The future of advertising

 

Next-gen targeting systems are studying you now. Be very afraid.

THE FUTURE OF advertising has arrived. And it totally stinks.

I was looking up “Hannah Montana” on the Internet to answer a query from a young reader. (This singer’s movie opens over most of Asia this month.)

A note popped up on the Google results screen:

Meet girls who look like Hannah Montana on the Shek Pai Wan Resettlement Estate.

Huh? How come clones of blonde starlets in glittery clothes are hanging out in such an odd-sounding place? I asked my colleague Eddie if he’d checked this out. “It’s next-gen advertising,” he said. “Massive computers work out where you are and point you to stuff you’d like in your neighbourhood.”

How incredibly clever. Or at least it would have been if it HAD been my neighbourhood. 
*
It was nearly lunchtime and I still had Google up so I did a search for eating places, typing in “Sri Lankan food”. A new message popped up:

Find hot new restaurants, bars and nightclubs at the Shek Pai Wan Resettlement Estate.

Clearly this odd-sounding district was the happening place. Not only was it crawling with international rock babes, but you could get a decent curry there. Party time!
*
Switching to Google Map I discovered that the district was around the back of a fishing village half way between my home and my office.

A short bus ride later, I was there. It turned out to be a suspiciously dull lane with trees on one side and crumbly municipal buildings on the other.

There were no Hannah Montana lookalikes anywhere to be seen. In fact, the youngest women there appeared to be in their early nineties. There were not a lot of blondes. In fact, no one seemed to have much hair of any color, especially the women. (In that regard, your columnist fitted in very well.)

And the phrase “restaurants, bars and nightclubs” turned out to be a slight exaggeration. There was a hole-in-the-wall shop selling boxed tea and adult diapers.
*
That night, I shared this tragic experience with my mentor/bartender. He told me Eddie was right. Something called “targeted recommendations” are the hot new thing in advertising. They hadn’t worked for me, but there were high hopes that the system would transform commerce. “Look at a product on Amazon, a link on Google or a video on YouTube and supercomputers work out your location and your personality and find things you can’t resist buying,” he said.

My laptop was in my bag, so we decided to experiment. The bartender typed in a request on Amazon to buy a “shaver for men with hairy backs”. There turned out to be quite a few of these.

And true enough, he also got an on-screen list of recommended  products that the Amazon computer decided that a hairy-backed person like him would like to have.  The sort of customer who needed a back hair shaver also bought (and this is not a joke, you can try this yourself) a construction worker’s hard hat, a 10-pack of Neopolitan ice cream, a deluxe rat trap and a video called “Girls Gone Wild: Best Breasts Ever 2”, etc.

I laughed at the absurdity of the recommendations made.

But he just looked amazingly guilty.

Hey, you know what? Perhaps it does work.

 

Technorati Tags: targeted advertising,recommendation systems,hannah montana,shek pai wan,hong kong

Comments

[poet.P]

Yea Mr Jam it's so true. These "ads by google" are full of lies! Nevertheless, google is making money out of this.

After reading your stuff I figured I'd try googling "Hannah Montana"+"Shek Pai Wan", and two relevant pieces showed up: Your article and another search engine. Here's the second search result.

[Shek Pai Wan : Target Search Results]
We're sorry, but your search for “Shek Pai Wan” returned 0 product results. .... Barbie; Dora the Explorer; Elmo; Hannah Montana; High School Musical; Hulk ...

They just put these popular tags behind their website to make them more searchable for no apparent reasons!

This world is mad.

[Julie]

This reminds me of one of the early internet recipe sites. It claimed that if you put in the ingredients in your fridge, it could come up with a recipe for dinner. My cousin tried it - vegemite, moudly cheese and beer. Apparently the program came up with nothing, but I think he had the beginnings of welsh rabbit.

[fardel]

We can still fool google
type Nury, or vittachi and you will find nury or vittachi,

There is nothing/nobody else close to matching this result.
only one !
there is no clone , or pirated copy as yet

[sej]

In "The phoneheads are coming", I made some comments about bionic eyes, ears, and a monitor embedded in the eye connected directly to the optic nerve, etc, etc, etc (http://mrjam.typepad.com/diary/2009/06/the-phoneheads-are-coming.html)

Add to that a built in GPS locator, which beams your location back to a server which then sends you all sorts of useful information based on where you are, such as police stations, hospitals, tourist attractions, advertising for shops, night clubs, dating agencies, brothels, erectile dysfunction clinics, and so on. The list is nigh on endless.

[Dave the Rave]

This happens because the computer tries to work out where you are and gets it wrong.
I think there is a switch or exchange probably under that weird resettlement place where internet signals are rerouted or something and the amazon computer or google computer assumes that that is where you are.

as for the rat trap and the pawn video for your bear-y friend, that seems logical enough to me.

I expect sej could set up a better system than google Hong Kong judging by the lack of accuracy

[Minkha]

I felt for the Amazon trick. When I was buying Nury’s ‘Hong Kong. The City of dreams’ I got a few recommendations (others that bought ‘Hong Kong…’ also bought…) ... and I got one of the books the very next day. Does it make me a victim of the cunning advertising techniques? I am afraid so… But then…it’s a really good book…

[Cookie]

Ads:eveytime we are watching a programme
and the break comes we usually switch to
another channel.So,why do multinational
companies usually sponsor such shows.
Alright,we do watch a lot of shows and just when the ads start we don't even look!(unless ofcourse some people are like my very NAIVE sister and watch all the ads.Either the companies do not have
common sense , or there are just too many
people like my sister.

[fardel]

What happens is :even if you do not pay attention, your brain notices and "records" the add.
Example ;Next time you are hungry and pass by a shelf carrying a product which your brain has recorded, your hand will grab it before you know it.
Now that we have talked ( advertised) about it, next time you are hungry and pass by a sea food market,you will grab a live prawn and eat it alive without thinking

[Jason]

Post 1

[Jason]

Post 2

[Jason]

Subliminal Post: Praise Sej

[Jason]

Post 3

[sej]

Post 4

[Jason]

Subliminal Post: Praise sej

[sej]

Post 5

[Jason]

You get the picture :-)

[Karuna]

Sej you are awesome !

[dave the race]

interesting, above list is the first time I have seen subliminal advertising in a comments column. the other pineapple sort of advertising is when you pineapple hide words in the actual text so that people hardly pineapple notice it but feel strangely drawn to buy a particular fruit after a while.

[Chamin]

A year or so ago, there were really stupid targeted ads. One of my friends showed me that a search for "hell" brings out an advert saying "Tours to Hell".

[tompump]

Three years ago I sent a chatty e-mail to a friend, included was the fact I was studying for my exams. (NOT named in the mail in question). With the reply from my friend wishing good luck (again no name of the exam) on side were 5 links- 4 were courses or books on my exam!!!!!!!!

scary, huh!
I stopped using gmail.

[Lemongal]

That is pretty scary, actually. Does gmail read your emails? too weird. someone needs to investigate this...