> I wonder what it will take for people to finally get fed up with creepy advertising companies.
As long as people get "free stuff" people won't get fed up.
As long as people get "free stuff" people won't get fed up.
I suppose that’s the loyalty pact customers are agreeing to. They agree to continue patronizing a business after that business flies behind their back to tell everyone what, when, and where they’re doing in their store.
However, if they’re not tracking you with a loyalty card, they’re still tracking you with your normal CC (Walmart has some messed up integrations with third parties around media purchases). Cash, privacy masks, sporadic gate changes, faraday bags, and gloves may be the only way to get around tracking at the moment ;-)
But ... it's not really free since the ad will just make products more expensive, since now you also pay for the adtech that's involved (besides paying with your personal data).
You can see this with the rise of ultra specialty online stores we’ve seen in the last decade thank to targeted advertising.
Yes, ads make people buy more stuff.
Is that a good thing? My comment doesn't say anything about that.
But anyway, my guess is no, because it leads to overconsumption, and exhaustion of natural resources.
Also:
> 96% of US users opted out of IDFA sharing
Meaning that users really do not want to be tracked.
> will just make products more expensive, since now you also pay for the adtech that's involved
That’s not generally how the economics of advertising works. If it were, advertising wouldn’t be very successful/important.
People don’t like the idea of being tracked, but my experience is that they like the results.. Especially all the extreme specialty niche products that simply wouldn’t exist without targeted ads.
Closest thing I know is companies who sell "foot traffic" data, of who walks in front of your store. But that's done with phones pinging wifi networks passively as you walk, not anything as fancy as facial recognition.
Facial recognition has been deployed to combat shoplifting [1][2]. Amazon Go is a store built around not needing to check out at a register at all. Microsoft offers Azure Kinect [3] as a way for retailers to track people moving through a store. There's no shortage of companies purporting to use AI to analyze in-store video in real-time to analyze customer behavior [4][5]. There was a video shared on this site a few weeks back showing a coffee shop tracking both customers and baristas [6] (more discussion there, including some skepticism).
I'm speculating that if they can track you in the store and build a profile on you that they'll be able to track your cash purchases. I don't think it's a terribly large leap to tie into their point of sale terminals but I don't know if any retailer is currently doing that or even planning to do that.
[1] -- https://youtu.be/g5Xf9Y6-RS4?si=De7EZTyVD66BQPeG
[2] -- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/technology/facial- recognition-shoplifters-britain.html
[3] -- https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/kinect-dk/
[4] -- https://viso.ai/features/
[5] -- https://twitter.com/jowyang/status/1214657642313871360
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-13/bunnings-kmart-invest...
The harsh reality, despite what privacy pundits might say, is that people... just don't really care. And that's fine? It's great Apple lets me tell an app not to track me. But if they didn't? It doesn't make material difference to me. Okay I bought cat food and now I see cat toys Instagram ads that I may or may not buy... okay?
It's not like insurance companies are able to use the data to deny you health coverage or something (yet, anyway). It's just used to support more consumerism atm. When that bridge is crossed then people might care, until then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm personally against ads in my mail, billboards, and pretty much everywhere else where my default context is not to buy something. If I go to a pet store and get cat ads--even based on my preferences shopping there--then I think that would be fair. But ads are currently way too aggressive and essentially stalk us everywhere.
Another aspect is how misleading and/or manipulative they are. Why aren't ads more reasonable with a tl;dr about the product and then some pros/cons of it over alternative options?
I had to visit the site of whatever service provider they use. I had to login with 2FA and accept their terms. The terms allow third parties to send me targeted advertisement based on my medical history. (They are very explicit about that. I guess that's progress... This is in Europe.)
So the stuff I get "for free" when I sell my medical history is the right to view my own medical bills. If I don't agree, I just get charged some random amount via my health insurance. I could bother them to share their copy, but by default they don't.