Advertising Creepiness

[Adam Back]

Tim May writes:
> I expect banner ads to die out soon enough. The technology is just too
> amenable to filters.
> 
> Adbusters for television have been talked about for years, but I know of no
> reliable adbusters...and an adbuster for t.v. doesn't save too much (since
> the 2-minute or whatever gap is still there). Taping and then
> fast-forwarding through ads is probably more convenient than an adbuster in
> realtime.

I think the idea of fast-forward for a TV would be a nice product.
Say that you had a high capacity video CD hooked up to TV.  Record it
all in a rolling backup of the weeks TV.  Then you can skip around,
forward over junk (ads, unintersting patches).

Probably you could combine with VCR+ or programme list to prune down
the bandwidth/capacity requirements by indicating disinterest and
interest, topic preferences etc.  

Possibly a setup like this is getting closer to feasible with storage
improvements.

> But for the Web, the arms race between adbusters and ad providers...seems
> likely to be lost for the ad makers.
> 
> Once some mainstream adbusters appear.
> 
> I wonder if advertisers will try to cite some right to enjoin ad
> busters from busting their ads? (Far-fetched, perhaps. But imagine
> if a particular version of this filtering occurrred...imagine the
> howls if Microsoft Explorer automatically filtered out the ads of
> companies it disliked or was competing against? Legal? Restraint of
> trade?)

A new feature for some enterprising cyberspace business to provide via
eternity servers perhaps -- mirrors of subscriber services, and banner
stripping.  Free, but account based subscriber services are annoying,
eg microsoft recently stuck about 5 mins worth of forms to fill in to
get at support for some thing you've already paid for, forcing you to
give them free user survey material.

I fill it in as Billzebub billg at microsoft.com etc., plus random
meaningless answers so that they get dud survery info, and so that his
secretary gets to filter the crufty ads.

Adam