A marketing team within media giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims it has the capability to listen to ambient conversations of consumers through embedded microphones in smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices to gather data and use it to target ads, according to a review of CMG marketing materials by 404 Media and details from a pitch given to an outside marketing professional. Called “Active Listening,” CMG claims the capability can identify potential customers “based on casual conversations in real time.”
This argument presumes that the entire many-billion and maybe even multiple-trillion dollar global ad industry is ALL based on complete, ineffective nonsense. That everyone has just been bamboozled. That’s a naive view, I think.
The best argument for why we must be vigilant against ads and data collection by advertisers is because the shit does work. It influences people to make purchases, sometimes against their better judgement or reason. Because subverting someone’s agency over their own body and mind is heinous at a very high level.
I’m certain you are wrong. You’ve absolutely purchased products that were advertised to you. You just didn’t make the connection between your decision and the advertisements. You THINK seeing an ad makes you unlikely to buy a product, but you likely only really notice and have an emotional response to the ads for products you weren’t likely to buy in the first place.
Strangers things have happened than money being thrown at bullshit.
NFTs were a thing, recall.
All the industry analysis of the ROI on advertising would’ve had to come to the same spurious conclusions about that effectiveness, too. With the largest, richest, and most profitable firms being the ones MOST fooled.
No, I don’t think anything that strange has ever happened. This is basically a conspiracy theory.
A bunch of people making money jerking one another off and you think any one of them’d be in a rush to rock the boat?
You sound much more conspiratorial with your “capitalism always results in rational and correct decisions” fallacy.
You’ve literally just described your own view as believing in a grand conspiracy where all players have sworn themselves to secrecy in a scheme any one of them could undermine in a moment, so I guess that’s that.
I don’t see where I did that. To say you sound more conspiratorial (which you do) is not an admission of any conspiratorial thinking on my part.
In case you edit it away later. Very good, bye now.
Now is that me describing my view as …I believe the quote was “believing in a grand conspiracy”?
And don’t try to side-step that you were speaking metaphorically as you literally said
I did no such thing.
You seem to have a similar grasp on others’ words as you do the realities of economic systems.
I know for a fact that you’re wrong. You just are. I have never bought a single thing based on an ad, period.
My dude, no one is as self aware as you think you are. You do yourself a disservice by thinking so, it means you’re ignoring an exploitable weakness.
What phone do you hve? What computer? What shoes? What milk do you buy? Ads dont work by showing up and making you go buy it like a drone. You see the ads a thousand times and then you start believing its better than other products
Or even as subtle as brand recognition. Nobody can research every purchase and when you walk walk up to two items and one sounds familiar. You’re more likely to buy that one.
That is absolutely impossible