Putting the consumer in a cereal ad, by Evan Selinger and Shaun Foster

Imagine it’s the near future. You’re walking along a city street crowded with storefronts. As you walk past boutiques, cafes, and the Apple Store, your visage follows you. Thanks to advances in facial recognition and other technologies, behavioral marketers have developed the capacity to take your Facebook profile, transform it into a 3-D image, and insert it into ads. That sweater you’re eyeing? In the display, the mannequin wearing it takes on your face and shape. The screen showing a car commercial depicts you behind the wheel. At a travel agency (let’s pretend they still exist—after all, this is a thought experiment!), you see yourself sunning on a beach, while the real you is bundled up against the cold. The ads might show you with an attractive stranger or a lost love (after all, Facebook knows whom you used to date). Or they could contain scenes of you and your happy family. No longer do you have to picture yourself in the ad—technology has that covered.

How plausible is this scenario? What would it mean if it happened? How would it change the ethical landscape of advertising? Would anybody care? We advise you to read some thoughts on these and related questions by Evan Selinger and Shaun Foster.

Each year, a collection of some of the worlds greatest scientists and thinkers attempt to answer an open-ended question posed by the foundation. For example: "What is your most dangerous idea?", "What are you optimistic about", and "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?". The answers are collected and edited into books, but you can read through them all on the website.

This year's question is "What will change everything?". (Hint: If you were thinking "economic collapse", you'll be disappointed)

The responses are almost always thought-provoking and/or challenging. Reading through the answers, I find myself constantly learning about something new or relearning something I thought I knew due to the latest advances in our understanding. It's an ultra-concentrated intellectual experience. Highly recommended.

Happy New Year!

Adam Greenfield, ubiquitous computing pundit, wrote a blog post recently about an unusual British Airways advertisement he encountered:

This is how the ad reads: “YESTERDAY AT T5 AVERAGE TIME THROUGH SECURITY WAS 4.7 MINS. This picture was taken at 9:44am yesterday and shows Amanda Gemmill on her way to Beijing to watch her boyfriend compete in the Men’s Eight Rowing Final. 4.7 minutes was the average time the 842 customers we asked told us it took them to pass through Security yesterday, between 6am and 2pm. We had to stop at 2pm so we could make this ad.”

The purpose of this ad is to reassure travelers that Heathrow's new Terminal 5 alleviates the airport's infamously long security waits which often lead to delayed departures.

As Greenfield points out, the ad was created in what is soon to be "the old-fashioned way": humans walking around talking to humans, rushing information to the printers, and fixing it to static sheets of pulp. In the near future, it will be possible do the same thing in realtime, with sensors and dynamic media.

Consider the implications of this "transparent advertising". If BA is uses realtime data to taut better service, then to make their point they actually have to have better service.

Let that sink in for a moment.

If the data is not being manipulated and the ads aren't taken down at the first sign of trouble, this is a ballsy move. If BA holds up their end of the deal, it makes a powerful statement: "We don't need to be clever, we're just good-- and we've got the data to prove it". However, if BA slips up, that same copy becomes a public dissemination of guilt. Transparency cuts both ways.

It's an interesting angle in this age of jaded consumers: deliver on what is promised; truth, if not accountability, in advertising. I realize it's naive to expect things to work this way, but shouldn't they?

(Zingerman's would do it)

I was doing some work this afternoon and procrastinated with some Facebook maintenance which involved reloading the site several times over the span of a few minutes in order to view my profile changes.

Imagine my utter shock when this ad was served up and would not leave my newsfeed:

Of course, when I saw this, I immediately made a blog post. Apparently, I am easily distracted.

Facebook, like AdSense and many other websites, uses contextual elements (favorite TV shows in your profile, for example) to serve up targeted advertising.

The ad in question is most likely just an unfortunate coincidence, but for a moment I thought I had been observed, morally judged for my behavior, and then given a sales pitch.

(In other words, I probably had a glimpse of the future.)