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tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/tech-and-advertising-36831/articles tech and advertising – The Conversation 2017-07-25T05:54:23Z tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81322 2017-07-25T05:54:23Z 2017-07-25T05:54:23Z Russia's Mayak satellite: crowd-funded cosmic pest or welcome nightly visitor?

The Mayak satellite will unfold a giant reflective pyramid that will be seen from Earth. Mayak/YouTube/Screenshot

Will we soon see a new bright "star" visiting our evening skies? The crowd-funded Mayak CubeSat was launched along with 72 other satellites aboard a Russian Soyuz Rocket on July 14, 2017.

Prior to launch, Mayak was just 30 centimetres long; such a tiny satellite would normally be difficult to see unaided. But Mayak is designed to unfurl a three-metre highly reflective sheet that can beam sunlight down to Earth.

Mayak blasts off along with 72 other satellites on a Soyuz rocket.

Will Mayak be the brightest object in the night sky apart from the Moon? Will our night sky be flooded by artificial stars? Is this the start of advertising in space?

Or can we relax and enjoy this new visitor to the night skies?

Bright lights

A bugbear of astronomers, both professional and amateur, is light pollution. In cities and towns across the world, faint stars are hidden from view because the atmosphere reflects artificial light back at us.

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 Light pollution hinders our view of the night sky. Flickr/äquinoktium, CC BY

While we don't think of the Moon as a source of light pollution, it also makes the night sky brighter. When there's a full Moon it is far more difficult to see the glow of the Milky Way stretching across the heavens.

Although Mayak weighs just a few kilograms and is currently more than 500km above Earth, it could end up being very bright indeed.

Mayak is designed to unfurl a reflective pyramid, with each side of the pyramid having a surface area of four square metres. (At the time of writing, it's unclear whether the pyramid has been unfurled.)

If the sides of Mayak's pyramid were perfectly flat mirrors, then Mayak could be a tenth as bright as the full Moon. That's bright enough to cast shadows here on Earth on a dark night.

Reflections on Earth

But photos make it clear that Mayak's reflectors were never intended to be perfectly flat mirrors, so it won't be that bright.

Mayak's reflectors may only illuminate regions of Earth's surface that are tens of kilometres across. As Mayak is moving at more than seven kilometres every second, it may appear as a bright star only briefly.

There are plans to improve Mayak's visibility by setting it tumbling, so that it flashes as it moves across the sky, although these flashes may not seem spectacularly bright.

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 Highly reflective satellites have been launched before, including NASA's inflatable PAGEOS. NASA

Given Mayak's fleeting passage, it is not going to produce much light pollution. Even if Mayak reflected light directly into a telescope, its rapid passage across the sky should reduce the chance of it damaging sensitive astronomical instruments. That said, I wouldn't be happy if it spoiled one of my astronomical images.

Also, Mayak is not the first satellite to produce such fleeting "satellite flares". The fleet of Iridium communication satellites has been orbiting Earth for two decades, and at any given location several such flares can be seen each week (they are sometimes mistaken for UFOs).

I personally enjoy seeing bright Iridium satellite flares. If you want to see some for yourself, you can look up predictions at Heavens Above.

Iridium satellite flares occur several times a week; you just have to know when and where to look.

Advertising from space?

The idea of advertising from space has been kicking around for decades. In 1956, a year before Sputnik, Arthur C. Clarke wrote of guerrilla advertising from the Moon in Watch this Space. In the 1990s Space Marketing Inc. proposed launching billboards into space.

The Mayak team includes employees of a Russian advertising agency, called 12, so is Mayak the beginning of advertising from space? To be blunt, no. And the ad agency says it does not want to move advertising to space, although it admits that others may be interested in that idea.

Besides, Mayak will be so small when viewed from Earth that it will look like a point of light.

A billboard in orbit just isn't practical. Given what the unaided eye can see, an orbiting billboard would need pixels (roughly) 50 metres in size. That means a 100x100-pixel image would require a square billboard 5km high. Apart from the impractical size, such an enormous object would be a huge target for (and creator of) space junk.

While Mayak's reflectors do gain attention (including media coverage), they are not intended to be billboards, but are a parachute (of sorts).

Satellites can remain in orbit for many years after they've stopped working, because at altitudes of hundreds of kilometres there's very little atmospheric drag. For example, Vanguard 1, launched in 1958, is still orbiting the Earth.

