“What would it mean for your business if you could target potential clients who are actively discussing their need for your services in their day-to-day conversations? No, it's not a Black Mirror episode—it's Voice Data, and CMG has the capabilities to use it to your business advantage.”

A marketing team within media giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims it has the capability to listen to ambient conversations of consumers through embedded microphones in smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices to gather data and use it to target ads, according to a review of CMG marketing materials by 404 Media and details from a pitch given to an outside marketing professional. Called “Active Listening,” CMG claims the capability can identify potential customers “based on casual conversations in real time.”

  • vexikronEnglish
    16·
    1 year ago

    Why wouldnt they be serious?

    If your phone has the capability to have a parental control / monitoring mode on it enabled, which can see everything you are doing on the phone, hear what youre saying and see what the cameras see and know your GPS location… and hide all of this to the user…

    Why wouldnt ad companies also pay for such a live feed, or at least parts of it, if the software and hardware capabilities already exist?

    People have been reporting getting advertisements based on conversations they were having 10 minutes ago with a person next to their phone for years.

    • Lemmchen@feddit.deEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      What are you talking about? Which phone has parental control abilities like that?

      • vexikronEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        Well, all phones with Google’s Android do, and probably all iPhones too, though I am not an iPhone user so I cannot speak from personal experience on iPhones.

        My brother, last year, decided to engage parental control on my android phone and used it to stalk me on foot and in his car.

        He was the head of the TMobile family plan we were on. I talked to TMobile employees at different locations many times about this. They tried to helo me, but because I was not the head of the plan, the tech support people that the instore agents had to call to try to fix my situation wouldnt do anything.

        At one point a T Mobile employee told me to call the police… on T Mobile.

        But uh yeah everything on stock android is connected to a google account, and TMobile and Google apparently just presume that any one not the head of a family plan are children, and will allow parental control to be enabled /without informing the ‘child’/.