Marketing.fm

If you have ever seen the movie Minority Report then you have seen the future of customized advertising. In the movie the stars are seen running through crowded shopping and mall areas in which their retina’s are scanned identifying them then displaying completely customized ads including their names and tastes. Although a futuristic pipe dream, this level of advertising is being developed right now.

In Tokyo in the shopping area of Ginza 10,000 RFID tags are being deployed. The hope is that people carrying the prototype readers of the tags will be able to find out relevant location and shopping information.

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The system works by matching a unique code sent out by each beacon with data stored on a server on the Internet. The data is obtained automatically by the terminal, which communicates back to the server via a wireless LAN connection and requests the data relevant to the beacon that is being picked up.

This translates to a live system that can provide updated information to users. This will hopefully be a system in which people can find relevant data that will be accompanied by ads that will hopefully drive shoppers to a nearby store.

To think that one day soon a shopping center will be able to not only tailor their messaging to you, but also track your movements and time spent at each location is a bit scary. The one downside that I continue to see, which does not seem to get covered is the idea that these RFID tags do not stop broadcasting the signal once you leave a location with a tag. Imagine that you pickup items that include RFID chips from your local store and someone can drive by your home and identify the products you purchased. (Yes, this would require breaking the encryption currently on most chips - but this seems to be only a matter of time)

How much value would an advertiser put on zip code information that included the usage patterns of a certain product?

Marketers pay millions for mailing lists, demographic data, neighborhood info - and I believe they would pay more for specific shopping habit information.

All this technology may make the initial shopping experience more relevant - but at what point of loss of privacy or abuse of these systems do we draw the line?

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