[HN Gopher] Ford Wants Billboards to Beam Distracting Ads to Scr...
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Ford Wants Billboards to Beam Distracting Ads to Screens Inside
Your Car
Author : HiroProtagonist
Score : 90 points
Date : 2021-05-14 19:28 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| youeseh wrote:
| This will become much more a thing when cars drive themselves.
| Now your attention is freed up to watch ads!
| asdff wrote:
| "Please focus your eyes on the advertisement in order for the
| vehicle to continue on the trip"
| cylon13 wrote:
| Thanks for this very short but compelling dystopian science
| fiction story. I'm sure it will haunt me for a while.
| tolbish wrote:
| *car doors lock*
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I was looking at getting a new truck. The Ford F550 Lariat is
| nice, but I am not paying for anything that can receive messages
| I did not request. There better be an off-menu option for a no-
| internet, no-bluetooth, no-RF, no-ODB3 or I will just stick with
| old used vehicles.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Ooof that explains the huge screens in electric cars.
|
| Not for me please, tiny screens, if i want to watch videos i have
| a phone.
| kwdc wrote:
| Ah! Now I understand why we need self-driving cars. The driver's
| real purpose is become a passenger so they can watch
| advertisements.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| Makes me think a bit of
| https://escapepod.org/2013/05/16/ep396-dead-merchandise/
| deepsun wrote:
| That reminds me of a science fiction novel (Azimov?), which
| starts with the main character driving a car full of annoying
| distracting ads, and the richest companies made ads that were
| just silence.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Yup. Regarding the silent ads, State Farm (an insurance firm)
| literally does that now. They have a genial looking
| spokesperson and run mildly comedic soft-sell adverts, then
| follow up a few months later with a sequel that has no dialog
| at all but gently reminds viewers of the midly comedic
| campaign. It's brilliant psychology.
| jollybean wrote:
| There's a use case for showing information that's hyper local. I
| hope that it's done fairly, I don't think it will be ...
|
| On the highway you get signs for 'McDonald's at this Exit' which
| is actually useful.
|
| Of course, a lot of regular signage would be useful as well.
|
| A display in front of you that showed you the 'current exit' -
| and frankly the current speed limit would be great.
|
| From a positioning perspective, maybe Ford should do that: shows
| you the current, civic signage including speed limit, exits,
| nearest gas etc..
|
| These are the systems I wish were designed for the mom & pop
| shops to participate. I'm wary that with private interests, it
| won't be the case.
| r00fus wrote:
| I most of this from my GPS Nav or CarPlay/AndroidAuto interface
| already. A/Gmaps could do better on telling you what's passing
| by.
|
| This patent would just put billboard content (mainly
| directions/contact) into such an interface.
| Shadonototro wrote:
| now that i think about it, distracting ads on the road should be
| illegal, it can distract the driver
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Billboards should be illegal period. They're unnecessary
| eyesores. It's jarring whenever I travel to places with them.
| rektide wrote:
| Ignoring cars for a moment, it's just super sad to me how bad the
| state of ad-hoc connectivity is.
|
| This is fairly car specific, but there was some ok ad-hoc
| networking work in 802.11p, Wireless Access in Vehicular
| Environments (WAVE)[1]. Using a low-bit rate wireless channel to
| allow, effectively, broadcasting. Now everyone wants to get on
| cellular, which seems like it's probably an industry play, to
| lock in cell phone providers, to make sure consumers don't get
| access. Allegedly some occasional forms of v2v (vehicle to
| vehicle) or v2i (vehicle to infrastructure & reverse) do have a
| local "broadcast" form of cellular, that doesn't rely entirely
| upon existing cellular networks, but all this cellular stuff
| feels like a colossal degradation versus a fairly understandable,
| simple wifi system, that we failed with only through lack of
| trying.
|
| There was Google's Physical Web[2], using a Bluetooth Low Energy
| beacon to broadcast a very short URL. That was integrated into
| Android! A notification could pop up! Ripe for abuse and bad, but
| it's the sort of thing I really wish the good & excited people
| had seized upon, had built something with. Incredible amount of
| potential and power. No longer developed, dropped from Android
| proper, but it's a simple specification, easy to implement in a
| couple hours. Google did a damned good job building,
| standardizing, promoting, trying, & this could be one
| instrumental way to have things in the world be able to advertise
| themselves digitally.
|
| There's wifi-aware[3], for Neighbor Aware Networking, but it's
| hard to assess this tech. It all seems locked up being gummy
| sticky gnarly Apple and Android uses. There's no interop. But
| supposedly it's something to help us connect with those about us.
