6 ms·

Ask HN: Why don't ads put you inside them (e.g., as the driver in a car ad)?

• meadhikari 16y ago
  Will it not be violating my privacy by taking me as a object for advertising?
  • amichail 16y ago
    The ad starring you would only be shown to you, although it may contain images of your friends.
    • mooism2 16y ago
      So does it violate my friends' privacy?
      • amichail 16y ago
        Perhaps it might be safer to not include your friends in the ad although the ad would be cooler if you do.
    • meadhikari 16y ago
      and would it require my details to be given to the advertisers to create the ad centered around me?
      • amichail 16y ago
        Why not do the computation on Facebook servers with limited data access to advertisers?
  • dcaldwell 16y ago
    It's only violating your privacy if you haven't given your consent to be used in advertising. This will truly be effective when advertisers figure out a way to get people to voluntarily use their image in ads. It's not that crazy to think that will happen. After all, I see plenty of people voluntarily using their images to advertise for Coke - in fact just saw a guy wearing a Coke Tshirt at the park yesterday.
• corin_ 16y ago
  a.) The cost to get these adverts looking better than terrible flash games would be pretty huge, and very difficult to automate. b.) The impact would be one of novelty, viewers wouldn't pay any attention to what the advert was trying to sell. c.) Why bother, advertising is already able to sell products without placing the viewer inside the advertisements
  • ThomPete 16y ago
    Wow, you probably couldn't be more wrong. a.) It's trivial to make it look good in fact it have been for quite some time. b.) The impact is normally pretty big exactly because people pay attention once their friends or themselves are involved. c.) Advertising as you seem to refer to it doesn't work nearly as well. Why do you think adwords work? They work because they communicate better by being closer to what you care about. I shall see if I can make a list of examples but there is tons of great great examples looking stunning and having a huge impact.
• andrewjshults 16y ago
  Not quite as advanced, but they did this in the past and there was a huge backlash against it, so they stopped doing it: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/01/facebook-ads-ma/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/01/facebook-ads-ma/ . From the wired article, it looks like there were a number of legal issues with reusing photos without permission http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2007/11/08/facebook-social-ads/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2007/11/08/facebook-soc... not to mention it's kind of creepy.
• rads 16y ago
  The best example of this I've seen is the Arcade Fire's "interactive film" called The Wilderness Downtown, which asks for your hometown address and… well, you'll see: http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/ http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/
• Retric 16y ago
  Legally don't don't own the rights to your likeness. So they can't use your picture without your permission.
  • sorbus 16y ago
    Not really a problem for facebook: "For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it"
    • hackerblues 16y ago
      Out of interest, what would this mean if I don't have a Facebook account but my friend posts a picture of me?
• chrisaycock 16y ago
  Probably for the same reason athletic apparel companies sponsor athletes rather than average joes. I don't aspire to my own running talent; I aspire to Usain Bolt's talent. It makes the brand something to look up to.
• jankassens 16y ago
  A Swedish advertising agency did just that. You could upload a photo of someone and this picture would appear all over the place in a video. http://www.draftfcb.se/info/thehero/en http://www.draftfcb.se/info/thehero/en
• caioromao 16y ago
  A similar marketing campaign was attempted by a bank here in Brazil once and backfired badly. When a client logged into his online account page, instead of showing "Banco do Brasil" (the bank's name) it'd show "Banco do <Client's-First-Name>" (Bruno's Bank -- if the client was called "Bruno", obviously). A few hours after this seemingly clever personalization, there were _several_ national news sites talking about the new feature and how people were reacting to it: Some people couldn't understand this would only be visible to their session, they thought their name was showing up to everyone and wanted it removed ASAP. Bottom line is: marketing acts should take into account how savvy the target audience is.
  • herval 16y ago
    Tech savvy or not, that campaign was absolutely terrible idea, from beginning to end, online and offline (they even changed the bank name on the entrance of the agencies!). That said, I wouldn't say the online bit was such a big culprit for its failure...
• revorad 16y ago
  Beacon, which was a much watered-down version of your idea, backfired. So I'm not sure if this would fly. Although it would be pretty whacky.
• d3x 16y ago
  I made something similar to what you are describing. http://www.socialadmanager.com http://www.socialadmanager.com I kind of abandoned it though. What I found is that people hate ads no matter what and most people dont recognize people e.g.: Facebook friends in pictures.
• ephermata 16y ago
  The film "Daybreakers" did a promotion which used this technique in late 2009. The film's premise is that a vampire virus has swept through humanity, converting most people to vampires and leaving only a few surviving humans. These remaining humans are hunted and captured to provide blood for the rapidly starving vampires. The ad was a site http://www.capturehumans.com http://www.capturehumans.com , which pulled your Facebook picture and pictures of your friends. The site then showed a short video on the origins of the vampiric plague, with you as Patient Zero. Your friends showed up as other early vampires or as humans to capture. The site isn't loading for me now, but this description gives this idea: http://www.movieviral.com/2009/12/15/daybreakers-gets-a-viral-site-that-claims-youre-patient-zero/ http://www.movieviral.com/2009/12/15/daybreakers-gets-a-vira...
• Groxx 16y ago
  I think you'd be fighting people's visual cortexes. On the bad-end, you see a mostly-accurate copy/paste of your head in a random expression slapped onto a car. On the good-end, you start fighting with the uncanny valley[1], and people start rejecting it because there's just something off about it. Then you've got people who won't know how you did it and will freak, as caioromao points out. Will it happen eventually? I'd say absolutely, definitely. Minority Report shows a half-decent means of doing this, loathe as I am to cite sci-fi movies as future predictors. But doing it correctly, at all times, will take far more sophisticated visual analysis tools than we have right now. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
• 360citiesnet 16y ago
  They do :-) http://www.renault.fr/espace-experience/index.jsp http://www.renault.fr/espace-experience/index.jsp an awesome licensing deal we made with our panoramic photos. -Jeffrey Martin, Founder www.360cities.net