Re: [projectvrm] Spotify wants to monetize your mood with ads based on your favorite playlists

[Don Marti < >]

begin =Drummond Reed quotation of Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 12:04:20AM -0700:
> 
> Speaking of the creepy line, I think there may be a market to turn the
> concept of "Do Not Track" on its ear and create a "We Don't Track" badge
> that vendors could use just like the "GMO Free" badge for food, "No BHT"
> badge for milk, etc. A vendor that wanted to send a strong market signal
> that they are not part of the tracking web could actively display the "We
> Don't Track" badge and thus have an advantage over competing products/sites
> that do not display it.

You mean like all the weird-looking SSL badges that
users don't have time to learn (and that mostly appear
on questionable sites, anyway)

"we don't track" sounds like "transparency" -- too
much time to process, too easy to spoof, impossible
to verify.
  http://zgp.org/~dmarti/business/transparency/



> A Customer Commons effort?
> 
> On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 3:50 PM, William Dyson 
> <
 >
> wrote:
> 
> > Of course this caught my eye…..
> >
> > W
> >
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
> > http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/16/spotify-wants-to-monetize-your-mood-with-ads-based-on-your-favorite-playlists/
> >
> > Music streaming service Spotify <http://www.spotify.com/> is taking its
> > advertising tactics up a notch, with a new feature that will place ads
> > based on the tone of your playlist.
> >
> > The product, called Playlist Targeting
> > <http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/16/spotify-wants-to-monetize-your-mood-with-ads-based-on-your-favorite-playlists/spotify.com/brands>,
> >  leverages
> > Spotify’s listener data to push ads. In a press release, the company 
> > wrote:
> >
> > Brands can now target audience segments based on who they are (age &
> > gender, geography, language), what they’re listening to (playlist, genre),
> > and when and how they’re listening (time of day and by platform/device).
> >
> > While super-targeting is very hot among advertisers, placing ads based on
> > someone’s mental state seems a little reminiscent of Facebook’s heavily
> > criticized mood experiment
> > <http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/28/facebook-secretly-experimented-with-the-moods-of-700000-of-its-users/>
> > .
> >
> > For those who don’t remember, Facebook injected the feeds of 700,000
> > unwitting users with negative content to see if they would react with
> > negative posts of their own. At the time researchers noted, “When positive
> > expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more
> > negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite
> > pattern occurred.” So mood manipulation seemed very much achievable.
> >
> > People were especially angry because the study was conducted without the
> > consent of the users involved.
> >
> > Though Spotify’s new mood-targeting feature is not a study and isn’t
> > subject to the same ethical standards, it does deserve closer examination.
> >
> > The link between consumer mood and buying behavior
> > <http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~tecas/syllabi2/adv382jfall2002/readings/gard.pdf>
> >  has
> > long been studied. But the effects of newer forms of adtech, like serving
> > ads based on mood, have not. We don’t yet have standards to determine
> > whether this kind of practice is ethical. For instance, we know it is
> > unethical and illegal for businesses to misrepresent statistics to tell a
> > story about their company that isn’t true. But it took time for those laws
> > and standards to develop, and with technology moving more rapidly than
> > ever, it’s hard not to wonder if ad targeting at the mood level doesn’t
> > have the potential to do damage. By allowing mood-targeting ads, are we
> > opening up the door to potential unethical emotional manipulation in the
> > interest of selling products?
> >
> > Imagine you’re post-breakup and you’re listening to “Ultimate Breakup
> > Playlist.” All of a sudden Spotify serves you an ad for Celesta, an
> > antidepressant. Wouldn’t that feel just a little bit invasive and perhaps
> > taking advantage of your weakened state? Or would you feel like maybe it
> > *is *time to go on antidepressants and this advertisement was helpful?
> >
> > The company says its Audience Targeting platform leverages data about your
> > gender, location, behavior, mood, music taste, trends, and, most
> > off-putting of all, “need states.”
> >
> > There aren’t any clear answers yet on whether mood targeting has the
> > potential for harm or if it’s just a means to better serve consumers the
> > products they want. But, as companies grow their ability to track down
> > users and identify them by everything but their name, we need to stay 
> > aware
> > of the potential for abuse.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >

-- 
Don Marti                    
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/