Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>> (e.g. I'm going to move our ad from this unit in this location to this other unit in this other location in 'real-time' as there's more high net worth people there today).

That's not the goal. The goal is to turn outdoor billboards into online ad bars. The goal is to micro-target whales, those with lots to spend and who are most susceptible to ads. When such an individual walks down a street they will see billboards targeting them specifically. Everyone will know when the latest tech millionaire steps of the BART. All the billboards will switch from Honda to Bugatii.

Personally, I'm not wealthy. But when I drive down the road I don't want to see the same stupid ads I see online. (At work. At home I use adblockers and never see ads.) None of the ads are relevant to me in any way. I am not looking for a retirement home, nor am I having trouble with my colon. And I definitely do not want to see incontinence products on every billboard.

View on HN

It's easy to draw comparisons between online/digital units and outdoor, they share a lot, but the fundamental difference is that digital/online is one-to-one (one ad, one user, can be personalised) and outdoor is one to many. Right now, there's no technology available that will change that. Some people think if AR becomes ubiquitous it might, but that's still fantasyland.

Because of that, again right now, it's a misnomer that outdoor want to do the Bladerunner style microtargeting of large outdoor display (the Bugatti example you gave) simply because you make MUCH less money showing an ad to 100's of people to target one person than showing a _better_ ad to the 100's. This is because the outdoor market is still fundamentally based on CPM not CPA; that _might_ change, but in my experience it's not likely.

I'm not so sure about those numbers. Putting something directly in Bill Gate's eyeline is worth more than a thousand pleb eyeballs. If a billboard company can say "For the next three seconds, Whale#3 is staring at billboard#67" they can sell those seconds for many hundreds of dollars.

But I wouldn't limit it to the wealthy. Advertisers know that at particular points in life everyone become susceptible to ads. The young couple who just discovered they are pregnant: big spending on new products asap. The junior executive who just got a big promotion: new car time. The soldier who just got leave: hotels. The guy who just inherited a house from a dead relative: estate agents. I think most advertisers would forgo the attention of the regular commuters if they can target the one individual on the train who is primed to react to a specific type of ad.

My nightmare is the rise of so-called anti-ads, individually-targeted ads so horrible that users will pay to make them not appear. There are ads on television that cause people to change the channel. (The crying puppy ads, the borderline-obscene erectile dysfunction stuff.) Now imagine you cannot escape. That ad follows you around all day. How bad must it become before you will pay to make it stop? Bladerunner wasn't that bad.

>The goal is to micro-target whales, those with lots to spend and who are most susceptible to ads.

Is this a trend you are seeing in digital out of home? AFAIK, no one is working on doing this. Just some back of envelope math tells me it would be very expensive to target the "1%" this way and it will still probably pay less than the average CPG would pay if you had attribution. Likewise Luxury brands still want to advertise across the socioeconmic gamut, not just the wealthy - the ones that don't (like a McLaren) don't advertise at all, or in only hyper niche areas.

Attribution is the "holy grail" as it gives CPGs an extremely clear ROI for ad spend, that's why they want better data.

Targeting, a.k.a. tracking, the 1% seems like a good way to get some privacy regulations, and maybe make some money along the way. Win win?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com