1y ago

Marketing Company Claims That It Actually Is Listening to Your Phone and Smart Speakers to Target Ads

www.404media.co Marketing Company Claims That It Actually Is Listening to Your Phone and Smart Speakers to Target Ads

“What would it mean for your business if you could target potential clients who are actively discussing their need for your services in their day-to-day conversations? No, it's not a Black Mirror episode—it's Voice Data, and CMG has the capabilities to use it to your business advantage.”

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I don't know why, given recent impressive developments, but I've always met thie idea that this is really happening with heavy skepticism and I still do. This is definitely the most concrete thing I've ever heard and I definitely don't doubt companies would do this, I just... I don't know, it's hard to believe they really are.
One reason is it just seems like they'd be absolutely overwhelmed by useless data, it's not like AI is cheap to run, and it'd be so hard to link a conversation that's captured to a genuine sentiment and then to an ad connecting to that person and then a purchasing decision to that ad. This is scary for sure but it feels like this is more marketing hype to marketeers than a real thing.
Will be watching closely. I feel like this might actually be that bridge too far that the mainstream of society will demand action be taken against if it gets widely adopted and widely known. Even if it technically works and is provably effective to advertisers I think you'd need Google or Amazon to be the ones pulling it off and to have done so silently so we all just kinda assume they're doing it but don't know. If a company "starts" offering this service in a way the public can latch on to it would likely cause a massive backlash that would hopefully scupper such plans.
- The biggest criticism for the idea of phones always listening and sending that data somewhere ia that they would also be listening to other corporations and their meetings. Even if multi-billion corporations can just waltz over the rights of normal people, other companies would be very interested in knowing this is happening.
  Also I feel like they already know this stuff so they gain very fucking little in listening on us. You saw an interesting website two days ago and spent more time in it than normal. Then you meet uo with friends whom are known to have similar likes as you, why the hell would ad companies not show ads for the same page / item / event to those people. It doesn't matter at all if you mention it or not. Companies already know what products and brands you like, if your friends search for something, obviously they get ads of products that are interesting in their circle of friends. The items / brands / whatever are being talked about because they're interesting to the circle of people, which companies already know.
- All you need is a list of advertising keywords. Have the device treat those like wake words just like Alexa and then target ads to the device based on which words it heard most often.
  This is but the most simple version, it's easy to elaborate from there.
  
  Have the device treat those like wake words just like Alexa
  You do understand how incredibly difficult this is right?

78 comments