Big Brother Ford Wants to Listen to Your Conversations to Place Car Ads
Advertising has far from spared the automobile. While driving, we can already be exposed to advertising campaigns on the radio or on music streaming services, via Google Maps and Waze, or even with the many billboards that line our roads. However, none of these solutions benefit car manufacturers, who are therefore many to imagine how to market this “available human brain time”, a fortiori at the dawn of autonomous driving.
When it acquired a stake in the Challenges press group in 2017, Renault explained, for example, that “The French and Europeans now spend an average of two hours a day in their vehicles [et que] “The development of the connected and autonomous car will free up useful time for users”The idea of the Renault group – which has since sold its shares – was then to broadcast the content of Challenges on board its connected vehicles.
For its part, Ford seems to be imagining a more intrusive solution, that of targeted advertising broadcast on board its vehicles. After a patent filed in 2021 going in this direction, the manufacturer with the blue oval has filed a new one with the relevant US authorities through its subsidiary Ford Global Technologies.
Big Brother listens to your conversations and starts one when you have nothing more to say
This patent describes an entire targeted advertising system as it could be implemented on board the brand's cars. For Ford, the objective of this solution would be to “intelligently schedule variable ad durations, seeking to maximize business revenue while minimizing impact on user experience”.
The commercials could be broadcast in audio or video format, directly on the vehicle's screens, but only when stationary for the latter option. Depending on the reaction to these advertisements by the vehicle's occupants, or the intensity of their discussions, these ads could be broadcast more or less frequently.
The campaigns broadcast would be targeted according to several criteria, such as the passengers' destination, data previously collected on their interests, or even their conversations listened to on board the car!
Ford told The Register that “the ideas described in a patent application should not be considered as an indication of our business or product plans”. Nevertheless, the manufacturer seems interested in the possibilities enabled by such technology. Will we one day see reduced-price rental offers by opting for a subscription with advertising, like for a streaming service?
For those who still want to protect their data, their personal life in general, this direction is enough to send shivers down your spine, especially when you know that the Mozilla Foundation has described cars as “worst product category for privacy”.
