Re: Advertising Creepiness

[Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>]

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@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