Digital Text Ads Coming to Shopping Carts
For some of us, the supermarket is something of an oasis. The endless rows of celery, chicken thighs, Cheez Whiz -- it's just us alone with that which God has provided for our nourishment, perfectly at home underneath the fluorescent lights. Like heaven, but with a candy aisle. So even better, really.
Now marketers are doing their best to destroy that sanctuary. In the very near future, Modstream is hoping to install bars with scrolling displays onto the handles of shopping carts, to enable food companies to beam messages to us as we peruse the shelves. The companies gain access to a Web-based store profile, enter in a given message, and transmit their ads to participating stores and, ultimately, your eyes. The setup apparently even enables said companies to change their message as they go.
It'll be like, "Sale on Jiffy peanut butter in aisle four!" Then you rush to get to aisle four and you find out that it's the freaking vegetable aisle and before you know it you're getting sprayed by mist.
Grocery shopping will never be the same.
From Engadget
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jim @ Nov 22nd 2007 8:28PM
Great and I also like the Aldi's deal stick a quarter in and get the shopping cart and the parking lot is not cluttered with carts. If you haven't got time to take it back , some kid will do it for kicks or maybe fifty cents cuz it's really more manageable..
noni @ Nov 22nd 2007 8:42PM
Just cover the handlebar with a jacket if you are not interested. I will (this has weird lower case ls)
Wendy @ Nov 22nd 2007 8:52PM
From what I've learned, Heaven is a lot better!!!!
Barry @ Nov 22nd 2007 9:48PM
When this finally happens at my store, I'll be carrying a roll of duct tape to cover up the text screen. If any stores see this, I'm hoping everyone else gets this idea. I get enough ads shoved down my throat from every direction already...even my e-mail screen now has ads...it's gotten so nausiating that I do not deal with businesses that cram their ads onto my computer screen when I'm trying to write an e-mail. I'd like to figure out a way to reverse these ads and spam the ones sending out this crap, just to see how THEY like being bombarded with constant ads. Max Headroom was a program ahead of its time for when it aired, but today's advertising is starting to make it almost come to life...advertising everywhere you look.
Forbes @ Nov 22nd 2007 10:39PM
Get used to it. As people read less from newspapers and magazines, MP3's reduce radio listenership, cable, DVD's, internet... marketers will always be on the look out for new places that get your undivided attention. Like your cell phone.
Lisa @ Nov 22nd 2007 10:41PM
This is a horrible idea, and I don’t just mean the adverts they want to force (they already have them playing over the whole store…shudder), but the amount of money it’d take the store to repair those handles once they break. You don’t need to work at a grocery store ( though I already do) to know how bad those carts are roughed up while being round up and taken back inside. Someone could slash their hand on a fractured screen, raise a ruckus, sue, bla bla bla. This’d cause more hassles than benefits, and just wouldn’t be worth it.
Mike @ Nov 22nd 2007 11:11PM
No piece of advertising I've ever seen comes close to being as annoying as the Lavalife dating service abomination on Sympatico MSN. Now they've made it even longer and more insulting and annoying, and to make things worse it gets wedged and makes it impossible to view the Video I've put up with it to see. If they start putting that kind of garbare in my face as threatened on shopping carts, I'll do the duct tape gag and if anybody squawks I'm out of there.
Mike @ Nov 22nd 2007 11:21PM
In answer to Forbes's comment; has anyone ever considered the possibility that people read fewer newspapers and magazines and listen to less radio because they're fed up with mindless garbage advertising that goes on until the mystical moment of dullness. I completely stopped watching network TV years ago.
noreenkerner @ Nov 22nd 2007 11:31PM
How many times will they be out in the rain, snow, etc before they short out and I won't have to read them anymore? Carts get slammed around all the time in the parking lot, how durable will they be?
ZenManDo @ Nov 22nd 2007 11:58PM
I'd rather find cheaper apples. This would only annoy me enough to not even buy what they were pitching if that was the only thing that I came into the store to buy.
Bradford L Rutter @ Nov 23rd 2007 1:11AM
One time I had got some e-mail that said when you got spam, to send as many replies as you could to clog up teir web site. So not thinking I replied, and copyed that and replied a few times and then copyed that. Ect. And filled up to Copy window too. I sent it and was imeadiatly bumped from AOL. I had filled up the send window and copy window with a total of 527 E-Mails. I had to phone them to get reinstated. I explained things. And then I asked them why I could copy and paste that many in the e-mail send blocks if you weren't allowed to send that many????????
I was thinking that I did a bit against Spam.
But they never answered me on that.
Teeh, Who Needs Them??????????
Zardoz & Brad
WTOLawyer @ Nov 23rd 2007 1:56AM
The reason for AOL's action was easy to understand: you became the email of record of the spam! You should already know that most of the "return" addresses are hijacked accounts; that most of the senders listed were not the ones seing the mail. In effect, what you did was to spam those innocent folks whose emails were used in the first instance.
In response to an earlier comment about e-mail and advertising, that issue is easily resolved. Use a fee-paying account instead of a free, advertising-based account. Isn't that the best solution if you prefer not to see advertising in exchange for using a free service?
DALE @ Nov 23rd 2007 4:13PM
I REALLY HAVE NEVER GOTTEN A BAD SHOPPING CART AT ALDIS;NO FLOPPY,STICKY,OR STUCK WHEELS;NO HASSLES GETTING CARTS APART. I ENJOY GIVING THE NEXT PERSON MY CART FOR FREE AND TELL THEM TO PASS IT ON!