JULY 2004 IN
RICK ASTER’S WORLD
In 20th-century psychology, if you thought that a message on the television screen was directed specifically at you, it was one of the surest signs that you had lost your mind. No more. Advertisers have been finding more and more ways to present different messages to different people, and that means no one but you sees the exact mix of advertising that you see. “One to one” is the hottest concept in advertising, as advertisers try to get closer to their ideal of delivering specific messages to specific selected individuals.
This side of advertising is easiest to see in the Google search engine and at retail web sites such as Amazon.com. When you see the small text advertisements at Google, they are selected in response to the specific words you search for. The “cross-selling” messages at Amazon are based on the selections you’ve made on the web site — the products you’ve selected or purchased and the words you’ve searched for.
Targeted messages that respond to your online actions may seem harmless enough, perhaps even a useful way to gain information about something you’re researching. But advertisers target you in a hundred different ways, and it is the targeted messages that aren’t so obvious that can lead you astray.
If you see the advertising you’re seeing and imagine that everyone else is seeing it too, you will get the impression that the advertising is bigger than it actually is. Advertising creates a picture of the world, and if you imagine that this picture is the world, your view may clash with that of someone else who sees different advertising and is getting a different picture. This effect is already obvious when one person gets the impression that something is the hottest new product or the biggest new movie while someone else in the room has never heard of it. It will become more prevalent as demographers and interactive technology give advertisers more ways to single out individuals for carefully targeted messages.
Some of the oldest questions in philosophy have to do with the nature of reality. What if everything you see in the world is a show put on for your benefit? This is no longer merely an interesting philosophical question. Advertisers are experimenting with electronic roadside billboards that let them change the message depending on who is driving by. Interactive forms of television may soon, they hope, offer the same kind of control over commercials. If you are in a decision-making position, you have to wonder which of the messages in discussion boards were planted there just for you to see. Google’s forthcoming e-mail service will use the same approach to select advertising for e-mail web pages. Already, a significant part of your electronic world is a show put on for your benefit. If you don’t realize it’s a show, the people who control what’s on your screen can manipulate your view of the world, and in turn, your view of reality.
I know how much trouble a few distortions can cause from of what a few cult members taught me years ago. They described how they recruited new members from the college community where they were based. One of them would befriend someone, learn a few things about them, and invite them to a party or social event at the cult house. Then everyone in the house would work together to create an event specifically to make the visitor feel at home. They would change who they were, take on different interests to match those of their visitor, even create a fictional personal history sometimes. More than one time out of ten, they claimed, they would have a new cult member.
If a falsified environment might lead a person to join a cult, what will happen when advertisers gain the ability to create a “commercial cult” just for you? Could it lead you to take actions that aren’t in your own best interest?
Traders need a high degree of security in their electronic environment to make sure their view of things isn’t being distorted by anyone who might be trying to manipulate their trading behavior. Someone who could change a few of the numbers on the trading screen could lead a trader to make a bad trade, so traders need to know that outsiders can’t get into their screens. We don’t all need that same degree of security — yet — but a bit of security consciousness can help you keep your world view from being warped by targeted advertising. Here are a few suggestions to start with:
Next month: Inside the Commercial Closet
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