Intelligent advertising

In the second world war, the bombing in Europe was pretty inaccurate. If you wanted to take out a factory or railway yard, then you had to drop a whole lot of ordnance in the hope of hitting your target. Collateral damage was of course high. Fast forward fifty odd years and the Gulf wars startled much of the world with smart bombs you could drop from way up high down a single lift shaft and detonate when it reaches the middle of the building.

One of the problems for advertisers is that adverts are a bit like carpet bombs, hitting many people but resulting in a very low conversion rate for purchases. Like bombs alt. ough it does not kill people, it wastes time and may cause counter-productive irritation. The smarter players on the web have improved this situation in leaps and bounds. Log onto Amazon and it will hold out tempting offers based on your previous purchases (or even simple viewing). Facebook is also getting rather clever, serving ads based on your chatter and relationships.

And soon, it will reach television. Gesture-based TV control has already reached us, for example in the latest LG TV sets where a camera watches the viewers and turns waving arms into specific controls. But this is not advertising. Not yet. Though Microsoft has filed for a patent that has a Kinect-style camera that not only watches movements but interprets facial expressions and body language, figures out your emotional state and then serves ads that are finely tuned to persuade!

You can imagine it going further, too, with the advert gaining immediate feedback and dynamically changing to persuade you. It could even pick an argument with you, get you emotionally irrational then slip in a subtle suggestion. 'Irresistible advertising', perchance?

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