Why the Best Ad on the Internet Represents Real Innovation
Here’s the business pitch: Buy our razor because it’s really cheap. If you spend hundreds of dollars a year on brand-name razors, you’re not paying for the razor. You’re paying for what the razor represents.
And here’s the thing: The dude is right! Making razors is really cheap. Even quadruple-bladed, triple-aloe-stripped monstrosities don’t cost Gillette anything close to the retail price. So when you buy one of these fancy razors, most of your money isn’t going to production costs or shipping costs. It’s going to marketing costs. It really is going to Roger Federer and an ad agency and a communications team and all trappings of marketing that exist to distinguish the Gillette brand.
Across the economy, even as the price of items like razors, toasters, clothes, and food have fallen compared to wages, the share of their price that goes to marketing has increased. The stuff that’s getting cheap is actually getting even cheaper than we think it is, because we’re paying for the costs of distinguishing similar products.
But along comes a company that says: Let’s limit our ad costs to a bear suit, an American flag, and props for this guy who looks like Tony Goldwyn. Let’s market ourselves with virality instead of celebrity. Then let’s pass along the savings to customers.
Our good friend Starheadboy recently put some wheatpaste pieces on the streets of Seattle depicting awesomely cute and rather thoughtful kitties frolicking in boxes while pleading the case for public art instead of advertising.
Scene from occupied Ireland
![theatlantic:
I Didn’t Tell Facebook I’m Engaged, So Why Is It Asking About My Fiancé?
The morning began with my typical browsing routine: email, top-reads RSS news feed, a brief scan of Twitter, then Facebook. I found friends wrapping up at SXSW, some chatter about Kony, pictures of new babies, and then I noticed something out of the ordinary in the right hand column. (See above.)
It’s not the first time I’ve gotten an engagement ring advertisement. But what’s this? Facebook is directly asking me to comment on the nature of my relationship to Nick Smith? That’s something new. And weird.
Because, as it turns out, Nick Smith and I are engaged.
We contacted Facebook to ask them about what might have happened. A spokesman got back to us right away. First, the placement of the ad and the question was an accident. That is to say, Facebook wanted to show me the ad and it wanted to ask me the question, but the fact that they showed up at the same time was coincidental. Second, I was probably targeted for an engagement ring ad because of some things I posted about our wedding or on the basis that I’m a woman of marrying age. Third, Facebook’s spokesman said that my answer to the question about Nick was just for Facebook’s social graph, not for advertisers. […]
Since our engagement, there have been enough mentions of “engagement” and “wedding” in mine and my friends’ comments littered throughout my profile to suggest to Facebook’s keyword crawlers to deduce that we’ve got something big planned. The fact that he’s tagged in my cover photo, we have numerous albums taken in remote locations where we’re the only two people tagged, and that we both currently live in Chongqing, China, all should make it obvious to Facebook’s relationship-weighing algorithms that we’re pretty important to each other. […]
So why does Facebook care to know more about the nature of my relationship to Nick? The short answer is that Facebook wants to know as much as it can about my relationships, even though Facebook’s current policy is not use information from user questions like this one for advertising.
Read more. [Screenshot: Sara Marie Watson]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0xlsynQPn1qcokc4o1_400.png)
I Didn’t Tell Facebook I’m Engaged, So Why Is It Asking About My Fiancé?
The morning began with my typical browsing routine: email, top-reads RSS news feed, a brief scan of Twitter, then Facebook. I found friends wrapping up at SXSW, some chatter about Kony, pictures of new babies, and then I noticed something out of the ordinary in the right hand column. (See above.)
It’s not the first time I’ve gotten an engagement ring advertisement. But what’s this? Facebook is directly asking me to comment on the nature of my relationship to Nick Smith? That’s something new. And weird.
Because, as it turns out, Nick Smith and I are engaged.
