It’s all about getting the right ads in front of eyeballs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not a big fan of ads, and I’d rather have ad-free anyday. However, if I’m going to accept advertising (and I certainly might if my sub fees were waived as Russell Shaw mentions), it might as well be ads about stuff that’s meaningful to me. I mean, I have to agree with Eric Schmidt as quoted by David Utter - I want to see ads that I care about.

Fr’instance, I could be sitting here watching the Sonics on TV, Googling some pizza deals, and the next commerical on the tube could be for a local pie-maker. With some additional ads on my laptop for the other local competitors. Make it easy for me. Once you grok where I am, and what I’m looking at, you can tailor ads that are more likely to be interesting to me. Google already knows what I’m looking at online (if you login), and, with a potential addition of TiVo to their portfolio, they would know where I’m at, and what I’m looking at on the TV. Correlate my physical location (via my TiVo address), and my online location (via the IP of where I’m active on Google), and you can provide me personalized advertising in the above scenario. Kinda scary, kinda Big Brother, but at least I don’t have to watch ads that are absolutely no interest to me…

The Motley Fool via Tech.Memeorandum

Categories: Geek