Technical

A more powerful method of targeting a specific viewer for behavior-manipulative advertising has just recently been instituted (Bauder, 1999). On March 30, 1999, a new form of advertising was explored on television that could have a profound impact on the success of individually targeted marketing ploys. A digitally created ad was inserted into a scene in a program. The ad was not present at the time of the original filming. (Bauder,1999). The product placement was done as an experiment in which a soda can of Coca-Cola and a billboard depicting the Wells Fargo Bank were inserted into the background. According to Bauder it could have been just as easy to have a variety of soda brands shown dependent on the region of the country the show was being aired. Other, similar additions to pre-filmed shows have already taken place, such as addition of commercial billboards in the backgrounds of baseball games to the insertion of images of network TV stars into the audiences of big games being televised. "There is certainly the sense that the bleeding of the commercials into the programs is getting more extreme than it ever has been, " said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University (Kaufman, 1998). The marketing possibilities that this type of digital manipulation can afford the advertising community are immense. With the difficulty of determining if an image being viewed is real or not real already a major obstacle to most, if not all, viewers (Johnson, 1999), it will become increasingly difficult to know when we are being advertised to. It may even be difficult for the producers of the program to know when there is advertising occurring since the digital insertion of images can occur between the site of origin and the site of destination once everything becomes fully digitized. Hackers inserting images into a program during the data transmission process introduces an entirely new dimension to this study. The inserted images themselves continue to improve in resolution quality and would be difficult if not impossible to detect (Cringely, 1999). The steady merging of the Internet with TV, as is being done with Web TV, streaming video and HDTV, plus the overlap of demarcations of other types of communication such as cell phones and hand held PDAs will become more and more blurred (Cringely, 1999). Research shows that the same devices will be used to access capabilities and resources that are both personal-oriented and business-oriented (Seltzer, 1999). The lines between fact and fiction, true and false will also blur (Mander, 1978).
One of the main hurdles that advertisers today still face is the fact that when a commercial is being broadcasted it is reaching millions of viewers at once, yet only a certain percentage will find the information to be pertinent to them or be in the right mental frame of mind to be optimally effected by the information (Bagdikian, 1992; Mander, 1978; Neilsen, 1999). The true goal of the advertiser is to have target-specific ads go directly to the chosen viewer (Bagdikian, et. al; Rushkoff, 2001). Bagdikian goes on to say that ability to broadcast such viewer specific commercials, though now only in it's infancy, is available today. Transnational corporations have already been successful at targeting their products to age specific audiences on television using the type of program as a guidepost for the interests of the viewer (Mander, 1978). With the emerging digitized video output of television programs available to be viewed through the computer in conjunction with the browser interface an entirely new marketing potential has materialized (Froomkin, 1995). Broadcasting commercials to individual viewers based on information stored on databases that are developed using the data obtained by tracking each person's Internet use is now within the capabilities of advertising producers.

A. Michael Froomkin (1995) states,
"Anonymity may be the primary tool available to citizens to combat the compilation and analysis of personal profile data, although data protection laws also may have some effect also. The existence of profiling databases, whether in corporate or public hands, may severely constrict the economic and possibly even the political freedoms of the persons profiled; although profiling may not necessarily change the amount of actual data in existence about a person, organizing the data into easily searchable form reduces her effective privacy by permitting "data mining" and correlations that were previously impossible"

With the advent of Web TV, a browser window is open as the viewer is watching the program (Netscape, 1999). This open browser provides the portal of information that connects the specific viewer to an immense database where millions of bytes of data have been stored about that individual's purchasing history; credit rating; hobbies; political affiliations; educational status, etc. (Anonymous, 1987; Ladd, O'Donnell, 1998). With the Java enabled Browser Capabilities Component along with Content Linking Component scripted into the programming, the connection is made where it is possible for the database to work in conjunction with another database collection of pre-determined commercial ads that could then broadcast a very specific commercial that would have the highest potential for producing the desired effect in the viewer (Ladd, O'Donnell, 1998). One may wonder about the actual potential for this to occur, yet the information that would be needed to set up such a client-specific database has already been in place for years (Alwang, et al, 2001; Ladd, O'Donnell, 1998; Medford, et al, 2001). Part of this can be done with what are termed "cookies", which are pieces of data that are stored on the hard drive of an individual's computer when that person enters a web site that utilizes the technology. The cookie stores information about the user that is then available to the web site's database when that user returns in the future (Anonymous, 1997). First instituted by the Netscape Browser, cookies, (which Netscape calls persistent client state HTTP cookie), are a general mechanism which server side connections using, for example, CGI scripts, can use, store and retrieve information on the client side (the user's computer) of the connection. According to support documentation at the Netscape web site, cookies provide a simple mechanism that is a powerful tool enabling many new types of applications to be developed which could store information about online purchases and choices; store registration information automatically in order to free the client from having to re-type the information in each time the site is visited, plus store user preferences for repeat visitors. This information, though, is also available for countless other uses, for example, to find out one's political affiliations; medical interests and needs…anything (Alwang, et al, 2001; Ladd & O'Donnell, 1998; Medford, et al, 2001). The goal of the advertiser is to manipulate the viewer into wanting and purchasing a marketable product (Huffman, Vernoy & Vernoy, 1995; Warreby, 2000). The more the marketer knows of the targeted client the more personalized the marketing message can be, with a higher success rate for profits (Alwang, et al, 2001; Rushkoff, 2001). Specific commercial targeting utilizing the Internet and now digitized television is not only feasible, it is reality (Cringely, 1999; Medford, et al, 2001).