6 ms·

Clear Channel’s billboards will start tracking consumers in Europe

82 points by JeanMarcS 6y ago

waihtis 6y ago
So is the claim here that even though they dont know me at a personal level, they know me as ”shopper_1092716718” and can target me whenever they want? If so, another fantastic example of expensive and complex regulation being gamed by the big players while the smaller entities are left with the cost.
- INTPenis 6y ago
  In Oslo a while back there was a faulty billboard that started outputting all its log data to its main screen. It was essentially tracking everyone who passed it by characteristics like gender, if they had glasses, where they were looking. But yeah, every person was just an entry. There was no way for it to know who that person was. I wish I could find the story but my google-fu isn't helping.
  - whatok 6y ago
    https://theoutline.com/post/1528/this-pizza-billboard-used-facial-recognition-tech-to-show-women-ads-for-salad https://theoutline.com/post/1528/this-pizza-billboard-used-f...
  - tyfon 6y ago
    That's where people are wrong, it's not about not identifying the 99% that share similar traits, it's about not identifying those who do not share traits with others (in that area). Such a billboard in a small town up north in Norway could easily identify the individuals based on those characteristics since the population is so low.
- Tarq0n 6y ago
  This could be fine as long as there are very strong regulations against de-anonimizing the data (including jailtime for violators) and there was a regular rotation of the keys used for anonimization. People's privacy usually isn't impacted until datasets are combined, compromising pseudonimity.
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    I think you should basically kick advertisers in the nuts for stuff like this. I doubt it would be legal in my country and if it was, I wouldn't mind doing something illegal to the billboard. Can always use new cameras anyway.
  - waihtis 6y ago
    Does the de-anonymization serve any purpose at this stage? If the advertiser can successfully profile me based on what they can gather completely anon, I don't see why they need the further info. However, for any smaller player wishing to compete on the advertising side the cost of entry is now humongous because of intense up-front cost to setup capability that is in compliance. Et voila, corporations win in the end.
    - ourlordcaffeine 6y ago
      I'm guessing de-anonymised is more valuable, as it can be linked with other datasets to create a more in-depth profile, then sold to parties interested in knowing everything about a particular person.
      - tremon 6y ago
        Yes, but that definition is circular: if the dataset is detailed enough that a particular person can be linked across multiple datasets (with X degree of confidence), it isn't anonymised. So what you're really saying is that a detailed dataset is more valuable, and shouldn't be considered anonymized. Or, more succinctly, "anonymized" should not be boolean, but is a quantitative property of the dataset.
        Tarq0n 6y ago
        Anonymization is a bit of a misnomer here. This dataset is clearly pseudonymised. Most datasets at the level of the unit of observation are never truly anonymous, unless they barely contain any real information at all. However this can be sufficient to protect privacy as long as the dataset is never allowed to be combined with other information.
- tomp 6y ago
  I think we need to change the definition of "personal data" in GDPR from things like name, phone number etc. to just bits. It takes around 33 bits to identify a person, with some leeway (so maybe like 26 bits). Sex == 1 bit. Hair color =~ 2 bits. Glasses/no glasses =~ 0.6 bits. Phone number == 33 bits. Location to 1km precision would be many more bits in a rural area (less people / lower density) than in a big city. And so on. This would take care of the metadata. It would also put the companies on the defensive - if _the company_ thinks they're collecting just 20bits of data, but if I can do some fancy ML on their data (require regular external audits of collected data if more than say 10k people were tracked) and retrieve 27bits, that would put them in breach (& massive penalties).
  - hyperman1 6y ago
    They more or less already do: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... Chapter 1 Article 4, definition of personal data [...] an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly [...] or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person; If I read this correct, if you can be identified by a tuple (sex,hair color, classes, more attributes), the GDPR applies, even if they have no name etc... Hence, even an anonymized ID is still identification for the GDPR.
reedwolf 6y ago
I remember something like this in the movie Minority Report (2002).
- igravious 6y ago
  Funnily enough so must have Kim Lyons, the author of this piece, because five paragraphs in we have: “Remember that scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise is on the lam, but the billboards know what he likes? [Embedded YouTube video: Minority Report - Personal Advertising in the Future] We’re not quite there yet; the Radar-enabled billboards aren’t making spoken sales pitches directly to customers. […]”
