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Cafe in Providence, Rhode Island Serves Free Coffee To Students Who Provide Personal Data; Participants May Receive Info From Cafe's Corporate Sponsors (npr.org)
An anonymous reader shares an NPR report: Shiru Cafe looks like a regular coffee shop. Inside, machines whir, baristas dispense caffeine and customers hammer away on laptops. But all of the customers are students, and there's a reason for that. At Shiru Cafe, no college ID means no caffeine. "We definitely have some people that walk in off the street that are a little confused and a little taken aback when we can't sell them any coffee," said Sarah Ferris, assistant manager at the Shiru Cafe branch in Providence, R.I., located near Brown University. Ferris will turn away customers if they're not college students or faculty members. The cafe allows professors to pay, but students have something else the shop wants: their personal information.
To get the free coffee, university students must give away their names, phone numbers, email addresses and majors, or in Brown's lingo, concentrations. Students also provide dates of birth and professional interests, entering all of the information in an online form. By doing so, the students also open themselves up to receiving information from corporate sponsors who pay the cafe to reach its clientele through logos, apps, digital advertisements on screens in stores and on mobile devices, signs, surveys and even baristas. According to Shiru's website: "We have specially trained staff members who give students additional information about our sponsors while they enjoy their coffee." The source article additionally explores privacy aspects of the business. The cafe, which is owned by Japanese company Enrission, says it shares general, aggregate data such as student majors and expected graduation years.
To get the free coffee, university students must give away their names, phone numbers, email addresses and majors, or in Brown's lingo, concentrations. Students also provide dates of birth and professional interests, entering all of the information in an online form. By doing so, the students also open themselves up to receiving information from corporate sponsors who pay the cafe to reach its clientele through logos, apps, digital advertisements on screens in stores and on mobile devices, signs, surveys and even baristas. According to Shiru's website: "We have specially trained staff members who give students additional information about our sponsors while they enjoy their coffee." The source article additionally explores privacy aspects of the business. The cafe, which is owned by Japanese company Enrission, says it shares general, aggregate data such as student majors and expected graduation years.
I can't help but imagine that there is some kind of "advertising bubble" like a stock bubble, that is going on here. Is advertising *really* that valuable? I see ads, and they influence my purchases, and that is money to be made. (Well, shifted, since no new good was created.) So if they know my birth date and favorite color, they can target ads to me better. But how much better does that influence my purchases compared to the original ad they showed me? How much more money is there to be made from the more targeted ad? Is it worth a cent? A dollar? Ten dollars? Do advertisers really pay real dollars for that? Will companies really pay more for those targeted ads? Do they really really turn into profits somewhere?
I wonder if advertisers are using the concept of "targeted" ads to jack up advertising prices to the point where the ROI is not sustainable. I am hoping that it will turn out that targeted ads are not much better than regular ads, and there is a market "crash" that happens, and suddenly personal data becomes worthless.
that is all.