The Realities of "Minority Report".
In Future, Ads Could Rely on Eyes
"In 1999, Spielberg convened a three-day think tank to pick the brains of 23 futurists about likely changes technology would bring during the next 50 years.
'The futurists that I assembled around that table didn't agree with each other on every point, but one of the several things they did unanimously agree on was that the entire advertising industry is going to recognize us as individuals, and they're going to spot-sell to us,' Spielberg said. 'They will sell directly to you....'
In one key scene in "Minority Report," detective John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, is fleeing agents of the Pre-Crime police unit chasing him for a murder he is foretold to commit. As he runs down a street, electronic billboards scan his retinas and hurl personalized pitches his way....
In the future, it seems, the eyes are the window to the wallet....
'It's amazing how events have caught up with us after Sept. 11,' said Alex McDowell, the production designer for "Minority Report" who began imagining the world of 2054 in 1998.
'We know we want security, and we're willing to give up some of our civil liberties to have that,' he said. 'And Pre-Crime is really, in the end, the total loss of civil liberty. That's the extreme of it and the consumer-driven part of the film is the parallel extreme.' " [Excite News, via LibraryPlanet.com]
[The Shifted Librarian]
Neat idea, but I disagree. I think that the ads will ping the area for the wireless connections you have going, possibly scanning for the logos of the clothing that you are wearing (or the RF tags therin) and then tailor the adds to the widest market segment that is in it's area. These would then also serve as a way for companies to figure out just who their demographic is, as well as where they are at (literally).
There's no point in trying to sell FUBU to a pack of lawyers, they'd probably want an Armani or Lands End ad instead.
Marketing would then change massively, as it would no longer be amatter of selling AD space, it would be a matter of selling to a market based on how well an billboard owner could track who was walking past their ads.
When I went to go see Spider-Man, I saw two neat new (in a theater anyway) ad delivery systems. First was the "Rolling Poster" where there are a series of advertisments on a plastic roll that changes every five seconds or so. This one had movie posters on it. The other was a plasma screen, rotated 90 degrees so that it had the same form factor as a poster, and it alternated between showing the meanings of different ratings, and hawking popcorn. While these are static ad systems, they are a step in the right direction, as the plasma display feeds could easily be tailored to show ads based on the movie that you are going to see, or based on the peak of what movie has just had tickets sold for it.
9:21:35 AM 
|
|
