Posts Tagged ‘advertising’
Experiment Creates Advertisements to Sell Food to Monkeys
Santos’ monkeys have already demonstrated that they understand the concept of money, and behave similarly to humans when making economic decisions. The monkeys will have a choice between two brands of the same food (perhaps two different colors of Jell-o), one of which will be advertised by a billboard outside their enclosure.
But there will be no fancy slogans or slick pop culture references here, which would be lost on the monkeys anyway. This experiment gets down to what advertising is really all about: sex and power. One version of the billboard shows a female monkey’s exposed genitals next to the brand logo, and the other shows the alpha male capuchin next to the logo.
The experiment kicks off sometime in the next few weeks, so it remains to be seen if the advertisement will affect the monkeys’ preferences.
Video: E Ink Shows Off Rollable, Scrunchable, and Video Screens
E Ink is always working on new ways to use their electrophoretic technology; they were showing an early color e-ink prototype at CES two years ago. These videos show that there might be more use to this kind of ultra-low-power, easy-on-the-eyes screens than just ebook readers (although the Kindle's current-gen E Ink Pearl screen). These demos show that e-ink displays can be embedded into other materials--the video below shows it sewn right into a bit of Tyvex cloth, the super-tough, paper-like cloth used in shipping envelopes.
It's easy to see the uses for that kind of thing: Envelopes could be sturdy and reusable, with shippers simply changing the shipping address on the screen rather than tossing the envelopes. E Ink also showed off a version with a refresh rate good enough to handle full color video, though due to the limitations of the tech, it looks a bit washed-out and blurry. Still, there's definitely an interest in a screen that's capable but that doesn't strain the eyes, as seen in the buzz around the partly-similar . Engineers see the potential, working on and .
The obstacle to getting production going on these new products is mostly the cost: e-ink screens are pretty expensive, even rivaling LCD screens, and so far, it seems nobody has found it worth the cost to actually go forward with production. But the price will eventually come down--the Kindle originally cost $400, and now costs an absurd $114--and hopefully we'll get to see some next-generation envelopes soon enough.
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New Tracking System Can Pin Any Internet User’s Location to Within a Few Hundred Meters
Yong Wang, a computer scientist at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, developed a three-stage system to narrow the radius of geolocation without requiring the user's permission. The first stage is the one that's currently used: A packet is sent to the target, and the time it takes to to bounce back is converted into a (very vague) distance. But Wang took it further by realizing that many large organizations, like businesses and schools, usually have their servers in-house, meaning the IP addresses can be tied to a physical location that's easily found. If an IP address is linked to a university, you can just look that university up on Google Maps and have a pretty good idea that the user of the IP address is somewhere nearby.
Wang catalogued about 76,000 such "landmarks" on Google Maps, which leads to the first new stage developed. The new system pings all of the landmarks in that initial 200-km radius, and by analyzing the time that bounce takes, the possible location radius can shrink even further. In this stage, the software might find that ten out of twenty landmarks return similar ping times to the target, and shrink the possible location radius to reflect that result.
After that step, they continue the method until they figure out which landmark is closest to the target. In areas with many targets, like cities, that can lead to unsettlingly accurate tracking--all without the target's permission. The only recourse somebody might have to this method would be to , which would effectively confuse the software into returning a null result.
Who would be interested in this? Well, advertisers might not actually care to get this granular with their targeting, although super-local advertisers might be able to target individual neighborhoods. What's more worrying is the possible invasion of privacy from, well, just about anyone, from individuals to small groups to governmental organizations. Is everyone going to have to use a proxy just to avoid any stranger being able to zero in on their laptops? And do the benefits of this kind of tracking outweigh the costs?
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Berlin Installs Ad Projectors, Citizens Turn Them Into Prismatic Art
In subway stations in Berlin, new projectors cast glowing advertisements on the walls, exhorting commuters to buy Volkswagens or something. In this video, a group called marches into a subway station carrying mysterious apparatus, and proceeds to modify the projectors so that they display pleasing fragmented images instead. Kind of like how our everyday experience is increasingly fragmented by ze city's barrage of commercial messages from every angle, no?
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Social media tracker Tynt gives developers content in real-time data streams
Social media tracker startup has launched a new application program interface (API) that allows developers to access their content through real-time data streams, as the rush to put more information in the hands of smartphone users heats up.
Tynt works with online publishers and websites about the sharing activity of their users.
The new API is the first initiative of , as the company debuts new data tracking tools through its feature and makes them available to developers and users.
San Francisco-based Tynt also unveiled its new feature, where visitors can see top stories, popular search terms and images of in the sections of celebrity, how-to, New York, sports, technology and travel.
It simultaneously announced its new Geo-location service, which shows the specific areas, images, search terms and stories that people in New York are most closely following.
CEO and co-founder Derek Ball (pictured) told VentureBeat that Tynt’s new approach to interactive services is trying to find a way to harness the overall creativity flourishing in a lightning-fast developer environment.
“Our internal researchers are finding fascinating patterns in the aggregate data and we have so many ideas for what amazing applications could be built,” said Bell. “We simply can’t create them all, so it will be very interesting to see what kind of applications others choose to build on our data. I am confident that the best apps will result in positive traffic flow for our publisher partners and great insights for the end users of those applications. I think one of the most interesting possible areas is mobile.”
Tynt currently offers two APIs, a , where developers see a real-time stream of content related to six popular categories, and a Keyword Search, where developers engage real-time information streams based on keyword searches to figure out how users are interacting with a website’s content.
Bell said he believed that targeting mobile apps will almost certainly be the next target for both developers and companies catering to businesses trying to quantify how their websites are engaging users.
“I think one of the most interesting possible areas is mobile. and he indicated that apps would be where people would go for their data,” said Bell. “If you are building the ultimate app for any passion you might have, imagine being able to tap into a human curated set of the best content around that passion.”
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With New Face-Scanning Technology, Movies Will Soon Watch You While You Watch Them
The cameras will illuminate the audience with infrared and create 3-D stereoscopic images of the audience. Using facial recognition technology, they will know which way you’re facing, if you’re surprised or just bored, even if you came to the movie with friends or solo. Advertisers will use the data to determine if they’re getting through to you or not, and adjust accordingly. The technology could also be a boon to movie studios running test screenings – why ask how you felt about the film if they can just see for themselves?
Google announces first AdMob integration: AdSense ads in AdMob’s network
In the first major integration between AdMob and Google since the ad network , publishers will soon be able to show Google’s AdSense ads whenever an AdMob ad isn’t available, according to .
The move brings significant new ad inventory into AdMob’s network, which is good for both AdMob publishers and Google advertisers. Now AdSense buyers can tap into AdMob network apps like the popular game Angry Birds, and publishers will continue to receive a single check every month that combines both AdSense and AdMob earnings.
Google says the feature will be rolled out to eligible iPhone and Android app developers in the coming weeks. Developers won’t be able to filter out AdSense ads by type, and those currently filtering their AdMob ads will have to opt in to access to the feature. Developers not filtering out apps will receive access to AdSense ads automatically as the feature is rolled out, and those using the latest version of the AdMob SDK won’t have to make any changes either.
Google announced that , but the deal was for six months until it . Just last week, a mere five months after the deal was approved, for “personal reasons” — a sign perhaps that there was trouble in paradise.
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