Fargo Media: A Brave New Marketing World? Even in Fargo ND

If you have ever considered contacting an advertising agency for advice on how to market your business, I would suggest picking up phone and making that call. Now, more than ever, small businesses are going to need additional help cultivating new business and prospective customers. The world of data mining combined with our government forcing capitalism across the globe, or globalization, is beginning to have a detrimental impact on small business all over the United States.

Consider the new complex and sophisticated software Google introduced recently. How this new software works is it automatically activates the “built-in microphone and recording devices that come standard in every computer” in order to “listen and record ambient sounds in your home.” What this means, besides validating the writings in George Orwells’ novel 1984, is your computer will record and data mine anything happening in your home. If a dog barks or a baby cries, your household’s name will be added to a list to receive spam, junk mail, personalize web advertisement and possibly telemarketing. How this new marketing software works is really quite amazing when you consider all the information and consumer habits it retrieves for big corporations.

In fact, this new software is so intelligent it is currently being discussed to replacing the Radio Arbitron rating system and television’s Neilsen ratings. This is the new wave of marketing and big corporations will now have a distinct advantage in local, regional, national and global markets.

Now I do want to point out that Google is not using humans to listen to your habits and personal life, but instead, computers. The system hears key words or sounds, or “captured audio,” and compresses them into five-second snippets called “digital fingerprints” which then searches an Internet server for a matching fingerprint from a pre-recorded show, and if it matches, display ads, chat rooms with your college friends or other information will appear related to that five second snippit. For example, if you are watching the Jon Stewart Show and Tom Hanks is the guest, you will receive information on where to buy the shirt Hanks is wearing during the interview. The software is so precise, it will give you locations of places to purchase the shirt in your zip code. This bodes well for those companies who pay to be on the list. This means large company’s like Marshall Field’s will have a direct and customized advertisement to a viewer, whereas Straus and A.K.A. will have to wait for the potential customer to purchase The Forum or see their general branding commerical.

There are two more companies now that are claiming their software is better than Google’s to detect our detailed psychological algorithms. This type of habitual marketing has just entered a new era for those who love to track their current and potential consumers. Couple this with major grocery’s “loyalty” cards or any purchase made on your credit card, which also track everything you purchase, and the playing field for small businesses just got even more difficult.

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