The future is advertising?

The future is advertising? Going by the almost universal demand on everything on internet being free,- just look at emails/chat etc, it stands to reason that ad supported free sites will only go on. Now there are paid sites that also use ads, and some of them pretty obtrusively too and they are tolerated. I foresee eventually every other site will have heavy ads. But lots of ads itself does not help much. What the advertisers will of course like, are ads that are effective. Ads that actually interest the viewer and here comes in the success of sites like Google and all that do a lot of data mining and come up with targeted ads based on certain well researched assumptions of the user interest.

Even non internet ads – especially those that rely on broadcast media do a lot of research based on the preferences of the target audience before deciding on the exact ad message. Recently there was a report in Guardian of UK that talked about neuro-research driven ads. Here the advertiser actually map a sample’s brain waves/cell conditions in response of specific types of ads and based on the ad that generates a more suitable mental reason, come up with the campaign.

In some distant or not so distant future once net connectivity is ubiquitous so that broadcast networks can actually have appliances in user homes which can feedback data and receive targeted content (esp. in case of ads). This is not far fetched since cable modems already have capability to feedback data to the service provider. Such a setup can have a sophisticated sensor that can actually sense the brainwaves from a distance. Or maybe there is a headset based system that may be able to capture brainwaves while projecting a 3 dimensional image of the programming directly onto the retina. What prevents us from then say putting an ad for a similar whiskey on the screen when the hero in that flick is swishing a stiff one and the viewer indicates a similar wish?

Interesting case would be when instead of a headset, there is just one device in the room and all see ads based on whichever person it focuses on. Imagine a set of conservative parents and some interestingly iconoclast adolescent sitting together and the unit latching onto some of the viewers randomly?

Or a case of a hall full of people with a large TV set (like in sports bar and all). Might be quite some fun to speculate who trigger that ahem ad!