HDTV Almanac - Bugged, But It Could Be Good

[alfredpoor]

My entry last Friday about advertising on television shows streamed over the Web hit a few nerves over on HDTV Magazine where the Almanac is republished every day. It generated a long string of comments that covered a wide range of issues, from how much people pay for television service in their homes, to how [...]

[url=http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/columns/2009/11/hdtv_almanac_bugged_but_it_could_be_good.php]Read Column[/url]

[Roger Halstead]

I have very little problem with targeted advertising. It actually sounds reasonable ...if they'd get it right. Unfortunately, when you go to a site, or do a search on a topic the targeting considers you a market prospect even though you were just looking for information. Now you get adds for products in which you have no interest. Go to a newspaper site down on the gulf and suddenly you are finding adds for that area just because you read an article.

[alfredpoor]

I have no illusions that "targeted marketing" remains in the future. Direct mail advertising is what, 100 years old?, but they still can't manage to have clean and targeted lists. The Internet's advantage is that they have a lot more information to work with (thank you, Google), and eventually, they will build up the logic and software to make it work better. Keep in mind that Netflix paid a million dollars to improve their movie recommendations by a single percentage point. Progress will come slowly, but I do imagine a possible future where this micro-advertising will be the engine that saves the "blockbuster" entertainment productions.

Alfred

[Roger Halstead]

I think it'll get much better in the future...Near of far? Probably more like far and the algorithms to collect, collate, identify, sort out all the information accurately will most likely never be written and used in the system we know now.