| I think there are some IEEE 802.11 standards in here somewhere,
| but wifi alliance are generally not super nice people who don't
| share & who keep consumers in the dark & let Apple and Google &
| occasional other huge player monopolize use of the technology
| they stamp their name on, alas.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm afraid of a world where information & ads
| & other things bombard us, come at us from everywhere. But it
| distresses me to no end that we have almost no means to digitally
| connect with someone standing right next to us. That hopping on
| the same wifi is one of the only options. Or using some
| proprietary non-standard system that knows our identity & is
| tracking us, be it Google or Apple doing that tracking, doing
| that gatekeeping. It's weird as heck to me how advanced
| communications infrastructure is, but how it's still so
| fantastically centralized & top-down, and starting to get systems
| that allow us to be aware of other information resources is high
| on my interest list. That said, this article, especially with
| Vice's typical aggressive spin on the headline, doesn't sound
| particularly interesting or wanted to me, but it's in an area
| that seems radically under-examined, under-developed, that has
| had a fair share of could-be players pass by without making an
| impact.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11p
|
| [2] http://google.github.io/physical-web/
|
| [3] https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/wi-fi-aware
| Clent wrote:
| Intrusive use case.
|
| I can see a useful new trim feature as long as it is onl
| presented as a data point offered to platforms like Apple
| CarPlay; surfaced or not based on user settings. I see value in
| being able to flip through a list of most recently viewed
| billboards.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| They'd put ads under people's eyelids if they could.
| MikeUt wrote:
| But ad-sponsored medical procedures would be so much more
| affordable.
| Arrath wrote:
| What a terrible idea and not only for the chance of distracting
| the driver. Lets put our tinfoil hats on for a moment and imagine
| that the developers of this system don't properly sanitize the
| input from whatever sensors look for this advertising data. Now
| there is another ingress route for a malicious actor.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Will cars start costing $2000 to offset all the money they are
| going to make off the cancer that is advertising?
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Sure at first then like cable TV it will suddenly cost a lot
| more later.
| Black101 wrote:
| Yes, but to make the cars safe, they will force you to stop at
| every Walmart along the way so that you can safely watch the
| ads.
| quotha wrote:
| Ford wants money.
| TheBill wrote:
| 1) Waze has been doing this for a while which addresses context
| as they're only served to a geofenced area:
| https://www.waze.com/business/ 2) QR Codes & Lane Assist cameras.
| Boom, done. Pay $F a bunch of $/BTC/RUB to put your companies ads
| on their allow list, no allow list, no open URL for Johnny Drop
| Tables.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| This is clickbait. "Wants to" and "filed a patent to" are
| completely different things.
| Akinato wrote:
| I'm not so sure. Spending the time (and money) researching it
| and developing a patent tends to indicate a desire for them to
| integrate the technology.
|
| I'd argue against "is going to", but "wants to" seems fairly
| correct.
| jcranmer wrote:
| For a large company, filing a patent is probably a sign that
| some team internally has looked at implementing it. I'd
| expect that there is some sort of internal budget dedicated
| towards filing patents, and an internal team in charge of
| deciding which internal patent applications are worth
| actually pursuing.
|
| While ideally you'd want to focus on patents for things
| you're actively pursuing, if there's budget for more patents
| and the latest set of applications are weak, then the team
| could end up pursuing applications that the development team
| has no intention of pursuing further.
|
| In that vein, I'd suggest that "wants to" is a stronger
| description of intent than actually happens with corporate
| patent filings.
| crooked-v wrote:
| And one can't forget defensive patent filing, where
| companies will file patents on anything and every idea they
| can come up with even tangentially related to what
| management actually wants, as a way of preventing somebody
| else from doing the same and then suing them over any
| overlapping elements.
| grecy wrote:
| I'm always floored when I read about legacy automakers coming up
| with increasingly more esoteric gimmicks to make money or
| supposedly make their cars "better". Ideas like massage seats,
| MORE screens, soft close doors, built in coolers, etc. etc.
|
| They do all of this instead of the most obvious and
| straightforward thing they SHOULD be doing: Building better
| vehicles.
|
| In the near future they'll all be begging for bailouts yet again,
| and it will be because they keep focusing on stupid features
| instead of actually making their products better.
| AareyBaba wrote:
| I want a car that warns you that your headlights are off when
| driving at night.
|
| I want a car with spare headlight bulbs built into the
| headlights so when one burns out the spare automatically turns
| on and a warning is displayed that you need to replace a
| headlight.
| elil17 wrote:
| If you read the actual patent filing and look at their claims
| strategy it's very clear that what they want to be able to do is
| have it so when you drive by a billboard or road sign you can
| press something on your car's navigation display to navigate
| there. That seems like a useful navigation feature (e.g., for
| getting to a gas station) and not at all related to "beaming
| distracting ads into your car."
