Imagine your car playing you an ad based on your destination, vehicle information—and listening to your conversations.
Ford has patented a system that, per the filing, would use several different sources of information to customize ad content to play in your car. One such information stream that this hypothetical system would use to determine what sort of ads to serve could be could be the voice commands you’ve given to the car. It could also identify your voice and recognize you and your ad preferences, and those of your passengers. Finally, it could listen to your conversations and determine if it’s better to serve you a visual ad while you’re talking, or an audio ad when there’s a lull in the conversation.
If the system described in the patent knew that you were headed to the mall on the freeway based on destination information from the nav system and vehicle speed, it could consider how many ads to serve in the time you’ll be in the car, and whether to serve them on a screen or based through the audio system. If you respond more positively to audio ads, it might serve you more of those—how does every five minutes sound?
But what if the weather’s bad, traffic is heavy, and you’re chatting away with your passenger? Ford describes the system using the external sensors to perceive traffic levels and weather, and the internal microphone to understand conversational cadence, to “regulate the number (and relevance) of ads shown” to the occupants. Using the GPS, if it knows you’ve parked near a store, it might serve you ads relevant to that retail location. Got passengers? Maybe you get an audio ad, and they get a visual one.
Given how consumers feel about advertising and in-car privacy, it is difficult to imagine an implementation of this system that wouldn’t generate blowback. But again, the patent isn’t describing some imminent implementation; it just protects Ford’s IP that describes a possible system. That said, with the encroachment of subscription-based features, perhaps it’s only a matter of time before you’re accepting a $20/month discount to let your new Ford play you ads on your commute.
I'm already sick of ads at gas station pumps, and will just sit in my car in order to avoid them.
Ads at the pump? What do you live? Luckily I haven't seen them in Germany yet. Guess it's only a matter of time..
Oh just wait. They are motivating me further to go electric. Very widespread across the US and very loud. Despite what people love to say about mute buttons on forums, many do not have a mute option.
USA - Washington DC Metro Area
Been happening for years now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSk3coye5Jg
Yeah we got those. You come back from work or a late road trip, maybe listening to quiet jazz to temper things down, suddenly at the pump this over powering buzzing noise "the all new slushy! Get them today! It's inside! One free on every 50 fill ups! See inside for details!".
I've seem them in France, but they are rare.
One of the buttons around the screen mutes them, in case you weren't aware. I've found that it's usually one of the ones on the top right, but it can vary.
I swear I'm going to break one of those pumps with how hard I push the buttons on the fucking thing that starts talking to me. I'll never choose to go to a fuel station with those.
Not always. I've been to a couple pumps where none of the buttons did anything. At that point I'm tempted to get a squirt gun to spray into the speakers, hope it does something useful to the speakers.
Most of Arco/BPs new pumps don't allow mute as far as I've found, I just layer electrical tape on the speaker
It's mostly valero pulling this shit. Everyone else seems to have gotten the memo