Mayak's practical purpose is to test a technology for reducing space junk, by dragging small satellites back to Earth. One can hasten the downfall of satellites by increasing their surface area. Mayak's reflectors increase the satellite's length from 0.3 metres (prior to launch) to 3 metres, greatly increasing the atmospheric drag it experiences.

If all goes well, Mayak will be dragged back to Earth in weeks, not years. Indeed, Mayak's parachute won't save it from destruction, but hasten its demise via reentry into the atmosphere. Then, very briefly, Mayak definitely will be the brightest shooting star in the sky.

Mayak has been very effectively promoted in traditional media and online, including via this (curious) video.

Michael J. I. Brown receives research funding from the Australian Research Council and Monash University, and has developed space-related titles for Monash University's MWorld educational app.
 It promises to be one of the brightest objects in the night sky once the Mayak satellite unfolds a giant pyramid reflector. But what is it going to do? Michael J. I. Brown, Associate professor, Monash University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/70592 2017-03-17T03:15:43Z 2017-03-17T03:15:43Z Embracing the bots: how direct to consumer advertising is about to change forever

Is your chatbot advertising, or just being helpful?

The tech revolution is coming to advertising. Chatbots are replacing humans, big data threatens our privacy, and the blockchain is linking it all together. In our series on tech and advertising, we're taking a look at how the industry is being reshaped.

Soon, advanced computers won't just be driving you to work, they'll be selling you stuff as well. We can already see this in the form of chatbots.

Chatbots are artificially intelligent pieces of software, capable of maintaining a conversation with a human. While they aren't perfect yet, they have markedly improved in recent years, leading some to claim 2017 will be the year that we finally see mass adoption.

Chatbots can already do some incredible things, such as operating a medical helpline, helping you plan your vacation, and even talking with you when you can't sleep.

In the world of advertising, this represents a huge step. Chatbots are personalised, to the point, and all knowing, thanks to consumer tracking, big data, and machine learning. With the likes of Facebook jumping aboard, all of this is right in your pocket.

The rise of chatbots

According to American research firm Gartner, 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human by 2020. Given this, businesses are beginning to invest and experiment in the space. Their bots have the capacity to do a great many things - provide personalised support for many customers at once (not just VIPs), recommend products and services, and assist during and after a sale. All without the need for humans.

The strength of bots is their ability to have tailored conversations, give personalised offers, and offer convenient purchases. Armed with data and serious computing, they can analyse patterns in our speech to decide when and what to advertise. They can also increase engagement and bring your brand personality to life.

In addition to all of that, bots are novel and a little bit human. This means we are less likely to get distracted than we would be with other digital options, like banner ads.

Personal assistant or sales assistant?

"Hey, I see you're going to Gary's party on Saturday. Need any help?"

What sounds like a conversation is the future of direct to consumer advertising. Chatbots won't just remind me about Gary's party, but accept his invitation, order a gift based on Gary's preferences, arrange an Uber to the party, and maybe even move around tomorrow's appointments for me.

Is this a personal assistant or advertising? The potential of chatbots is that they will be both: advertising will be intelligent, help will be on-demand, and it will feel like we're being assisted rather than sold to.

The bots will recognise patterns, learn from us, and their suggestions will be there at exactly the right time. And unlike the personalised suggestions already provided online courtesy of consumer tracking, this advertisement will have a human touch and embrace natural conversation - the new wave of advertising will allow us to upscale personal selling in a way we've never seen before.

But they're not there just yet

One thing standing in the way of widespread chatbot adoption is that they are a little creepy. This cause of this creepiness is two-fold.

First, there's the uncanny valley. This is the phenomena, where we perceive a non-human as creepy because it is almost (but not quite) human. Some suggest that the answer here lies in not asking the bot to "act" human, rather, just let it be a bot.

A second source of "creepiness" is a feeling of invasiveness that might arise if the bot appears to know something that you haven't told it. It is a delicate balance for bots: they should know enough to be helpful, but not enough to give consumers a sense of invaded privacy. They must use the information responsibly to build trust, and aim to provide a valuable service.

But the technology isn't mature yet. This manifested spectacularly last year when a Microsoft chatbot named Tay started sending out offensive tweets. Even the CEO of a virtual assistant company has warned of the damage of a "low-IQ" bot. If advertisers exploit this technology before it's ready, bots could become just another thing to be ignored when the "ads are on".

This isn't about the transaction, it's about the relationship.

