Date: Tue, 2 Aug 1994 13:38:43 -0700 From: Phil Agre Subject: the future of advertising I've enclosed a message from Jeremy Allaire on the online-news mailing list. For information about online-news, send a message that looks like: To: rre-request@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: archive send news [...] Forwarded message: Date: Sun, 31 Jul 94 22:49:08 -0500 From: Jeremy D. Allaire Subject: "Do-it yourself Papers" The commentary on the advantages and disadvantages of a "filter" or "preference" based news service prompted me to recall the events from a conference I recently attended. It may shed some light on how the major Cable/Telco folks are thinking about bringing this into your home. Essentially, the conference was about how to leverage new interactive technologies for marketing and advertising. Folks from Time-Warner, TCI, US West, Prodigy, and others were there. The basic thrust was that Interactive forms of information posed the threat of breaking the reader/viewer away from the advertisement, because the cold stark fact was that the majority of people prefer the entertainment/information over the advertisements. And, in a world where more control is offered to the user, that could cause some problems. Besides the frequently referenced and revolting notion of turning advertisements into interactive game shows where you win what are essentially coupons, there were several points made about new strategies for controlling the reader/viewer in the interactive age. The upshot was this -- while computers (e.g. set tops or PCs) do allow for refined choices by the consumer, they also allow for refined choices by the advertisers. Major Telco/Cable folks are dying to make deals with credit card companies and banks to get purchasing behavior data with which they may "program" (oh my Orwell) your set-top box or PC data flow. So, one example was this. You go to the store and buy toothpaste, it gets registered in a database, it gets referenced by another database (here, the Cable/Telco company) which performs an operation (e.g. the average time to use a roll of toothpaste equals 2 months) and then programs your set-top to give you a toothpaste add 2 months down the line. The idea is to refine and control the incoming data to meet the advertisers needs. Sound like freedom? IMHO, the bottom line is that all of this technology will continue to be advertiser driven, and, hence, the advertiser will shape the contents of your box more than you shape the contents of your box. We're obviously talking about a different phenomena than todays PC/Online Newspaper service, but that is what is being built by the Bells and Cable folks, and they are working with their traditional sponsors. Just a thought. Jeremy Allaire 612.672.9653 "I will be the Set-Top Box" *** END FWD **** [This is just an informational forward, and does not represent official EFF positions or statements in any way.] -- Stanton McCandlish
mech@eff.org

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