4 Alarming Advertising Trends You Should Know About

We are installing ad blocks by default on all our devices. We even have privacy browsers like Brave and safe search engines like DuckDuckGo. You feel somewhat protected. But no worries, the advertising business will soon solve that problem. You can’t install an ad block in your car, can’t you?

Although not here yet, advertising giants seem to be on a mission to wish them into existence.

1. Smart glasses and augmented reality

As far as ways to show you ads, smart glasses are the holy grail for advertisers, so I’ll start with them. And why would it not be? Let’s look at how you can see an ad now: The TV is just sitting there mostly turned off, billboards and other physical advertising requiring people actually passing by and showing interest, I won’t even bother to go into detail about radio, and ads for your phone only work when you use it. No wonder Meta is so keen to switch their entire business model. So why is the marketing world waiting so eagerly for smart glasses to become mainstream?

Attention

One of the biggest steps in a successful campaign is “How do we get people to look at our ad?”. No matter how well you did everything, if people don’t look, it’s for nothing. But what if you have a permanent billboard in front of your eyes? Then you can’t really look away.

I’ll leave you with what is a very disturbing image in an eerily positive Forbes article.

“Imagine it: You’re walking home from work. You put on your Google Glasses to check your email and notice that the sushi place across the street, where you frequently go for takeout, is highlighted. In the window is a glowing icon that lets you know there’s a discount available. A tiny tilt of your head brings up the offer: 40% off any purchase plus free edamame. With a bit more tilting and nodding, you place your order. By the time you cross the street, it’s ready for you. Would you like to pay via Google Wallet?

You nod.”

Enjoy your walk!

Billboards

I don’t believe it will take anyone more than three minutes of googling “smart glasses” + “uses” or “advertising” to bump into the billboards section. The pitch behind this idea is that you can put up billboards that are capable of displaying something different for each individual looking at it. Something similar already exists in London, where the famous Piccadilly billboard is able to display targeted ads based on the gender and age of people passing by, as reported by Wired in 2017.

Although less invasive than other means, this still raises some concerns. Let’s imagine another scenario. You have a 50-minute commute three times a week and you need to use the motorway. Every few miles or so, on the right and left side of the road you see the phone you checked the specs of yesterday, a dancing Pokémon because your son watches them every day, and a car leasing company because you just took yours to the shop a few days ago. Sounds fun!

2. Active listening

If it didn’t happen to you, you know someone with this story. A friend mentions a random brand or gadget you never heard of and the next thing you know you start seeing ads for it. Mark Zuckerberg famously denied this while being questioned by US Senator Gary Peters in this YouTube video (timestamp included). If these are genuinely coincidences or not, only a few people know the truth. But again, why not take it a bit further if you know the state can also benefit? But that’s a story for another day.

3. Eye Tracking

“How come our phones don’t track your eyes when you watch ads on your screen?” I asked my friends about two years ago. I got met with some ridicule and a “No user would ever accept that” — said the person with three Amazon Alexa’s in his house. But I diverge.

Like somehow my words spawned this devil into existence, wouldn’t you know it, MoviePass (2.0) announced their new app will track your eyes to ensure you are watching the ads. And we are not talking about 15 seconds of YouTube ads. This is 15 to 20 minutes of being forced to look at ads in order to proceed. Which of Dante’s circles of hell is this?

I look forward to the day this company crashes and burns just because they brought this into the mainstream.

4. Self-driving cars

Going full circle with my introduction, there is no ad block for a car, is it?

Imagine getting driven by your Level 5 autonomous car to run some errands and your partner texts you asking if you fancy some takeaway tonight. Your car’s navigation then starts to add all kinds of takeaway options on the route and bombard you with offers.

You don’t have to imagine, the “American Marketing Association” is on the case, calling autonomous cars a game changer for advertisers.

With the rise of driverless vehicles comes the opportunity to advertise directly to passengers. How can marketers take advantage?

This is how the article starts, followed by a seamless transition of calling the passengers to consumers. Isn’t advertising cool?

In closure — Data, Data, Data

With each step in the journey of humans and technology we chiselled away at what is private and what is “user data”. As it has been massively reported, data is now the most valuable commodity, surpassing oil, gold, silver, or anything else you can think of. We’ve been taking incremental steps, and with each new gadget or device, we give away more and more of ourselves.

Think about it. We gave phone companies our fingerprints, faces, voices, and credit card purchases, social media companies our likes and dislikes, our political and ideological orientation, and our vulnerabilities. We even surrendered our DNA to find out …something. Can you blame these companies for not stopping there? People and governments don’t seem to mind at all.

Now with all that data at their disposal, it’s just a case of companies one-upping each other, which usually means another brick in the wall of our privacy falls, and they can look inside.