We contacted Facebook to ask them about what might have happened. A spokesman got back to us right away. First, the placement of the ad and the question was an accident. That is to say, Facebook wanted to show me the ad and it wanted to ask me the question, but the fact that they showed up at the same time was coincidental. Second, I was probably targeted for an engagement ring ad because of some things I posted about our wedding or on the basis that I’m a woman of marrying age. Third, Facebook’s spokesman said that my answer to the question about Nick was just for Facebook’s social graph, not for advertisers. […]
Since our engagement, there have been enough mentions of “engagement” and “wedding” in mine and my friends’ comments littered throughout my profile to suggest to Facebook’s keyword crawlers to deduce that we’ve got something big planned. The fact that he’s tagged in my cover photo, we have numerous albums taken in remote locations where we’re the only two people tagged, and that we both currently live in Chongqing, China, all should make it obvious to Facebook’s relationship-weighing algorithms that we’re pretty important to each other. […]
So why does Facebook care to know more about the nature of my relationship to Nick? The short answer is that Facebook wants to know as much as it can about my relationships, even though Facebook’s current policy is not use information from user questions like this one for advertising.
Read more. [Screenshot: Sara Marie Watson]
![theatlantic:
Yep, Google Just Patented Background Noise
In 2008, Google applied to patent a system that analyzes the environments surrounding mobile phones — temperature, humidity, sound — by way of sensors embedded in those phones. The technology would be mainly used, Google said in its filing, for (yes) “advertising based on environmental conditions.” It would provide another information layer, beyond quaint little GPS, that would target ads based not just on users’ immediate locations, but on their immediate environments. So, the filing noted, detections of hot weather could serve up ads for air conditioners; or, inversely, winter coats. Or the phone sensors might detect, say, the distinctive sounds of an orchestra being tuned, and combine that information — the user is at a concert — with location data and local events data to figure out which concert the user is attending. And then serve ads (for nearby restaurants, orchestral CDs, local violin teachers) based on that intel.
Cool, no? And also totally creepy?
Well. This week, Google was granted its patent. The firm has officially patented background noise. (And also: cold. And also: warmth.)
There are huge privacy concerns here, obviously, one of them being that the ability to track devices’ background noises would seem to imply the ability to track all their noises. And “it is important to respect the privacy of users,” Google acknowledges in the patent, noting that monitor-tracking will be opt-out-able and that “a privacy policy” specifying which, and how, sensor-gathered information would be used “may be provided to the user.” One wonders about the legality of the hypothetical operation in the 12 states that require everyone recorded to consent to that recording. The sound the phone picks up may just be an advertising signal for an algorithm to Google, but the law could see it differently.
These might be moot points, anyway. There’s no indication, as yet, that Google has plans to implement the “environmental condition” technology, GeekWire points out. But it bears repeating nonetheless, both as a whoa and as an insight into how the firm is thinking about the role it’ll play in our digital future: Google has patented background noise.
And all for the purpose of serving you ads.
[Image: A rendering of Google’s latest patent. Note the lines: “environmental condition” and “ad server.”]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1aqsaoGQA1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
Yep, Google Just Patented Background Noise
In 2008, Google applied to patent a system that analyzes the environments surrounding mobile phones — temperature, humidity, sound — by way of sensors embedded in those phones. The technology would be mainly used, Google said in its filing, for (yes) “advertising based on environmental conditions.” It would provide another information layer, beyond quaint little GPS, that would target ads based not just on users’ immediate locations, but on their immediate environments. So, the filing noted, detections of hot weather could serve up ads for air conditioners; or, inversely, winter coats. Or the phone sensors might detect, say, the distinctive sounds of an orchestra being tuned, and combine that information — the user is at a concert — with location data and local events data to figure out which concert the user is attending. And then serve ads (for nearby restaurants, orchestral CDs, local violin teachers) based on that intel.
Cool, no? And also totally creepy?
Well. This week, Google was granted its patent. The firm has officially patented background noise. (And also: cold. And also: warmth.)
