Are you sharing your living room with others?

How would you feel if advertisers could see what you were doing and target adverts to suit your activity level or even your mood?

It’s not as futuristic as it sounds.

Dr Andy Mc Stay, lecturer in Media Culture at Bangor University has an article on the topic in The Conversation. 

He explains how some of the technology to enable advertisers to target adverts at individuals- and according to specific information about them, may already be in your living room, while others are certainly under development.

Mc Stay describes this as behavioural advertising and says that the whole systems involved could be said to be displaying a whole new characteristic (for them): empathy. Empathy can be defined as a form of reading social cues and responding appropriately- and that’s exactly what we can expect from advertisements. As they read our actions, activities, tone of voice, gestures and facial expressions, they will be able to direct adverts that they think will suit our moods- from a holiday to cheer us up if we’re down in the dumps to some DIY for the active viewer!

Publication date: 31 January 2014