14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft made yet another move designed to qualify it for the status of Big Brother, and only because of bridging the gap between advertising and the consumer. Under the innocent title of "advertising that is relevant to a person", the Redmond company filed a patent describing a tracking system designed to identify the consumer and serve personalized ads. The company aims to build an extensive database with a variety of personal information, shattering privacy, just for the sake of a relevant ad.
"A person is viewing a display. By evaluating tracked information about the person, the display and/or the content being viewed, a tracking system determines that an opportunity exists to present an advertisement that is relevant to the person in the context of the person currently viewing the display. The tracking system provides advertiser data for the advertisement and instructions for generating the advertisement to a synthesis system local to the viewer and the viewer's display system, which dynamically synthesizes the advertisement and provides it to the display," reads the abstract of the Microsoft patent filing.
The tracking system could be placed in public areas, but also in your home. All content you access via your television, computer monitor, mobile phone is analyzed in conjunction with background data about you. And then an advertisement pops up. What kind of data is Microsoft interested in? Well, nothing much, just...
"Viewer information may include, for example, a profile of the person, which may include, for example, the person's interests and hobbies, the person's sex, age, locale, profession, subscriptions and memberships, ethnicity, marital status, personal characteristics such as parent, pet owner, very tall or short, and the like, the person's address book (list of contacts), calendar, mail and/or message store, a task list, notes and the like; a purchasing history of the person; the person's advertising preferences."
So the ad is bound to be relevant. But not without raising privacy concerns. Now a patent means nothing. Microsoft could go on and bring to life such a tracking system, but then again, it could very well do the opposite.