Window shopping ghosts and precision temptation
Posted by: mariamz on: March 6, 2011
How good are you at resisting tempation? What will you do when yours greet you in the street, or call out to you from your pocket?
These are questions raised by the latest advances in advertising technology.
- Location-based marketing is becoming more sophisticated as big players battle to help businesses reach people on the move. It works by targeting offers at mobile users passing by retail outlets.
- Billboard posters target passers-by based on RFID chips or recognition software identifying their age and gender.
- Ad-retargeting is where advertising is targeted specifically at web users based on things they have already shown an interest in, but not bought.
Ad re-targeting by Sarenza on the guardian website
Convergence of the above could mean a world where we are haunted by the ghosts of previous window-shopping bouts and tempted back into shops where unneccesary and / or unaffordable items had recently been resisted.
Just what a girl / boy needs?
Whether this becomes reality will depend on two things… how successful real-world re-targeting is for businesses (online re-targeting is already very successful for retailers, All Saints (clothing), reportedly generated a return of £21 for every £1 spent on retargeting ads in the last two months of 2010.)
… And how much consumers really object when confronted in the street by their own tempations over and over again, until they submit.
Shopping bags image via ChiqueChic
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