There are huge privacy concerns here, obviously, one of them being that the ability to track devices’ background noises would seem to imply the ability to track all their noises. And “it is important to respect the privacy of users,” Google acknowledges in the patent, noting that monitor-tracking will be opt-out-able and that “a privacy policy” specifying which, and how, sensor-gathered information would be used “may be provided to the user.” One wonders about the legality of the hypothetical operation in the 12 states that require everyone recorded to consent to that recording. The sound the phone picks up may just be an advertising signal for an algorithm to Google, but the law could see it differently.
These might be moot points, anyway. There’s no indication, as yet, that Google has plans to implement the “environmental condition” technology, GeekWire points out. But it bears repeating nonetheless, both as a whoa and as an insight into how the firm is thinking about the role it’ll play in our digital future: Google has patented background noise.
And all for the purpose of serving you ads.
[Image: A rendering of Google’s latest patent. Note the lines: “environmental condition” and “ad server.”]
![theatlantic:
For the Next Two Weeks, Rush Limbaugh Won’t Have National Advertisers
Right after releasing an ever-growing-list companies that don’t want anything to do with Rush Limbaugh on Monday (the count is at 140), the broadcaster’s distributor has sent out a memo telling affiliates to suspend national advertising spots for the next two weeks.
Though Premiere Radio Networks did not specifically comment on why the suspension was needed, but it does address one problem in particular: In the past week, several companies were unaware that their ads had aired during Limbaugh’s show in the wake of his comments about Sandra Fluke.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0tuuaSfF01qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
For the Next Two Weeks, Rush Limbaugh Won’t Have National Advertisers
Right after releasing an ever-growing-list companies that don’t want anything to do with Rush Limbaugh on Monday (the count is at 140), the broadcaster’s distributor has sent out a memo telling affiliates to suspend national advertising spots for the next two weeks.
Though Premiere Radio Networks did not specifically comment on why the suspension was needed, but it does address one problem in particular: In the past week, several companies were unaware that their ads had aired during Limbaugh’s show in the wake of his comments about Sandra Fluke.Read more. [Image: Reuters]
(Source: weheartit.com)
![theatlantic:
Inside Smellvertising, the Scented Advertising Tactic Coming Soon to a City Near You
Bus stops are typically not the place where you want to hoover in a big noseful of air. Car exhaust, stale cigarettes and fresh urine – the noxious bouquet of mass transit is anything but welcoming.
In this hazy stinkscape of forlorn odors, a food company is launching a marketing campaign.
By the end of today, crews in London, Manchester, Glasgow and other U.K. cities will have outfitted 10 bus stops with large advertisements for “McCain Ready Baked Jackets,” a frozen baked-potato product that microwaves to readiness in 5 minutes. Each billboard includes a fiberglass potato sculpture and a mysterious button: Push it, and the tuber discharges the aroma of “slow oven-baked jacket potatoes.” Read more.
[Image: JCDecaux]
So, does this mean Smell-O-Vision is making a comeback?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz52xs3j2W1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
Inside Smellvertising, the Scented Advertising Tactic Coming Soon to a City Near You
Bus stops are typically not the place where you want to hoover in a big noseful of air. Car exhaust, stale cigarettes and fresh urine – the noxious bouquet of mass transit is anything but welcoming.
In this hazy stinkscape of forlorn odors, a food company is launching a marketing campaign.
By the end of today, crews in London, Manchester, Glasgow and other U.K. cities will have outfitted 10 bus stops with large advertisements for “McCain Ready Baked Jackets,” a frozen baked-potato product that microwaves to readiness in 5 minutes. Each billboard includes a fiberglass potato sculpture and a mysterious button: Push it, and the tuber discharges the aroma of “slow oven-baked jacket potatoes.” Read more.
[Image: JCDecaux]
So, does this mean Smell-O-Vision is making a comeback?
