Secret E-Scores Chart Consumers’ Buying Power

[salvorhardin]

At a LeadsCon conference in Midtown Manhattan last month, eBureau was among those making its sales pitch. Its exhibition booth depicted a multiethnic group of fictional consumers and their hypothetical scores.

Score boxes superimposed over a young African-American male read variously: “eScore: 811, high lifetime value potential” and “eScore: 524, underbanked, but safe credit risk.” Another caption floating over the crowd read: “eScore: 906, route to best call center agent NOW!”

It’s just another sign of the rise of what might be called the Scored Society. Google ranks our search results by our location and search history. Facebook scores us based on our online activities. Klout scores us by how many followers we have on Twitter, among other things.

...

But the spread of consumer rankings raises deep questions of fairness, says Frank Pasquale, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law, who is writing a book about scoring technologies. The scores may help companies, he says. But over time, they may send some consumers into a downward spiral, locking them into a world of digital disadvantage.

“I’m troubled by the idea that some people will essentially be seeing ads for subprime loans, vocational schools and payday loans,” Professor Pasquale says, “while others might be seeing ads for regular banks and colleges, and not know why.”

Full article (~2,800 words): http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/business/electronic-scores-rank-consumers-by-potential-value.html&pagewanted=all

[Rabid_Rabbit]

1. Ads are only useful

if they are viewed by potential customers. What is the point of showing me a new BMW when the best I can hope for is a used Honda?

[salvorhardin]

2. That's sort of the point

The eScore determines your buying power so that if you can only afford a Honda, you get the Honda ad, and not the BMW ad. But think about how else this technology could be used. For instance, how about political ads tailored to your buying power?

eScore 900: Susceptible to fears of downward wealth redistribution. High potential donor value.

eScore 400: Susceptible to fears of job displacement by illegal immigrants. High likelihood of voting favorably if properly motivated.

Plus campaigns can get your party registration from the BoE, so that can be added into the mix. If you're a Dem, you get an ad undermining your confidence in Obama. If you're a Republican, you get an ad extolling the moral virtues of Romney's deficit reduction plan. The exact nature and "call to action" message of each ad dependent on your eScore.

And campaigns can decide how much money to spend in battleground states, thus further effectively nullifying the vote of anyone not in one of the anointed battleground states.

[Generic Other]

3. And those with adblockers seldom see any ads

Ads are like UV rays. Cumulative effect is harmful.

It's funny how blocking them from view improved my internet experience. I suspect it made me less susceptible to their attempts to lure me away from the content I really wanted to access.

And yes, I know ads pay revenue for the websites, but too bad. My uncluttered mental landscape is worth a lot to me.

[salvorhardin]

4. Two things

1) I use an ad blocker too, and love it, but I turn it off on sites I like, and want to support.

2) When content is delivered via mobile apps, it is impossible to block ads. The apps are not web browsers -- they're just two way data streams, with controls and display logic, and run in protected memory. There's no way of coding a generalized ad blocker.

[Generic Other]

5. That sucks

Luckily my stupid phone (or stupid user) can't access anything much other than text and phone messages. I try and access DU and I get so impatient I give up. Impossible to do anything. I need a new phone but not so I can be bugged by ads. Something for me to think about I guess.

[salvorhardin]

6. I'm in the same boat

I have a not-so-smart-but-it-has-a-good-heart phone, and right now it's just perfect for me. I don't really care about browsing the web when I'm out to dinner, or whatever. I have a tiny 11.6" notebook computer that I use to work at the coffee ship but that's about the extent of my mobile computing needs. The only thing I really miss is GPS, but then I could always get a standalone unit from Garmin or Tom Tom.

One bright spot is that newspapers and magazines are moving away from apps because Apple is so greedy, and, well, Android sucks to develop for. They're slowly embracing HTML 5 + CSS 3, and redesigning their print editions as basically scaled up web pages. That's easier than trying to convert a standard print layout to screen. Coupled with responsive web design (basically just standard CSS3 and Javascript tricks), this means a site can adapt itself easily, on the fly, to whatever device it's displayed on.

So I expect over the next few years that we'll see many mainstream media sources drop the apps, and just have people log in from the website, no matter where or on what they're logging in from. That does open up the potential for browser ad blocking hacks again.