Love them or hate them, advertising runs the internet. It’s an imperfect and complex system of counting clicks, impressions, and page views, mining your browser history and other data to serve you the best possible ads. Ford has filed a new patent that could bring and enhance that wonderful experience to your car.
FoMoCo’s patent shows a system that uses your destination, route, speed, travel history location, traffic, and more to determine the type of ads to show you and how many to display on the vehicle’s various screens. Even the type of road you’re driving on, such as a city street or highway, could determine the number of ads you see, and Ford will be watching.
The automaker will assess how users interact with the ads, which could include acoustic data like monitoring in-car conversations, to help it “understand the user’s tolerance for a particular advertisement’s count.”
The system could listen for dialogue between passengers and reduce the number of ads during conversations or play an audio ad when the cabin is quiet. It could also listen for keywords or phrases that indicate the driver’s destination, using that information with historical data to begin serving relevant ads, which sounds like a privacy nightmare.
One of the great things about online ads is that they often help subsidize numerous online services, websites, and other digital spaces for their users, making them free or nearly free to access. Google’s entire business model has been built on this, giving its users access to email, word processing, cloud storage, and other software services for the low, low price of free… at the cost of giving up their data.
It’s a Faustian bargain, but at least users get something. If Ford’s ad system subsidized one’s monthly car payment or subscription fees, then there could be a benefit, but this seems like a way for the automaker to pad its profits on top of people paying $40,000 or $50,000 for a new car.
You can’t have your cake and eat it, too, Ford, so hopefully, this stays a patent. Or will future Ford vehicle’s pay for themselves through ads? Only time will tell.