Looking forward

Artificial intelligence is constantly progressing, spurred on in part by competitions like the Loebner prize. With enough data and time, chatbots could become very convincing. In addition to seeing our bots become more seamless and eloquent, we could also see them more integrated across different technologies and functions: already users of virtual assistants can utilise them across loads of devices.

Likewise, bots can talk to other bots, coordinating a valuable experience for the consumer behind the scenes. Imagine how much more important these interactions will become as we enter our increasingly connected future. In addition to knowing what Gary wants for his birthday, will our bot also lock the house behind us and drive us to the party? If on the way home the bot reminds us to stop and get milk and some antacids (maybe that second slice of cake wasn't a great idea), will we think of this as advertising or just thoughtful?

It's a call we will all be making soon, as these bots increasingly enter our home and work lives.

In many ways, they are already here.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 This could be the year chatbots are widely adopted. But beyond making our lives more convenient, they represent a huge potential for advertisers. Kate Letheren, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology Charmaine Glavas, International Business Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/70323 2017-03-16T03:51:18Z 2017-03-16T03:51:18Z The blockchain could help advertisers lock up our attention
The tech revolution is coming to advertising. Chatbots are replacing humans, big data threatens our privacy, and the blockchain is linking it all together. In our series on tech and advertising, we're taking a look at how the industry is being reshaped.

While technology has been making more devices "smart", and we carry phones with all sorts of sensors, these haven't yet been systematically applied to advertising's central problem – engagement. The blockchain, however, will make advertising much smarter.

Traditional advertising – think of posters on bus stops and TV commercials – is easy to ignore and its effectiveness is hard to measure. Even online advertising has problems measuring engagement. But with the blockchain, advertisers will be able to tap into the data in our devices, automatically pull together multiple sources of information, and even offer rewards to consumers.

What is the blockchain again?

Think of the blockchain as a kind of a public spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is stored simultaneously on a bunch of different computers and is encrypted.

When someone transfers a Bitcoin (or anything else you're trading on the blockchain) the transaction is verified by all of the computers, encrypted and added to the spreadsheet, where everyone can see. The encryption and transparency are what make the system secure.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, such as Ripple XRP and Ether, sit on top of the blockchain. They can be used as currencies, transferred between people just like normal money. Or they can be used as a kind of token, the transfer recorded to signify when something has been exchanged.

A computer program known as a smart contract has evolved out of this system. It can execute specific actions when predefined conditions within the blockchain are fulfilled – such as automatically paying a farmer when crops are delivered. But smart contracts could also have huge implications for advertising.

Advertising is going to be more complex

Advertising in the age of blockchains and smart contracts will be something more like an ecosystem. Information and value will flow and be captured in numerous directions. Using smart contracts, many different entities and data streams will be brought together.

Let's imagine Jane sees an advertisement for a pair of shoes on her smartphone. The advertiser asks that, in exchange for Bitcoin, she reveal her identity by turning on her camera and taking a selfie. She must also allow the advertiser to access her SIM and verify with the phone company that it is indeed Jane who owns the phone. The advertiser would also like to know where Jane is located using the Google Maps application on her phone.

Individually, none of these actions are new. What will be new is having a smart contract to tie it all together.

At the initiation of this advertising effort, the parties involved in the smart contract are Jane, the advertiser, the phone company and Google. A predefined reward (in the form of Bitcoin) promised by the advertiser will be released to Jane only once all parties fulfil their part of the contract. Jane must take a selfie and send it to the advertiser, the phone company must confirm with the advertiser that Jane indeed owns the phone used to take the selfie and Google must release Jane's location to the advertiser.

There are a few implications from this example.

Consumers like Jane will now be empowered to choose whether they want to give up their privacy in exchange for something. Jane could choose to block Google Maps from revealing her location, for example.

Advertisers will know exactly how consumers interact with their ads. By specifying actions for Jane to perform, like taking a selfie after watching an ad, advertisers will overcome the crucial problem of not being able to verify whether people are actually paying attention.

They will also know whether consumers have adhered to every part of the agreement. If Jane does not allow Google Maps to reveal her location, the advertiser will be aware of this and may release only some of her reward. This is an efficient and cost-effective method of piecing together the profiles of customers.

Finally, the blockchain will enable advertisers to capture value they could not previously, because they could not track or measure interaction with ads.

For example, let's say the advertiser's request is more ambitious, and Jane decides to reveal she is using a cab from company X and dropping by cafe Y to pick up a latte before going to the shoe store. The original advertisement has now generated value not only for the advertiser but also for those other entities.