| robalfonso wrote:
| I would add to this; I've driven by billboards and actually
| wanted the phone number/website but didn't catch it in time. So
| while like anything it could be abused. It also serves a useful
| purpose
| Akinato wrote:
| I'd hope it would just be a simple button to "bookmark" the
| content or program the coordinates into your navigation.
| Otherwise this seems like the exact kind of distracted driving
| that most distracted driving laws are trying to prevent.
| r00fus wrote:
| Clearly this will never be hacked to automatically reroute nav
| to unwittingly send car to target location.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| While I can imagine ways to design a simple protocol so
| poorly that what you suggest is possible, I don't know if I'd
| be able to make one by accident. It seems unlikely that the
| designers of the technology are aiming for that.
| falcolas wrote:
| "Here is the address to the advertised burger king. Do you
| wish to go there now?" The yes fills the screen and can't
| be dismissed, the little 'x' to close it is offscreen
| because a developer forgot that screens have different
| sizes in different vehicles.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Now that I can see. Not really a hack, but yeah that
| squares with the ability level I'd expect from someone
| who puts a touchscreen in a car.
| hughrr wrote:
| I am more worried about being goatse'd when I'm driving.
| capableweb wrote:
| Having your navigation display change because a company want to
| divert you from your destination sounds exactly like "beaming
| distracting ads into my car". Even a message will distract
| people more than necessary, humans already prove their focus is
| poor as hell. It'll feel like your car has a life of it's own,
| and that life is now capitalism.
| reader_mode wrote:
| I don't see why this couldn't be toggled off with a simple
| setting.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It really should be opt-in then, not opt-out.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Same reason your browser doesn't block all ads and popups
| by default.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The closest thing to this that exists now is probably the ads
| in Waze, but those only show up when you're stopped and vanish
| when you start accelerating again.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Not only should the in car interface lock itself when driving
| to a map or rear camera, but distracting video billboards in
| general should be banned for safety reasons. Tempting drivers
| to push buttons to make pop ups go away is just going to lead
| to deaths. I have a friend who died in a car accident and "ad
| revenue" doesn't impress me as a justification
| maxwell wrote:
| > distracting video billboards in general should be banned
| for safety reasons
|
| My state bans _all_ billboards. They 're thought pollution.
|
| https://movia.media/moving-billboard-blog/why-is-
| billboard-a...
| mxxx wrote:
| That's amazing. They're getting ridiculous in the big
| cities in Australia. You can't avoid them.
| ace2358 wrote:
| I was in Byron Bay town last Saturday night. I saw a
| truck with three massive screen billboards driving around
| (advertising the new alcohol deliver service by Dan
| Murphys's...). I couldn't believe how bright it was
| driving behind it. How that is legal is beyond me! Last
| thing the country needs is more alcohol. Advertising in
| Australia is getting out of hand.
| Dig1t wrote:
| WTF that is awesome, I had no idea this was a thing!
| slownews45 wrote:
| Fantastic. They have this huge bright video billboard where
| I drive - at night it is ridiculously distracting. I have
| no idea how they pass muster on road safety rules.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > That seems like a useful navigation feature
|
| Not really. I have a phone that can do this for me without the
| company needing to actually advertise.
|
| I just tried it, from the navigation screen it's one tap to
| "search along route" and another to pick the category I want to
| search for.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Do advertisers pay Ford for this privilege?
|
| Because that would be awesome if Ford slashed the price of
| their vehicles since they will be paid for by ads.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| It's not like that.
|
| The value is that the kind of person who like, buys a new
| car, is someone who buys shit generally, a proverbial whale
| consumer. They could just sell the purchaser lists directly,
| and it would already get you 80% of the way there (20% is the
| intent, although is there really intent if you look at a
| billboard?)
| llarsson wrote:
| There is intent of you hit the "navigate me there" button.
| _jal wrote:
| If they were building an in-car communication service, that
| would be one thing.
|
| But "click here to interact with street ads" seems pretty
| pointless to me, just one more bullshit distraction.
|
| I will note, I have not owned a car this century, and only
| drive when I need to. But I don't even want a screen in my car.
| The only useful feature is the backup camera, and I'm fine
| parallel parking for myself, if the cost of the camera is every
| other control moves to a fucking touch screen.
|
| I'm probably going to have to buy something in the next couple
| of years, and I'm pretty sure it is going to be a very old
| truck that predates the crapification.
| ralphg wrote:
| This looks like a useful method for self driving cars.
| whymauri wrote:
| Beaming ads onto mobile or mobile-like devices is an inevitable
| trend we're going to see over the next decade. For example, most
| TV watchers actually attend to their phone over the TV. How long
| will it be before Galaxy phones start beaming Samsung TV ads to
| your device? And Apple TVs? If they (TV manufacturers) all align
| on this, there's no real escape.
