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 01:33:55AM -0700:
> Whoa. I love the idea that a user could choose a setting in his/her browser
> that says, "Only show me ads that promise not to track me". If a browser
> had such a setting, I would set it in a heartbeat.

In progress...
  
http://monica-at-mozilla.blogspot.com/2015/03/how-do-i-turn-on-tracking-protection.html

> Now THAT could turn into a movement. Get Mozilla to add such a setting and
> 100M people to turn it on and see what happens.

Lots of stuff, mostly good.

  http://zgp.org/~dmarti/business/perfect-storm/
  http://zgp.org/~dmarti/business/end-user-security/

We know that advertising can work to build brands and
support content, because that's how magazines worked.
I'm optimistic that we can do the same on the web,
because it's largely a matter of disconnecting some
of the series of tubes, and connecting others.

> 
> 
> 
> >
> > 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/