Microsoft bringing ads to shopping carts
The software maker spent four years working with Plano, Texas-based MediaCart Holdings Inc. on a grocery cart-mounted console that helps shoppers find products in the store
Not that bad an idea
Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive, an online advertising company, last year for $6 billion shored up the company's capacity to serve video ads onto these grocery cart screens.
Spam spam spam ... more spam ... everywhere you go ..every surface you see... that surface is being transformed into a video player designed to show ads. Imagine a world where the sides of every building , and the sidewalks themselves ..are constantly playing ads and trying to sell you junk.
Advertisers will get more feedback about which commercials or coupon offers are effective, because customers either buy the products or accept the offers on the spot, or they don't.
Loosely translated : We're gonna try and fast talk them with pretty pictures...and we're going to INSTANTLY find out if it worked so we can try again and again and again to make them buy this junk. Very quickly we'll figure out what makes them buy junk , and what doesn't.
Whether they need this junk or not , whether it was on the grocery list they brought with them or not ... that's not part of the equation. Can anyone say "Mind Control" ?
Bring a bag and cover the screen is my advice. The last thing you need is to go to the grocery store to pick up some bread and milk and come home with 50$ of junk food instead and "oh I couldn't afford this AND the milk..so I skipped that...junior can have a chocolate bar instead. "
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I agree. between the US and Canada we have the most obese children in the world. This is all from advertising JUNK FOOD and stuff that will kept kids in front of the TV or computer. I very rarely see kids outside doing things any more.
It is funny people blame advertising for the way kids are now adays which is true in part. Both parents need to work to be able to buy all the things kids supposedly need to be happy which means the kids are left alone. Parents do not trust the outside world so kids are instructed to come straight home from school and stay indoors or parents pick their kids up from school and drive them straight home unless they are involved in organized activities. The answer to bored kids is to plunk them down in front of the computer or the TV. If as a parent you let your kids run loose in the neighbourhood without following behind them and something happens to them the first question is where were the parents. It is a catch 22 situation. A lot of kids now live in apartments and belong to single parent families, they do not have the support of a close family as people are spread out all over the country for economics. It is hard to watch your kids from the 15th floor so they are kept in. Putting advertising on grocery carts is just one more way to convince people that they must have items that they could well do without. Will it last probably not, remember when they had talking cars for awhile everyone thought it was great after awhile it just became annoying and you don't hear much of them anymore. I think that consumers will complain that there is already enough noise going on in the grocery store without having to listen to more.
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