Using the blockchain means all parties will have access to information about what happened. The advertiser could collaborate with other companies like cab company X and cafe Y to boost business. They could even demand those companies chip in to cover the costs.

A few years off

At this point we must go through a reality check.

While some parts of this picture are already being experimented with – Nasdaq has built a marketplace to buy and sell advertising on a blockchain, and others are building the tokens to sit on top – technologically and politically we are still sorely lacking.

There are also many digital blind spots that, like missing links among security cameras, allow some actions to go unobserved and unaccounted for during the advertising process.

But it is possible that in the future, once the infrastructure and our societies have caught up, every digital device will be connected to a blockchain-like system so that all digital actions are accounted for. When that happens, advertisers won't know what hit them.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 The blockchain isn't just for Bitcoin transactions. Advertisers can no longer ignore blockchain's huge implications for the world of marketing. Eric T.K. Lim, Senior Lecturer in Information Systems, UNSW Chee-Wee Tan, Professor in IT Management, Copenhagen Business School Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/69983 2017-03-15T03:50:26Z 2017-03-15T03:50:26Z We shouldn't ignore the potential of virtual reality advertising

  Shutterstock.com

The tech revolution is coming to advertising. Chatbots are replacing humans, data threatens our privacy, and the blockchain is linking it all together. In our series on tech and advertising, we're taking a look at how the industry is being reshaped.

By some estimates virtual reality (VR) will be a US$162 billion industry by 2020. Only 50% of this figure is projected to come from hardware sales; the rest will be revenue from software, content and services. It's not just the size of the market that advertisers cannot afford to ignore, but the unique potential of VR to influence choices and behaviour.

This is due to something called the Sense of Presence. Presence is the feeling that you are actually within the scene, as if you are physically there.

It's unlike watching a video through a flat screen. Anyone who has tried VR will have experienced this phenomenon, as the following video explains:

Sense of Presence: The Future of Virtual Reality.

With presence, a whole host of other psychological factors come into play. Researchers at Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab have been studying the effects of VR on behaviour for years and have come up with some amazing results. Perhaps most notable is their finding that how we appear to others and ourselves in VR can change our behaviour in the "real world".

Prematurely ageing someone in VR, for example, was found to make them think about their future. This led them to spend less and save more in real life. Other studies found that participants' visibly losing weight in VR was associated with exercising more and eating less, and that subjects could be made to feel more confident and social.

As one of the primary aims of advertising is to influence buying behaviour, this means VR opens up even greater possibilities than traditional forms of advertising media. You could almost liken it to having a salesman in every person's computer.

Stanford researchers examine the psychology of virtual reality.

The platforms are coming

While VR advertising is still in its infancy, it is growing. The use of VR adverts is somewhat closely linked to the rise of VR apps, but not completely.

The rapid adoption of 360-degree videos is one sign of this. These videos are shot with special cameras, allowing viewers to choose where they look during playback. They can already be delivered across a wide variety of platforms, including Facebook and Youtube.

This video of a fashion show illustrates perfectly how the technology works. The viewer can spin around using their computer mouse or by moving their phone, yet it still works as a normal video.

360° video VR Fashion Show – Freedom of Fashion – de Bijenkorf.

Some major companies are already putting out 360 content. Nike and Coca Cola are just two examples. Sports leagues like the NBA are starting to broadcast in VR, creating slots to advertise in virtual reality.

Distributors are also coming to market, ready to bridge the gap between VR advertising and these platforms. Omnivert is one and Virtual Sky another. They bill their 360 advertising in the categories of sponsorship ads (like those that play on YouTube videos) and experience ads, where customers can get an immersive view of the actual experience that is being sold.

The advantage of these companies is that they will distribute content that runs on a variety of VR hardware as well as normal PCs, mobiles and tablets. This means anyone can view it.

The disadvantage of 360 videos is the fixed viewpoint of the camera. In true VR the viewer is usually free to move around the scene at will. This requires programming and the use of specialist software to create and deliver. But this, too, is only a matter of time.

Advertisers and consumers take note

As the technology and industry mature, the computing requirements and cost for VR are starting to drop. VR will be increasingly accessible and the opportunities to advertise will grow as well.

This presents an opportunity for advertisers, especially those unhappy with current digital offerings. VR is a new market with lots of growth ahead of it, but it also has huge potential to change behaviour and choices. We are only at the beginning of research and practice into VR and psychology.

