Monday, August 19, 2013

police stops as a proxy for social equality

I wonder what the incidence is of police stops of high-end cars around the world?  I'm thinking this could be an interesting measure of evenhanded enforcement/social arrangements around the world.  For example, notwithstanding its relatively high gini-coefficient, my guess is that most new BMW drivers feel they are as likely (or perhaps even MORE likely) to get stopped by the police.  I wonder how common this feeling is in other places.

Friday, August 2, 2013

Targeted broadcast television advertising

Given the high value of digital advertising, much of which is based upon the better targeting, why haven't cable providers and broadcasters joined forces to deliver targeted ads?  I think this should be relatively straightforward (massive because of the numbers but straightforward nevertheless): with broadcasters' permission, cable providers would replace the ads with those better targeted to the specific household.  Delivery should be relatively simple.  Ads could be pre-loaded during low demand periods to avoid the need to stream ads in realtime (DVR equipped cable boxes may be able to do this without hardware modifications).

I believe advertisers would object if they perceive their ratecards as losing value (we paid for x households, instead we got y).  So we would have a combination of broadcast program and narrowcast ads. Which, in fact, is how adserving works generally anyway.  And could very well be why Google is getting in the broadband business.