back to article Microsoft develops mood-matching ad engine

Microsoft has filed for a technology patent which will allow advertisers to push their advertising to consumers based on their emotional states and recent behaviours and activities. The platform works across devices, tracking and monitoring the online activity data of consumers stored in logs including browsing history, web …

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  1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

    Hmm

    Let's imagine for a moment that I'm paying attention to the ads. What ads will it show me when I'm pissed off by the presence of ads?

    Perhaps there's a market in paying to have your competitors' ads shown to people who react negatively to ads?

  2. skeptical i
    Devil

    multiple guess

    So, if I am repeatedly searching for Rollins' "Gun in Mouth Blues" do I get ads for Prozac, ammunition, or both?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    > “the user information may include search histories, cookies, user identifiers, online activities, assigned emotional states, and passwords.

    Hmmm... can you imagine... a registration form asking for a user's desired username and password (the latter entered in twice), for an organisation they don't like... so they enter:

    Username: Somebody

    Password: company x are tossers

    Confirm Password: company x are tossers

    Clicks Submit... next page, in an ad banner:

    "We recommend: Anger management therapy... click here!"

    Mmmm, yes, targetted advertising.

  4. Graham Wilson
    Flame

    Goebbels Mk-II stuff!

    The algorithm would be read-lining to deal with an irritable cranky bastard like me!

    Seriously, this is Goebbels Mk-II stuff. Advertisers have been fucking around with the psychology our minds for a long while now. We all know if a 5-year old sees a McDonald's ad he thinks Christmas has come. That's bad enough but this one takes the pail.

    If you really want to know what took mind-control marketing into the big-time, well here's the seminal article--it has legs and form (you need 10 mins): http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb54.htm

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Small part of the plan

    Anyone who thinks we will have targeted advertising cradle-to-grave is missing the bigger picture.

    Why limit yourself to birth, target the pregnant mother, get those ambient sounds to be brand X associated! The death thing? leverage that with environmentally friendly "good gas" cremations or "Worm friendly coffins" if there is still a enough space to BR (biomass-recycle) a consumer. We need to target a family, bloodline, race.

    It's happening now but we are upwind of the Coffee.

    Kids seem unable to traverse a short section of the land without being connected to man made "input", a willing audience for sure "Lyrics sponsored by Microsoft Metro Beat your head".

    I stopped shopping at Tesco partly due to the club card offers for single person microwave meals, hemp rope and kick-able chairs.

    I'm joking of course, the chair offer was from Ikea.

  6. VinceH
    Big Brother

    " The platform works across devices, tracking and monitoring the online activity data of consumers stored in logs including browsing history, web page content, search queries, emails, instant messages, videos from webcams, gestures from a computing device, e.g., Microsoft Kinect and results from online games."

    So on the one hand we have the so-called eu cookie law, which is a pile of crap but at least the idea is to protect privacy from tracking on the web, and on the other hand we have Microsoft who want to take tracking to a whole new and far more sinister level.

  7. The BigYin
    Mushroom

    Can they detect the mood...

    ..."tw@ off"?

  8. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Everyday brings us another step closer to the Capitalist 'BB' society

    Scene, a man returns home from a days work to find this message waiting for him.

    'Mr winston Smith, it has come to our notice that you have not been consuimg your minimum amount of advertising needed to keep our society economically healthy. This will be rectified by a change in programming. for the next three hours you will be able to see nothing on your InfoScreens apart from advertising which has been specially seleted for your viewing. Failure to consume this content will jeopardize the health of the nation and allow our enemies from Antartica to invade our lives.

    Yours S Balmer, Supreme Leader of the Western World'

    Being serious, I'll never allow this technology into my home. If I can't avoid it then I'll get rid of any devices that use it even the TV.

    BB Naturally.

  9. harryg123

    hideous

    hideous nauseating scary and nobody seems to give a shit

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Microsoft privacy ..

    If Google did this then it would be an invasion of our privacy ..

