Pervasive Advertising

1st Workshop on Pervasive Advertising on May 11, 2009 Nara, Japan (this site)

Electronic displays have become ubiquitous and replace traditional posters and billboards. Hence they do not only provide a way of showing dynamically updated content, but also means to react implicitly and explicitly to the audience in its vicinity. In order to interact with the target audience, technologies need to be explored capable of identifying the user or his interests / needs.

Current models of mobile phones come with high speed Internet access and built-in location sensing. Those properties make mobile phones a powerful mediator between the advertiser / advertising platform and the customer.

Social networks such as Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn are rapidly growing. Such platforms include detailed information not only on the interests of users (based for example on profiles and histories) but also on their network. This information is placed on the Internet and shared with friends or even the public.

These technological advances, besides others, change the opportunities and challenges for advertising radically.

Consequently, advertising is becoming one of the major deployers of pervasive computing technology for many end-users (e.g. mobile ads, digital signs, context awareness, RFID). Yet we believe that the attention this topic received in the pervasive computing community does not equal its immediate impact on society.

Taking a positive view we can envision advertisements that precisely match a person’s interests and fit the current situation so well that people enjoy receiving them and see advertising as a pleasant distraction. On the contrary taking a negative view one could imagine a world where people cannot escape from advertisement, where we are continuously tracked and where advertisements reduce the quality of life. Both views even though very extreme are worthwhile a further discussion. Hence we hope to provide a venue for this discussion by offering this workshop.