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Here's another look at the science of consumer tracking, one that reveals a few more details about the technology and the mindset behind it all than the users might like.
For those who are not aware, smartphones are closely tracked almost everywhere, including inside larger stores. The Google traffic map is largely based on tracking phones to calculate traffic speeds and generate the green-yellow-red-blood colored lane stripes. If you've paid attention, this highlighting has gotten a lot more detailed in the last year or two, which is just wonderful until you work it through: it's a result of big jumps in the accuracy and perseverance of tracking your cell phone.
I long assumed there was a link between traffic-tracking and digital billboards, as well as a more general use of the data for fixed billboards, but it seems that aspect has been a little primitive, until now. The article goes into considerable detail about how relative traffic speeds, time of day etc. are used to target the specific audience on the highway with digital signs.
Where it gets just a tad disturbing is not just that they discuss linking specific passers-by on the highway with specific other tracking in, say, Target stores, but that they toss it off so casually - 'oh, of course.'
The smartphone and its support infrastructure and the free access to the movements and actions of every single person who carries one must be a gift from the gods to the marketing industry... and a few others with even less benign intentions.
The writeup of the tech is interesting, and chilling - but the blithe attitudes of those who use it to maneuver consumer attitude is much more so.
Merry Christmas.
(One of my proudest moments was when I called this, and sent an AT&T press conference into chaos and other reporters scrambling to write fast enough... 20 years ago.)
Yeah. "Buy This!" "Subliminal messaging." "Targeted audience." I buy what I need and ignore all the static in the background. You obviously are not able to do this.
Yeah. "Buy This!" "Subliminal messaging." "Targeted audience." I buy what I need and ignore all the static in the background. You obviously are not able to do this.
There are times I will engage someone who chants, "Advertising doesn't affect me. I make my own choices. Only stupid people fall for that stuff."
And there are times I just sigh and go do something productive instead.
^^^ Good idea, because it's impossible, and unproven to state that EVERYONE, EVERYTIME is affected by advertising. Believe or not, there are people who do use their own mind, and judgment and common sense.
Advertising became so pervasive, obnoxious, intrusive and often plain stupid, that lots of people hate it more than love and learn to ignore it and block as good as possible. Most ads are insulting their intelligence and if advertisers are "dumbing things down" for their audience, they need to revisit their buyer personas and focus on how they want to be talked to.
^^^ Good idea, because it's impossible, and unproven to state that EVERYONE, EVERYTIME is affected by advertising. Believe or not, there are people who do use their own mind, and judgment and common sense.
Since I've never said anything of the kind and agree completely, there's not much to add. Other than that the idea that "advertising" is or must be or is supposed to be 100% effective - or effecting - is a nonsensical concept of the ignorant mind.
Those who claim to be uninfluenced and independent are invariably deluded, but it's difficult enough to discuss that in-person/IRL when you can pin down evasions and blind spots; since everyone's avatar online is perfect, it's a pointless it-said/it-said waste of time.
Marketing has been the most powerful shaping force of our culture, thinking, lives and politics since WWII. Anyone who thinks otherwise - or that such shaping is benign, irrelevant or beneficial - is the very model of a modern major "sheeple" - the dumb suckers they profess to despise.
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