“What would it mean for your business if you could target potential clients who are actively discussing their need for your services in their day-to-day conversations? No, it's not a Black Mirror episode—it's Voice Data, and CMG has the capabilities to use it to your business advantage.”

A marketing team within media giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims it has the capability to listen to ambient conversations of consumers through embedded microphones in smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices to gather data and use it to target ads, according to a review of CMG marketing materials by 404 Media and details from a pitch given to an outside marketing professional. Called “Active Listening,” CMG claims the capability can identify potential customers “based on casual conversations in real time.”

  • smegEnglish
    10·
    11 months ago

    This seems fishy. Beyond being illegal in a lot of places, if this was actually possible without people noticing (e.g. detecting massive data usage of audio being uploaded or native battery/CPU usage of it being processed locally) then we’d know about it!

    My first thought is that this is the classic tech sales bullshit of claiming your product can do something impossible in order to sell it. What’s most confusing is the statement from the bottom of the article:

    “CMG businesses do not listen to any conversations or have access to anything beyond a third-party aggregated, anonymized and fully encrypted data set that can be used for ad placement. We regret any confusion and we are committed to ensuring our marketing is clear and transparent,” the statement added.

    So are they admitting it was bullshit or what?