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Joe8Bit 6y ago
I did some work as a consultant for a big outdoor publisher and this has been a problem they've been attempting to solve for a decade or more. This kind of physical, outdoor advertising has been hemorrhaging dollars to online ads for decades for several reasons but a big one is online having a much better (but far from perfect) attribution story. Attribution is the big, thorny problem in _all_ of advertising e.g. how do you know if Customer A saw Ad B and that they then went on to buy Product C. In my experience this type of tech has two goals: The first is measuring distribution with aggregate data about how many people saw the ad and when, then combining this with ethnographic data about the location (e.g. what proportion of people in this area fall into income bracket Y). This looks like "1,293 people have seen your ad in the last 60 minutes and here some demographic information about them". This is done with video and gait tracking, or radar/lidar for measuring volumes and people who 'engage' with the ad by lookijng at it for >N $TIME. This is all perfectly possible and scalable and is what ClearChannel are currently doing, the product trick is to make it 'real-time' so advertisers can adjust their buys and unit distribution more flexibly when combined with digital signage (e.g. I'm going to move our ad from this unit in this location to this other unit in this other location in 'real-time' as there's more high net worth people there today). This also nicely ups outdoor spend (people use it more, it appears more sticky) but they also charge more for these more 'dynamic' outdoor units. There's a bunch of seriously dubious data the the publishers use to justify this new way of buying outdoor. The second (and WAY worse one) is doing direct attribution (e.g. Did consumer sKIFW3890 see ad sdoflij0934r and then did they buy product 029w3r29 from merchant 203ei2-309ir). This has been the holy grail of outdoor for a decade but no one's been able to make it work. ClearChannel very clearly WANT to do it, which is creepy as all hell, but in my reading between the lines (and working in the industry a little) I don't _think_ this is what their Radar solution delivers, at the moment. I could be wrong, though.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >> (e.g. I'm going to move our ad from this unit in this location to this other unit in this other location in 'real-time' as there's more high net worth people there today). That's not the goal. The goal is to turn outdoor billboards into online ad bars. The goal is to micro-target whales, those with lots to spend and who are most susceptible to ads. When such an individual walks down a street they will see billboards targeting them specifically. Everyone will know when the latest tech millionaire steps of the BART. All the billboards will switch from Honda to Bugatii. Personally, I'm not wealthy. But when I drive down the road I don't want to see the same stupid ads I see online. (At work. At home I use adblockers and never see ads.) None of the ads are relevant to me in any way. I am not looking for a retirement home, nor am I having trouble with my colon. And I definitely do not want to see incontinence products on every billboard.
rich_sasha 6y ago
This is awful. Where is my GDPR opt-out screen?
- hadrien01 6y ago
  Should be opt-in anyway, given all the data that is retrieved
- castis 6y ago
  The opt-out screen is on the hardware installed on the billboard, you might need a pair of cutting pliers to access it.
- cinntaile 6y ago
  This probably doesn't collect GDPR protected data. If the billboard aggregates the data to say that 30% of the people that passed by have an iPhone and the other 70% have an Android phone then GDPR won't come into play here. Or that 40% of the people that went past the billboard are between the ages of 40 and 60 and so on.
  - coldcode 6y ago
    But what if you added facial recognition (for walkers) and license plate readers (for drivers). Now you know exactly (assuming you have a good DB and the recognition was perfect which is not the case today) who saw the billboard. Now that's creepy.
    - simiones 6y ago
      Well, yes, but then they would run afoul of the GDPR, which may prevent this from happening in the first place. But it can't prevent them collecting aggregate stats.
Dirlewanger 6y ago
How is this company not dead yet?? Weren't they delisted from the NYSE?
gruez 6y ago
So how exactly are they tracking people? wifi/bluetooth? facial/gait recognition?
- JeanMarcS 6y ago
  (copying my comment to answer you) From what I read in the Belgian post where I got this info, to be conform to GDPR, they will only track with opt-in. The trick is that opt-in will be in partners apps you will install on your phone. So, basically, your phone.
- Tsiklon 6y ago
  A clear channel billboard (roughly phonebooth size) in my area of London has a screen and a camera, it projects locally personalised ads for, among other things, a popular lager beer saying it’s available at a bar 30-100m away. I assume they’re all networked - and gathering literally all of the above.
