See That Billboard? It May See You, Too
nytimes.com
See That Billboard? It May See You, Too
1–10 of 67 posts
Re: See That Billboard? It May See You, Too
#2So you block ads on your phone and next thing you know they're tracking you outdoors. Geez. We need some regulation pretty soon otherwise this whole situation will get out of hand. What if someone hacks into that billboard and routes the data elsewhere?
Re: See That Billboard? It May See You, Too
#3They have tried this on Shopping malls and it was a disaster, people got really pissed when this was found out.
I think it's inevitable but it's not nice to know it's happening.
Re: See That Billboard? It May See You, Too
#4The bad thing is that you're not aware that you're followed, and they don't even bother to ask your permission. At the scale of a shopping center it may be OK, but in your daily life it's frightening. ClearChannel has the power to know you better than your best friend.
Re: See That Billboard? It May See You, Too
#5Somewhat related, but is there such a thing as "peak advertising"? Like, the point at which there is so much advertising that there is no more space to advertise on? Or we become so inundated by it that it ceases to have any affect on us at all?
Re: See That Billboard? It May See You, Too
#6I worked on an outdoor advertising system with tracking cameras that watched pedestrians as they passed, changing the billboard when various demographics were identified in front of the display. This was back in the 2009-2010 time frame. I was just consulting, and am pretty sure this company was purchased by someone like Clear Channel soon after. I think journalists are late to this one...
Re: See That Billboard? It May See You, Too
#7The attribution data story is really weird here.
So outdoor advertisers can potentially pixel customers who see an "impression" like they do for online ads and track conversion behavior if they ultimately walk into a store?
The article doesn't speak much to this, but what opt-in permission would a user give to actually allow their location to constantly be relayed to advertisers to make this possible? Would Target need to hide this in their T&C of their app and then match it against the billboard's data on an advertiser-by-advertiser basis...?
Re: See That Billboard? It May See You, Too
#8The bad thing is that you're not aware that you're followed, and they don't even bother to ask your permission. At the scale of a shopping center it may be OK, but in your daily life it's frightening. ClearChannel has the power to know you better than your best friend.
It only shows you what you give it. The only thing Amazon sends me offers about are computer peripherals because that's all I've bought through them. And Facebook only shows me travel ads because I only post details about my vacations on there. And Google only shows me ads for web hosting because most of my email is about website development.
None of these services know that I'm into hobby bonsai because I've never given them that information. So if don't want to be followed and frightened by them, then limit how you use them.
Re: See That Billboard? It May See You, Too
#9"has partnered with several companies, including AT&T, to track people’s travel patterns and behaviors through their mobile phones."
Basically what I make of this is that cell phone companies (for sure AT&T) have already agreed to sell Clear Channel your location data. Do they already disseminate this information out to anyone who is willing to pay for it or is this new?
Edit - I found they do and below are there are opt out links for different cell providers.
http://www.igeeksblog.com/how-to-disable-data-tracking-on-at...
Re: See That Billboard? It May See You, Too
#10Looks like you can opt-out here: http://att.com/cmpchoice
"AT&T provides valuable insights to businesses without compromising consumer privacy. AT&T Data Patterns does not share individual data – only counts. For instance, a report might tell what percentage of passersby is males aged 20-30. Consumers are always able to opt-out of having their anonymous, aggregated information used at att.com/cmpchoice."