David Evans Bailey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 Virtual reality holds huge potential for advertisers but we should all take note of its potential for manipulation. David Evans Bailey, PhD Researcher in Virtual Reality, Auckland University of Technology Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/69297 2017-03-13T19:20:57Z 2017-03-13T19:20:57Z The future of online advertising is big data and algorithms

The new world of advertising doesn't look like mad men.

The tech revolution is coming to advertising. Chatbots are replacing humans, data threatens our privacy, and the blockchain is linking it all together. In our series on tech and advertising, we're taking a look at how the industry is being reshaped.

The challenge facing advertisers and advertising professionals is remaining relevant in the face of a fundamental technological change. Namely, algorithms and big data.

The combination of the two, in the form of automated and real-time buying and selling, is redefining the advertising business model and value proposition.

Advertising is now a world of software, ultra-high-speed networks and processing power, statistics, optimisation, operations research, heuristics, data science and a range of related disciplines all coming together in dealing with large volumes of rapidly changing data.

How advertisers adapt will define their viability in the new world of online advertising. Period.

The trends marrying data and advertising

A number of interconnected trends are coming together to make this world of data.

Over 40% of the world's population now has access to the internet. This is both a large market for advertisers to go after and a huge source of data. But the explosive uptake of smartphones has also brought on a large number of first-time internet users – fresh eyes for advertisers – and there are many more to come.

Global technology platforms, such as Google and Amazon, Facebook and LinkedIn, have created huge pools of data and made it all useful. Simply put, big data is data that's too large or complex to be effectively handled by standard database technologies currently found in most organisations. But these platforms, among others, enable the data to be analysed and useful information extracted.

Historic data is also a potential gold mine in the right hands. It offers insights into industry trends and buying behaviours over time. Correlating historical data with "new data" can lead to the development of predictive models, also useful for advertising.

It's not just the data we willingly give over to Facebook and LinkedIn that is useful, but behavioural, demographic, geospatial and other metadata as well. We are all leaving digital footprints each time we interact with the internet.

The global volume, velocity and variety of this data is astounding. This data, and the real-time insights and patterns that can be extracted from it, is the basis for tomorrow's digital alchemy.

There is also a growing daisy-chain of intermediary organisations that harvest, analyse, interpret and offer up precisely targeted advertising services, all in near real time. At every stage, advertisers and intermediaries are clipping the ticket as they take their cut for being involved in the overall management of the torrents of data generated by us and fed back to us in the form of targeted advertising.

Putting it all together

Finally, there's the rise of programmatic advertising – the real-time and automated buying and selling of ads with algorithms, bringing together many of these trends. There are now huge online marketplaces where software buys and sells advertising space.

Many of the ads you encounter around the web are now programmatic, allowing advertisers to target who sees an ad, based on this increasing array of data. This allows advertisers to predefine criteria for their ads – only showing them to Australians at a specific point in time, for instance.

As the internet transitions from an "open" and ostensibly free network to one that is ubiquitous and highly monetised, advertising is being catapulted into a new paradigm. The sheer value and growth of the online advertising market is reshaping the entire advertising industry, and the rate of change is not slowing.

The fundamental concepts of advertising remain unchanged. That is, to present the concepts, products and services of the advertiser that connects sellers with potential buyers.

What has changed, however, is that the advertisers (and sellers) must be able to harness the arsenal of real-time measurement and placement tools to focus their efforts with pinpoint accuracy and minimal cost. Being able to make use of big data, analytics and algorithms isn't just "nice to have", it's essential.

Welcome to a new world of online advertising.

Rob Livingstone has no financial interests in or affiliations with any organisation mentioned in this article. Apart from his role at the University of Technology Sydney, he is also the owner and principal of an independent Sydney-based technology advisory and mentoring practice.
 Data is becoming more and more important to the online advertising game. Soon, the ability to use data and algorithms will be a basic requirement in online advertising. Rob Livingstone, Fellow of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/70050 2017-03-12T19:19:10Z 2017-03-12T19:19:10Z How Facebook and Google changed the advertising game

Google and Facebook are wiping out other digital advertisers. Shutterstock

The tech revolution is coming to advertising. Chatbots are replacing humans, data threatens our privacy, and the blockchain is linking it all together. In our series on tech and advertising, we're taking a look at how the industry is being reshaped.

Creativity and spectacle are becoming less important than the personal information used to target ads. The sponsored links on a Google search or in your Facebook feed are very effective, but for a completely different reason than your favourite television commercial.

When you think about advertising what comes to mind is probably the art. Memorable ads are often creative, clever or emotional. Something along the lines of a big, viral Australian beer ad, or maybe something from the Super Bowl.