eeNodoh6 6y ago
Does anyone know what kind of data they get and how they get it? Is it through bluetooth? Wifi? NFC? Something else? That's obviously something I would want to "adblock".
- elliekelly 6y ago
  It seems (in the US at least) they purchase the data directly from cellular service providers: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/29/468598100/using-billboards-company-will-collect-personal-information-to-help-advertisers https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/29/468598100...
  - eeNodoh6 6y ago
    Thanks. So if they did something similar in EU, it means they must have such deal with some providers. I can't wait to have their names, I certainly will change provider if mine has anything to do with that.
- JeanMarcS 6y ago
  (copying my comment to answer you) From what I read in the Belgian post where I got this info, to be conform to GDPR, they will only track with opt-in. The trick is that opt-in will be in partners apps you will install on your phone. So, basically, your phone.
- gregors 6y ago
  Tracking bluetooth devices for urban insights >>> https://youtu.be/EUwpSHDHZAs?t=2002 https://youtu.be/EUwpSHDHZAs?t=2002
mschuster91 6y ago
Am I the only one who is reminded of 2002's "Minority Report" here?! That was supposed to be a dystopia, not an instruction.
holstvoogd 6y ago
I hope everyone involved in that company spills their drinks and drops their toast. buttered side down.
JeanMarcS 6y ago
From what I read in the Belgian post where I got this info [0], to be conform to GDPR, they will only track with opt-in. The trick is that opt-in will be in partners apps you will install on your phone. "L'entreprise insiste cependant sur le fait que les consommateurs doivent donner leur autorisation pour permettre à Radar d'utiliser leurs données de géo-localisation. Cela se fait en général via les conditions générales de certaines applis." which roughly translate as "The company insists on the fact that consumers have to give their authorization to allow Radar to use geoloc datas. It will be done via CLUF of some apps" [0] https://datanews.levif.be/ict/actualite/les-panneaux-publicitaires-de-clear-channel-vont-tracer-les-passants-update/article-news-1319057.html https://datanews.levif.be/ict/actualite/les-panneaux-publici...
- shostack 6y ago
  Isn't that explicitly prohibited by the GDPR?
  - JeanMarcS 6y ago
    Well, IANAL, but in GDPR if I recall Well, you have to list all the subcontractors that will have access to personal data. If they are listed and the user accept it in the middle of the 40 pages licence they are opting in. Again, not a lawyer, but that’s how I interpret it. And there’s a good chance they have good ones to prevent mistakes.
    - jdlshore 6y ago
      I’m not a lawyer, but I am my small company’s DPO, and I think you’ve misunderstood. The GDPR specifies six ways you can legally process personal data. Consent is one of them. It must be explicit for each usage, in plain language, opt-in, and non-coerced. Non-coerced means you can’t require consent as a condition of access. So, no, consent buried in a 40-page T&C would not count.
      - JeanMarcS 6y ago
        Well, you must be right. I assumed it was what I wrote because the CEO said it was how they gonna get consent. Maybe missing details
Renaud 6y ago
It befuddles me to see that there so little pushback against the use of these types of tech. We can't trust advertisers to limit themselves. They are only limited by what current technology can achieve but the goal posts keep moving and so is their appetite for more intrusive ways to gather data. There is a strong competitive incentive for them to build a system capable of proving that a specific consumer seeing a specific ad ended up in a specific sale. Imagine how much value that information could have to a company wanting to sell its products! Near-guaranteed sales, ad expenses laser-targetted to those who will actually buy! A boon for both advertisers and sellers! Advertisers gather and cross-reference public information, credit information, track people tastes, political affiliations, phone location, where they go, what they look at... all to present consumers with hyper targeted adverts that result in more sales. The more detailed and precise the data, the more targeted the ad and the higher the chances of persuading a customer to part with their money. Removing uncertainty is the goal. I sincerely hope that these overreaching applications of what is basically surveillance tech meet stronger resistance. Legal challenges are best, but some old-fashioned 'guerilla' tactics may also be effective... I wouldn't be sorry for companies like Clear Channel either way.
rbecker 6y ago
One more tool for corporations to better manipulate consumers will surely improve the world, and not the opposite.
rmrfstar 6y ago
People. They will track people, not consumers.
maest 6y ago
How does a billboard know which phones are passing it? Do smartphones just randomly connect with nearby devices? Even if wifi and Bluetooth are off?