|
| Cars are just a canary, I think. And a dangerous one at that
| thanks to driver distraction. But longer term, as we get better
| autonomous driving systems, expect the interior of "your" vehicle
| to get plastered with advertisement. Welcome to the future!
| ElFitz wrote:
| > And Apple TVs?
|
| Well, that's at least one company from which I, although
| perhaps mistakenly, wouldn't expect that. And being proven
| wrong would probably make me reconsider my purchase habits.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I mean, Apple TV still gives you recommended stuff on your
| dashboard. That's just a stones throw away from the FireTV
| default of playing a preview of whatever is recommended to
| you on your dashboard, and that's basically a stones throw
| away to just showing you ads. You can't delineate whether
| something is an ad or not just based on where it's being
| shown. Apple already sells higher ranking search results in
| the app store (Suggested Apps), so it's not a radically
| different change from what we have now. Really it just
| involves Apple combining autoplay and context-aware
| suggestions.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| There is an escape, for now: stop connecting things to the
| internet when they don't need to be. Of course, there is
| nothing stopping the industry from replacing HDMI with a
| standard that _must_ include an internet connection...
| pdimitar wrote:
| They already did, I know that HDMI 2.0 includes Ethernet and
| if the host (computer or TV stick) has internet it will
| transparently share it with the TV which can then happily
| install updates and show you ads.
| detaro wrote:
| Can you name any combination of devices that actually does
| this? I've never seen an implementation of it, in over a
| decade of this being an optional part of HDMI.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > I know that HDMI 2.0 includes Ethernet and if the host
| (computer or TV stick) has internet it will transparently
| share it with the TV
|
| Technically, you can encode whatever the hell you want over
| an HDMI cable. Whether or not the terminating end is able
| to receive/interpret it is a different story, however. The
| cost of implementing end-to-end-Ethernet-over-HDMI is so
| high that it would almost certainly be prohibitive to
| modern production, much less the production capabilities of
| 2013, when the spec for HDMI 2.0 was released.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Do they make HDMI prophylactics yet?
| pdimitar wrote:
| No clue but I'd pay for an HDMI device that ignores/kills
| Ethernet traffic.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Most HDMI cables don't even have the pins required to
| wire Ethernet over them.
| r00fus wrote:
| Amazon Sidewalk is well positioned to remove your pesky
| connectivity preferences.
| asdff wrote:
| time to line my home in lead
| aasasd wrote:
| While the article is just another trash piece, there's a short
| story by 'Henry Kuttner' describing pretty much the future into
| which we're heading with electronics all over the place and
| everything connected to the web, in conjunction with the ad
| industry. It's basically the definitive text on the topic for me.
| The story is called 'Year Day', and it should be in the public
| domain unless renewed somehow--however a quick search for the
| text turns up nothing. It was first published in the collection
| 'Ahead of Time'.
|
| ('Henry Kuttner' is pretty much another pseudonym of Henry
| Kuttner and his wife and co-author C.L. Moore.)
| nverno wrote:
| Stopped reading after first line 'Advertisers are motivated by a
| singular goal, and that is to turn every facet of human existence
| into an opportunity to show you ads.'
|
| I realized this is click bait, but it could still be improved
| with some subtlety. Guide the reader to the conclusions you want
| with information instead of starting off with this nonsense.
| cortesoft wrote:
| That sentence bothered me right off the bat, too. In fact, I
| have it copied because I was going to comment on it.
|
| 'Advertisers' would actually love for ads to be super rare...
| and only have their ad ever be shown. Their true desire is to
| have as many people as possible purchase their product.
|
| Advertising space sellers 'singular goal' is to get paid as
| much as possible from advertisers. They probably want fewer
| overall ads to be displayed, because that would make their
| space to display ads more valuable. They would love to be the
| only place ads are displayed.
|
| Ad brokers are probably the only ones who really want ads
| everywhere, because they make money on volume.
| soared wrote:
| For context, this type of advertising falls into "digital out of
| home" or DOOH. DOOH is going to be the next big thing (connected
| TV like roku/etc is the current big thing). Consider how
| antiquated a normal billboard is, when you could make it digital
| and get many more features.
|
| This vendor has a cool map you can see of all their screens. Most
| of them are the small screens on gas stations/stores/etc, but
| some are billboards. They recently signed a deal to put digital
| signage on top of ubers and taxis (but not inside the car). I'm
| not affiliated but attended a pitch of theirs.
|
| https://www.adomni.com/inventory
| nerdponx wrote:
| These taxi and gas station video ads suck. Eventually we need
| laws against intruding on people's mental space with this shit.
| Nothing else will stop the bloodsucking advertisement monster.
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