These ads had a symbiotic and reciprocal relationship with the media they played alongside. Big sporting events or television shows draw a certain audience, and advertising agencies created a spectacle to match. This isn't the game anymore.

Google and Facebook dominate digital advertising

According to Jason Kint, CEO of digital content industry group Digital Content Next, Google and Facebook captured all of the US$32.7 billion growth in digital advertising spending in the first half of last year. Everyone else's share shrunk by 3%.

Kint's estimate came after earlier predictions by Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak that some 85% of new ad spend in 2016 would be split between these two companies.

Google and Facebook both make money by pairing user-generated content and personal information with advertising.

Google's search engine serves sponsored results alongside other results in response to user search queries. Content posted by users on YouTube is often preceded by ads that mimic many of the traditions of television ads. Google-hosted display ads also appear on non-Google websites.

Facebook uses information users have given it, such as age, gender, relationship status and location. The site uses this to display ads from advertisers seeking to target people by specific characteristics.

Although they both use some of the same social signals, it is often a slightly different process: Facebook has monetised personal data, while Google has monetised activity.

'The internet of you'

Unlike earlier forms of advertising that were targeted to generalised audience segments by broad demographic characteristics, the forms of advertising used by Google, Facebook and their competitors are more precise.

They use specific activity (such as searching for a term like "hotels") or status information (changing a relationship status to "engaged") to find people most likely to be interested in chosen ads.

More recently, data generated in a more passive way – from going about daily activities like travelling to work or cooking meals – are also added to our searches and what we post on Facebook. This information is collected through in-home and wearable devices like Google Home and mobile phones.

All of this data generation and collection leads to personalisation, or what wearable device maker Jawbone calls "internet of you" – "technology tailored to you, with your own data driving the experience".

Hosain Rahman, CEO of wearable devices maker Jawbone, says internet-connected devices should be "organised around you".

Ads are precision targeting

The personalisation and precision of these new ads are changing the nature of advertising. It's no longer about entertaining, delighting or making a personal connection; it's about precision targeting.

It is easy to imagine gyms seeking new clients by targeting those who have shown search interest in getting fitter, enabled by online tracking, but what about using step-counting devices to promote those shoes to someone who has actually started walking just a little more?

These are the kinds of data-supported advertisements of the "internet of you".

Such strategies pose difficult ethical questions about privacy and personal information as users may have consented to the data use without actually reading or understanding long and complex terms-of-service documents.

These approaches also upend a common and understood – although widely criticised – approach to funding internet content with display ads. As the media theorist Douglas Rushkoff put it:

We are not the customers of Facebook, we are the product. Facebook is selling us to advertisers.

But on the "internet of you", users may find they are both the customer who purchased a product and the target of a secondary customer (an advertiser) who bought their data.

What this means for advertising

With Facebook and Google dominating, many other web publishers are at a loss as to what to do. They find it difficult to find the "right solution to the big question of driving payment for quality content", as the founder of the website Medium recently put it.

In an end-of-year update for marketers, Google highlighted the biggest issue in this new world – trust. Companies "must find ways to reassure consumers and position their brands as trustworthy".

One way to create engaging and trustworthy advertising is by showing an interest in what customers already care about, which is helped by knowing as much about them as possible.

However, if users find precisely targeted ads creepy or feel unable to trust the devices in their homes and on their bodies, they may push back against marketers that deploy them. That would force ad makers to look once again to content that works alongside the media it funds.

Travis Holland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 For advertisers, media content is becoming less important than personal information. Travis Holland, Lecturer in Communication and Digital Media, Charles Sturt University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.


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New Delhi: Charles Bombardier, an Industrial designer has come up with a new concept plane "Antipode" that travels at a speed of Mach 24 and can reach London to New York in a mind-boggling 11 minutes.
The aircraft has five rocket boosters attached to its wings, which would propel the plane to 40,000 feet and help it reach Mach 5, before they separate and fly back to base.
After that, the supersonic combustion engine will be ignited, shooting the jet up to a speed of Mach 24.
Bombardier claims that Antipode can carry 10 people for a distance of up to 20,000km in less than an hour.
On his website, Bombardier says the Antipode can be an ideal business or military aircraft to fly senior officers anywhere in the world in almost no time.
Last year, the Canadian engineer had come up with Skreemr, a four-winged scramjet that he claimed could carry 75 passengers at speeds of up to Mach 10.
News24 Bureau