82 points by JeanMarcS 6y ago

So is the claim here that even though they dont know me at a personal level, they know me as ”shopper_1092716718” and can target me whenever they want? If so, another fantastic example of expensive and complex regulation being gamed by the big players while the smaller entities are left with the cost.

INTPenis 6y ago
In Oslo a while back there was a faulty billboard that started outputting all its log data to its main screen. It was essentially tracking everyone who passed it by characteristics like gender, if they had glasses, where they were looking. But yeah, every person was just an entry. There was no way for it to know who that person was. I wish I could find the story but my google-fu isn't helping.
- whatok 6y ago
  https://theoutline.com/post/1528/this-pizza-billboard-used-facial-recognition-tech-to-show-women-ads-for-salad https://theoutline.com/post/1528/this-pizza-billboard-used-f...
- tyfon 6y ago
  That's where people are wrong, it's not about not identifying the 99% that share similar traits, it's about not identifying those who do not share traits with others (in that area). Such a billboard in a small town up north in Norway could easily identify the individuals based on those characteristics since the population is so low.
Tarq0n 6y ago
This could be fine as long as there are very strong regulations against de-anonimizing the data (including jailtime for violators) and there was a regular rotation of the keys used for anonimization. People's privacy usually isn't impacted until datasets are combined, compromising pseudonimity.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  I think you should basically kick advertisers in the nuts for stuff like this. I doubt it would be legal in my country and if it was, I wouldn't mind doing something illegal to the billboard. Can always use new cameras anyway.
- waihtis 6y ago
  Does the de-anonymization serve any purpose at this stage? If the advertiser can successfully profile me based on what they can gather completely anon, I don't see why they need the further info. However, for any smaller player wishing to compete on the advertising side the cost of entry is now humongous because of intense up-front cost to setup capability that is in compliance. Et voila, corporations win in the end.
  - ourlordcaffeine 6y ago
    I'm guessing de-anonymised is more valuable, as it can be linked with other datasets to create a more in-depth profile, then sold to parties interested in knowing everything about a particular person.
    - tremon 6y ago
      Yes, but that definition is circular: if the dataset is detailed enough that a particular person can be linked across multiple datasets (with X degree of confidence), it isn't anonymised. So what you're really saying is that a detailed dataset is more valuable, and shouldn't be considered anonymized. Or, more succinctly, "anonymized" should not be boolean, but is a quantitative property of the dataset.
      - Tarq0n 6y ago
        Anonymization is a bit of a misnomer here. This dataset is clearly pseudonymised. Most datasets at the level of the unit of observation are never truly anonymous, unless they barely contain any real information at all. However this can be sufficient to protect privacy as long as the dataset is never allowed to be combined with other information.
tomp 6y ago
I think we need to change the definition of "personal data" in GDPR from things like name, phone number etc. to just bits. It takes around 33 bits to identify a person, with some leeway (so maybe like 26 bits). Sex == 1 bit. Hair color =~ 2 bits. Glasses/no glasses =~ 0.6 bits. Phone number == 33 bits. Location to 1km precision would be many more bits in a rural area (less people / lower density) than in a big city. And so on. This would take care of the metadata. It would also put the companies on the defensive - if _the company_ thinks they're collecting just 20bits of data, but if I can do some fancy ML on their data (require regular external audits of collected data if more than say 10k people were tracked) and retrieve 27bits, that would put them in breach (& massive penalties).
- hyperman1 6y ago
  They more or less already do: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... Chapter 1 Article 4, definition of personal data [...] an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly [...] or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person; If I read this correct, if you can be identified by a tuple (sex,hair color, classes, more attributes), the GDPR applies, even if they have no name etc... Hence, even an anonymized ID is still identification for the GDPR.

reedwolf 6y ago

I remember something like this in the movie Minority Report (2002).

igravious 6y ago
Funnily enough so must have Kim Lyons, the author of this piece, because five paragraphs in we have: “Remember that scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise is on the lam, but the billboards know what he likes? [Embedded YouTube video: Minority Report - Personal Advertising in the Future] We’re not quite there yet; the Radar-enabled billboards aren’t making spoken sales pitches directly to customers. […]”
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Joe8Bit 6y ago

