ADWARS 2

Of eyeballs, cookies and watchdogs

This follows our previous post on ‘eyeball tracking ’ in the Paris metro. Jon Liebowitz, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (item ‘Don’t Track me Bro’ by Daniel Lyons in Newsweek, Jan. 2011) commented on the prevalence of ‘tracking cookies’ (‘cookies’ sounds so cute, right?) during consumer web surfing, cookies being bits of code that are placed by sites/advertisers automatically and surreptiously on internauts’ hard-drives so as to gain information on those persons’ web activity. This hidden information is then used to promote/sell pertinent products back to those same consumers.

Now although cookies were initially ‘sold’ as useful features of the internet experience, in the sense that they would stock minimal information about websites that people visited often, thus quickening access the next time, the new tracking ‘cookies’ and associated advertising tend to now slow down the web experience at each visit, it’s called ‘Loading’… I even have a computer which was so spammed and gummed-up by clutter that I preferred to no longer use the lemon. It’s sitting right beside me, a victory for SPAM, despite the software.

Of course, some internauts might like the idea of seeing only personalised ads aimed at their habits and their hobbies. The fact remains though that this implies acceptance of the the stealth principle applied by the advertiser. Instead of banning, or at least controlling, certain practices, such as telephone marketing or tracking cookies, some prefer to pay to hide their telephone numbers or to pay for anti-spam software. I would call that getting screwed twice. It may be true that computer aficionados have ways of avoiding these problems (e.g. anonymous surfing…), but the problem is still there for 95% of web users.

Official watchdogs are necessary to the extent that one cannot trust advertisers and marketers to self-regulate. The old fox and chicken coop analogy springs to mind. Side-track : Recent financial scams in the States (Madoff) and State-condoned financing of private banks by public funds in the U.S.A. and Europe, all in the wake of the sub-prime crisis when right now multinationals are sitting on massive cash hoards while the unemployed are desperate for work (no paradox), have provided ample proof of the need for regulation of certain capitalist business practices (banks, ratings agencies) by State bodies or commissions. Of course, when these bodies do exist, they are laughably weak or under influence. Advertisers are the same as financiers : human predators.

Returning to Jon Leibowitz of the FTC, he makes the point that our computers belonging to us, we have the right to know “what’s going on” inside them. Indeed, most people have little idea of the cynical sophistication lurking behind their surfing. Example : when this writer surfs on an Australian website, the banner ads on the page are in French, where he is living !

Leibowitz also proposes a ‘Do not Track’ option to block access to these tracking cookies (think also unlisted phone numbers). JL hopes internet businesses will self-regulate. More fool he. Microsoft agrees with self-regulation and will include tracking protection in the next version of its IE browser. That’s marketing to a T : they do something underhanded to make a sale, then when found out, they offer for sale a patch to fix their own initial dirty deed !!

Remember ‘Minority Report’, where Tom Cruise, his new eyeballs installed, walks through a mall and hears personalised advertising addressed to him by name. Is that what we want to happen in our societies ? It’s never too late to remain vigilant.

GIVE ADMEN THE FINGER !


One of the ‘sexy’ billboards

At the present time in Paris and doubtless tomorrow in other French cities, the news on the advertising front is the deployment of 80,000 billboards in the metro in a deal between the Paris RATP transport authority and the advertising agency Publicis + Decaux, an urban furniture  uglifier. Of which, hundreds of new-style, interactive, electronic mothers. I had mentioned this previously on Adwars1, a blog with my Sciences-Po University media students in 2009 (http://adwars-ws.blogspot.com/2009/02/too-cold-too-clean.html).

This time, a recent issue of ‘Alerte’, by ‘AGIR pour l’environnement’, a French activist group, returns to the story, objecting strongly to the fact that a utilitarian metro system should become a unilateral commercial space where a captive audience of commuters (10m per day in Paris) may be visually assaulted and psychologically manipulated at will.

Advertising has of course existed in the Paris metro for years (Dubonnet, for example) and one does not deny that the medium has the capacity to inform, but with the advent of the 21st century, the metric density as well as the affective delirium have increased tenfold considering both the large, fixed hoardings which dominate the visual environment of every station and the ubiquity of recent messages (stairs, floors, doors, turnstiles, tickets, bus sides…).

Some advertisers even rent whole tube stations so there is no way of escaping the same, repetitive message. Worse, they’ve gone electronic !  The pro-environment group informs on the new generation of smaller electronic screens (1.60m X 0.90m), whose presence will extend beyond the Underground to the streets above, to bus shelters and why not, to moving transport.

Urban advertising of course exists already and some might claim to barely notice it (see ‘zombies’). However, this new generation resembles a snazzy, vertical, backlit TV screen and is equipped with cameras to eyeball-track the passers-by as they interact with the billboards ! The Men in Grey watching want to know what we ourselves may not even be aware of !

I did see and photograph one of the first (see above) at the Etoile metro station in 2009. Even if the cameras are supposedly not yet in operation, looking at them, knowing that some group of marketing graduates are studying my reactions without my permission is rather eerie, to say the least. If not illegal…

At present, thanks to the vigilance of certain consumer and militant groups, the French ethics committee - the CNIL - is studying the case. As for the cameras, though installed, they are purportedly not yet operational.

So, not being sure whether this is true or not, when I pass in front of one, I give it the big finger ! Try it sometimes if you are in Paris and you’ll feel momentarily better…

(A Better Place - Heal the World)

As I said in the Intro to this new blog, as a media teacher, I already covered certain negative aspects of advertising with a group of 4th year Sciences-Po students in Paris, France, over a previous academic year (2008-9).

Given that it was a media class in English and despite the quite high linguistic level of the majority of the students, this placed nevertheless certain limitations on content and form, the students’ written English being well below their verbal skills (thanks to ‘Friends’ et al…). Academic strictures we could say, were at play. Here, in ADwARS 2 however, we shall aim wider and higher. Hey, the sky’s the limit !

The raison d’être for this blog resides in my conviction that as a member of a society, there must be a sense of individual responsibility on the part of the citizen. Every citizen, it seems clear, can and should help the collective unit through his individuality in his or her personal way. Whether manually, intellectually, organisationally or practically. This does not in my view imply massive personal commitment on the part of all, but it does imply minimal, positive involvement in the evolution of one’s society. And complaining verbally right left and centre about aspects of one’s society does not in my view, constitute positive action or thought. Fundamentally, I am calling here for the return of civic responsibility, a notion which has suffered seriously since the rise of the consumer society.

One final point of importance before our next post : this is a blog by an Australian having been born, educated and worked Down Under. And having followed post-grad studies and worked as a teacher and in multimedia within Europe (France). My ideas are thus shaped by these cultures and this post-WW2 boom age.

Such post-WW2 Western ideas are pertinent especially to those in similar cultures, meaning that though they are not dominant globally, they do remain powerful - look for proof at how U.S values have for years been broadcast worldwide by TV, the video-game industry or Hollywood…look too at the myth of Michael Jackson.

To be continued…

HOSTILITIES IN THE GLOBAL VILLAGE HAVE ONLY JUST BEGUN

My initial 2008-09 ADWARS blog is still available online at :
http://adwars-ws.blogspot.com/
This was a one-year-long teacher blog designed for my university media students, both to upgrade their working lexic and to stimulate in-class reflexion on the vast question of advertising in the Western media, especially on television. This is no simple topic.

The new, improved ADwARS 2 will take up where ADWARS left off, but this time will aim wider, no longer only with the student population in mind and will necessarily be punchier, briefer, wilder, with real-time blogger interaction. It might even lead to some pretty useful reflexion ! 
Critically,