    “Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE do not use any information captured by Kinect for advertising targeting purposes. Microsoft has a strong track record of implementing some of the best privacy protection measures in the industry. We place great importance on the privacy of our customers’ information and the safety of their experiences.” link

  11. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Ads

    The mood Microsoft have me in at the moment is INCREDIBLY pissed off. If that HAUGE fuck off banner ad at the top of the Reg doesn't go very soon, I'm gonna stop visiting the site. I hate having to minimise an ad just to concentrate on the news I'm trying to read.

    I know El Reg likes a $, but that much? Seriously?

    1. The BigYin

      Re: Ads

      bind9, dnsmasque or solution of choice.

      Direct what you don't want to 127.0.0.1.

      Simples.

      And I say 'simples' as, seeing how this is a tech site, I assume you have a modicum of technical competence.

      Or AdBlock/GreaseMonkey. El Reg has to be one of the worst site for ads. Too big, too colourful, too bright. And then we having the branding changes...I mean really. Sometimes when on a different PC I think I've arrived at the wrong site! El Reg - is you identity worth so little to you?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Ads

        Yeah, would use adblock etc but I do design some ads, so I can't really block them when testing, and I tend to open el Reg in same browser so I can flick tabs. I just don't design ads that are so bloody irritating though.

        Perhaps this is part of MS's new policy, they are going to make their ads as annoying as their new desktop?

    2. Irongut

      Re: Ads

      What huge banner ad?

      Install the Ghostery extension, it is available for most browsers these days. It requires almost no set up or training, stops the advertising and social network bastards tracking you and as a nice side effect you won't see many adverts either.

  12. ehoffman

    Ads? What are those?

    Ads? What are those? It's been years since I have ad blocker on my Firefox. I even freaked out a few weeks ago when I saw someone go to Youtube with IE, seeing ads popup and all those. I asked him since when there's ads in Youtube? He said Duhhh, where have you been in the last couple years? That the happy (can't say it's the sad) truth... :-)

    I really freak out when I just look at some of the Web sites I regularly go without an Ad blocker, to the point where I ask myself if I would continue to go there without it!

    For the record, I also have a DVR, so no more TV ads either. In fact, even when I see/hear ads (you can't avoid all of them!), I would consider myself as one of the worst target for advertisers. I *never* buy anything based on ads I see. When I want/buy something of any value, it's because I spent some time reviewing the different competing products on my own (user reviews, never the vendor's marketing BS).

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What if......

    ....I search for porn all the time? What sort of adds do they serve to people who are horny, but dead inside!?!

    1. Tasogare
      Holmes

      Re: What if......

      Ads for more porn, presumably.

  14. Wile E. Veteran
    Black Helicopters

    Be afraid

    Be afraid, be very afraid.

    Time to head for the bunker.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Mood Matching Ad Engine?

    Dear MS,

    Whatever I search for, I see ads for Porn. Why?

    ...User.

    Dear User,

    Because all you ever think about is sex.

    ...MS.

  16. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

    From the comments, you'd think this was news

    The sky is not falling, kids. Or if it is, it's been falling for a while. This is incremental, and not a particularly significant increment at that.

    I haven't looked at the Microsoft patent, but from the description in the article there's very little new here. Gauging emotional state from facial image? Been done. The rest sounds like bog-standard data harvesting and sentiment analysis on the front end, and targeted advertising on the back.

    Hell, you could probably get fairly similar results using the technology of ten years ago: accumulate user input, do some blind Bayesian sentiment analysis on it, keep a weighted sliding-window average, and let the system do unsupervised training using ad clickthroughs. That's like a mid-semester assignment in an advanced CS class, or the sort of thing you could put together after reading a couple of articles in Dr. Dobb's (back when there was a Dr. Dobb's).

    Anyone who thinks this is a novel invasion of privacy is ill-informed. Be angry if you like, but don't be shocked.

    (In fact, the Microsoft patent may be good news for privacy advocates, as it could have a chilling effect on everyone+dog rolling this kind of tech out, for a while.)

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