by their DJs that match their DJs' styles.
... Burma Shave.
We don't
Know how
To split an atom
But as to whiskers
Let us at 'em
Burma-Shave
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
That's just what we need more of ... distracted drivers trying to read bright moving images on a billboard while driving at 55mph.
Sometimes targeted ads do interest me like RSS feed news. Those are basically targeted words to get you to pay attention to an article someone's written. If I could see a targeted ad for AMD's Ryzen CPU I think that would be worthy of a look instead of something like female makeup products.
I'm going to find one of these and see which ads it shows be while I drive either my 1979 FJ40 or Panamera.
Have gnu, will travel.
Now I want to run my car past it made up to look like the batmobile, see what it does with THAT...
To the gods it goes away just as quickly as so many other hair-brained advertising ideas before it gets any traction.
Advertising scum just keep ramping the scumminess up, don't they?
How much do I pay to get a billboard of Trojan Magnum condoms every time I pass?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
This is the last thing that people need.
Nore fucking distraction and how many marriages will break up when an advert aimed at a car for something a bit iffy and the wife sees it. AS the only car on the highway she has to assume that the other driver of the car has been playing away.
etc
etc
etc
Another reason to NOT visit the USA ever again. The place really is turning into Trumpton.
When the camera sees my car, the ads will be for Goodwill and Dollar stores. There might be promos for retirement homes or funeral services. Maybe a pretty girl will show on the billboard hawking Viagra. But most likely the policeman behind the billboard will pull me over to impound my tired old car.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I'm sure they'll be cross-referencing web habits via Cell phone radio/Mac addresses as well. Why not commit to total creeper stalking if you're going to stalk?
Haven't we seen this, (or a variation) every year for oh, the last 5 years?
Just Sayin'.
"A Little Song, A Little Dance, A Little Seltzer Down your Pants" -Chuckles The Clown
When it sees a police car, does it change to an advertisement for donuts?
(the mention of Russia made me think of this, because of the police-detecting bus-stop billboard)
So I can't answer a phone call because it would cause me to be distracted, but big-business corp can distract the hell out of every driver on the road and that's OK because.... money?
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
I see you are driving a North American designed cars, here are some ads for the nearest mechanic and lowest cost tow trucks.
I see you are driving an import, here are some expensive products for you to consider.
I see you have a Trump bumper sticker, here are is an ad for a DVD rewinder.
I see you have a Hillary bumper sticker, here are ads for pant-suits.
2005 Chevy Cavalier, red
What do you *know* about me now?
By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising...kill yourself. Thank you. Just planting seeds, planting seeds is all I'm doing. No joke here, really. Seriously, kill yourself, you have no rationalisation for what you do, you are Satan's little helpers. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now. Now, back to the show. Seriously, I know the marketing people: 'There's gonna be a joke comin' up.' There's no fuckin' joke. Suck a tail pipe, hang yourself...borrow a pistol from an NRA buddy, do something...rid the world of your evil fuckin' presence. —Bill Hicks
If I ever get in an accident near one of these things we'll be able to sue an annoying business entity instead of the other guy.
Advertisers evolve to target "consumers" ever more subtle, trying to influence them subconsiously.
I'm sure the targets will evolve defenses, as noone wants to be influences this way, and made to act against our own best interests, i.e. in the interests of companies instead of our own.
The more refined the advertisement methods become, the more people will start to distrust everything.
Potentially this will have negative effects on society as a whole.
This type of influencing should be stopped and prevented.
If anyone read billboards.
There is a lot an advertiser can tell about you from the car you drive, says Synaps.
There's a lot Synaps will be able to tell about public response when people start destroying their cameras. In most cases sneaking up from behind, probably, though there's ample evidence that many people are willing to commit crimes on camera.
Not that I would do such a thing, of course. But some folks are likely to take offense, and digital billboards are already hugely annoying. Add privacy invasion (real or perceived) to that and you're asking for trouble.
https://youtu.be/9aHHVPR5Avo