Cloudian clobbers car drivers with targeted ads Cloudian object storage is being used to target Japanese drivers with focussed ads as they drive past a digital billboard. Dentsu, a Japanese advertising supplier, has set up an experimental system on a road in the Tokyo area where road gantry-located video cameras capture images of vehicles and drivers. It features deep …
On your way home from the dealership: "You're driving a brand new BMW... would you like to buy a new BMW?"
Just picked up your daughter: "You recently searched for baby products, you should buy Pampers!"
In the car with the wife and she's looking a bit testy: "Try AshleyMadison.com, free for 30 days!"
We may expect targeted ads, because that's what's being shoved down our throats, but it doesn't mean that we *like* it.
I remember my first targeted ad, they didn't realize what happens if you don't filter words that are impossible to buy/sell with marketplace ads.
I was searching for explosions for a school project.
This is a Google ad gem:
Looking for explosions?
Find new and used explosions on eBay!
The clowns coming up with this concept should be strapped into heavy-duty chairs with their eyelids propped open and forced to watch "targeted ads" for three days straight.
The drooling, gibbering remnants of human beings they then became could be released to start their new life on the streets.
One wonders how long before the ambulance chasing scum of the legal profession latch on to this with the "M'lud, my client was distracted by <insert billboard pic> and was therefore not aware of the traffic stopped in front of him" defence.
Absolute madness, I tell you. Just because you can, etc, etc
It's probably the pr0n ads after visiting some specific city locations that will terminate this idea, especially if it involves politicians.
I'm rather puzzled, though, I thought privacy was rather well protected in Japan. I recall Google getting into trouble with its Streetview because of it, so why is this suddenly OK?
Unlike TV ads that make money for the networks to continue creating great, entertaining programming (well, that's what the ads tell us anyway), billboards only pay for their own existence.
Consumers don't care that a billboard exists (unless it blocks their view of something). Billboards are like websites that only serve up ads, without any real content (aggregators, I think they're called). Or TV channels that only show commercials (is there such a hell?).
Targeted ads only make sense when you don't want to LOSE someone's focus (e.g. "You're reading our news, here's an ad that will hopefully not make you close your browser window). As others have mentioned, you shouldn't be stealing focus from people operating motor vehicles.
Amazingly enough, I've actually built a paintball Gatling gun. It's not belt-fed, but feeds from a "powered magazine" to keep stuffing paintballs into the gun as fast as it can fire. Got it up to 6000 paintballs/minute but then realized just how many paintballs I was going through--it gets expensive after a few minutes.
"before we can purchase targeted ad-blockers?"
Eh, those things are never secure, so:
Passenger in car takes smartphone, uses wifi to log into billboard with "Admin" and "password".
Has billboard log into pronworld.net/classics/debbydoesdallas.mp4*, selects stream.
Change billboard's login to something very secure and logs off.
Problem sorted.
*Not a real weblink, sorry guys. :)
That reads kinda, um, interesting to a Krautistanian. Roadside ads in Japan targeted at Edmund Stoiber's wife?
This seems to be a lot of trouble to go to just to display something on a billboard which will register on most drivers as 'Oh, it's a billboard' in the small corner of their mind not currently occupied with texting, changing the CD, thinking up cruel and unusual punishment for the Audi driver who just cut them up, wondering if they should have got off at the last junction, fiddling with the GPS and, oh yes, driving a car.
"Privacy concerns will be assuaged by the system not storing camera images once they have been analyzed. Also the system doesn't capture licence plates or other identifiable vehicle information."
Yet. How much do you trust the company responsible for this abomination not to succumb to the urge to sell us out? And how long before the GuvMint decides to issue "requests" that "metadata" be kept - purely for our own protection, of course.
Utterly stupid - and highly dangerous. The entire add industry has become a completely hostile entity.
I've noticed some petrol stations do adds now at the pump. I also noticed a tiny camera, so as soon as the fill starts I make a point of turning my back on the pump (I always fill the tank) with just a quick glance at the total before I go and pay.
I've also learned to ignore programmable motorway signs now unless the lights are flashing.
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