I did some work as a consultant for a big outdoor publisher and this has been a problem they've been attempting to solve for a decade or more. This kind of physical, outdoor advertising has been hemorrhaging dollars to online ads for decades for several reasons but a big one is online having a much better (but far from perfect) attribution story. Attribution is the big, thorny problem in _all_ of advertising e.g. how do you know if Customer A saw Ad B and that they then went on to buy Product C. In my experience this type of tech has two goals: The first is measuring distribution with aggregate data about how many people saw the ad and when, then combining this with ethnographic data about the location (e.g. what proportion of people in this area fall into income bracket Y). This looks like "1,293 people have seen your ad in the last 60 minutes and here some demographic information about them". This is done with video and gait tracking, or radar/lidar for measuring volumes and people who 'engage' with the ad by lookijng at it for >N $TIME. This is all perfectly possible and scalable and is what ClearChannel are currently doing, the product trick is to make it 'real-time' so advertisers can adjust their buys and unit distribution more flexibly when combined with digital signage (e.g. I'm going to move our ad from this unit in this location to this other unit in this other location in 'real-time' as there's more high net worth people there today). This also nicely ups outdoor spend (people use it more, it appears more sticky) but they also charge more for these more 'dynamic' outdoor units. There's a bunch of seriously dubious data the the publishers use to justify this new way of buying outdoor. The second (and WAY worse one) is doing direct attribution (e.g. Did consumer sKIFW3890 see ad sdoflij0934r and then did they buy product 029w3r29 from merchant 203ei2-309ir). This has been the holy grail of outdoor for a decade but no one's been able to make it work. ClearChannel very clearly WANT to do it, which is creepy as all hell, but in my reading between the lines (and working in the industry a little) I don't _think_ this is what their Radar solution delivers, at the moment. I could be wrong, though.

sandworm101 6y ago
>> (e.g. I'm going to move our ad from this unit in this location to this other unit in this other location in 'real-time' as there's more high net worth people there today). That's not the goal. The goal is to turn outdoor billboards into online ad bars. The goal is to micro-target whales, those with lots to spend and who are most susceptible to ads. When such an individual walks down a street they will see billboards targeting them specifically. Everyone will know when the latest tech millionaire steps of the BART. All the billboards will switch from Honda to Bugatii. Personally, I'm not wealthy. But when I drive down the road I don't want to see the same stupid ads I see online. (At work. At home I use adblockers and never see ads.) None of the ads are relevant to me in any way. I am not looking for a retirement home, nor am I having trouble with my colon. And I definitely do not want to see incontinence products on every billboard.

rich_sasha 6y ago

This is awful. Where is my GDPR opt-out screen?

hadrien01 6y ago
Should be opt-in anyway, given all the data that is retrieved
castis 6y ago
The opt-out screen is on the hardware installed on the billboard, you might need a pair of cutting pliers to access it.
cinntaile 6y ago
This probably doesn't collect GDPR protected data. If the billboard aggregates the data to say that 30% of the people that passed by have an iPhone and the other 70% have an Android phone then GDPR won't come into play here. Or that 40% of the people that went past the billboard are between the ages of 40 and 60 and so on.
- coldcode 6y ago
  But what if you added facial recognition (for walkers) and license plate readers (for drivers). Now you know exactly (assuming you have a good DB and the recognition was perfect which is not the case today) who saw the billboard. Now that's creepy.
  - simiones 6y ago
    Well, yes, but then they would run afoul of the GDPR, which may prevent this from happening in the first place. But it can't prevent them collecting aggregate stats.

Dirlewanger 6y ago

How is this company not dead yet?? Weren't they delisted from the NYSE?

gruez 6y ago

So how exactly are they tracking people? wifi/bluetooth? facial/gait recognition?

JeanMarcS 6y ago
(copying my comment to answer you) From what I read in the Belgian post where I got this info, to be conform to GDPR, they will only track with opt-in. The trick is that opt-in will be in partners apps you will install on your phone. So, basically, your phone.
Tsiklon 6y ago
A clear channel billboard (roughly phonebooth size) in my area of London has a screen and a camera, it projects locally personalised ads for, among other things, a popular lager beer saying it’s available at a bar 30-100m away. I assume they’re all networked - and gathering literally all of the above.

eeNodoh6 6y ago

Does anyone know what kind of data they get and how they get it? Is it through bluetooth? Wifi? NFC? Something else? That's obviously something I would want to "adblock".

elliekelly 6y ago
It seems (in the US at least) they purchase the data directly from cellular service providers: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/29/468598100/using-billboards-company-will-collect-personal-information-to-help-advertisers https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/29/468598100...
- eeNodoh6 6y ago
  Thanks. So if they did something similar in EU, it means they must have such deal with some providers. I can't wait to have their names, I certainly will change provider if mine has anything to do with that.
JeanMarcS 6y ago
(copying my comment to answer you) From what I read in the Belgian post where I got this info, to be conform to GDPR, they will only track with opt-in. The trick is that opt-in will be in partners apps you will install on your phone. So, basically, your phone.
gregors 6y ago
Tracking bluetooth devices for urban insights >>> https://youtu.be/EUwpSHDHZAs?t=2002 https://youtu.be/EUwpSHDHZAs?t=2002

mschuster91 6y ago

Am I the only one who is reminded of 2002's "Minority Report" here?! That was supposed to be a dystopia, not an instruction.

holstvoogd 6y ago

I hope everyone involved in that company spills their drinks and drops their toast. buttered side down.

JeanMarcS 6y ago

From what I read in the Belgian post where I got this info [0], to be conform to GDPR, they will only track with opt-in. The trick is that opt-in will be in partners apps you will install on your phone. "L'entreprise insiste cependant sur le fait que les consommateurs doivent donner leur autorisation pour permettre à Radar d'utiliser leurs données de géo-localisation. Cela se fait en général via les conditions générales de certaines applis." which roughly translate as "The company insists on the fact that consumers have to give their authorization to allow Radar to use geoloc datas. It will be done via CLUF of some apps" [0] https://datanews.levif.be/ict/actualite/les-panneaux-publicitaires-de-clear-channel-vont-tracer-les-passants-update/article-news-1319057.html https://datanews.levif.be/ict/actualite/les-panneaux-publici...

shostack 6y ago
Isn't that explicitly prohibited by the GDPR?
- JeanMarcS 6y ago
  Well, IANAL, but in GDPR if I recall Well, you have to list all the subcontractors that will have access to personal data. If they are listed and the user accept it in the middle of the 40 pages licence they are opting in. Again, not a lawyer, but that’s how I interpret it. And there’s a good chance they have good ones to prevent mistakes.
  - jdlshore 6y ago
    I’m not a lawyer, but I am my small company’s DPO, and I think you’ve misunderstood. The GDPR specifies six ways you can legally process personal data. Consent is one of them. It must be explicit for each usage, in plain language, opt-in, and non-coerced. Non-coerced means you can’t require consent as a condition of access. So, no, consent buried in a 40-page T&C would not count.
    - JeanMarcS 6y ago
      Well, you must be right. I assumed it was what I wrote because the CEO said it was how they gonna get consent. Maybe missing details

Renaud 6y ago

It befuddles me to see that there so little pushback against the use of these types of tech. We can't trust advertisers to limit themselves. They are only limited by what current technology can achieve but the goal posts keep moving and so is their appetite for more intrusive ways to gather data. There is a strong competitive incentive for them to build a system capable of proving that a specific consumer seeing a specific ad ended up in a specific sale. Imagine how much value that information could have to a company wanting to sell its products! Near-guaranteed sales, ad expenses laser-targetted to those who will actually buy! A boon for both advertisers and sellers! Advertisers gather and cross-reference public information, credit information, track people tastes, political affiliations, phone location, where they go, what they look at... all to present consumers with hyper targeted adverts that result in more sales. The more detailed and precise the data, the more targeted the ad and the higher the chances of persuading a customer to part with their money. Removing uncertainty is the goal. I sincerely hope that these overreaching applications of what is basically surveillance tech meet stronger resistance. Legal challenges are best, but some old-fashioned 'guerilla' tactics may also be effective... I wouldn't be sorry for companies like Clear Channel either way.

rbecker 6y ago

One more tool for corporations to better manipulate consumers will surely improve the world, and not the opposite.

rmrfstar 6y ago

People. They will track people, not consumers.

maest 6y ago

How does a billboard know which phones are passing it? Do smartphones just randomly connect with nearby devices? Even if wifi and Bluetooth are off?