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Targeted Political Ads for Microsoft Products

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday March 18 2014, @07:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the suddenly-not-a-game dept.

Vanderhoth writes:

"According to a story from the Washington Post, Microsoft is using gamer profiles to create targeted political ads. The article talks mostly about XBox Live, but other services like Skype and MSN will be included. The article also presents some interesting, to non-gamer, stats about the typical gamer that Microsoft was promoting at the CPAC. As an example, 40% of it's 25 million subscribers are actually married! who'd of thunk it?"

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday March 18 2014, @08:23PM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Tuesday March 18 2014, @08:23PM (#18305) Journal

    Is this really surprising to anyone? If a large internet ad company has your location info, they will target ads to you based on that. Facebook, Google, and many others already do this. Is the difference this is on XBox instead of Android?

    Politicians love to target segments of potential voters with appropriate messaging. The postal mailing I may get will have things about supporting schools and traffic, the one sent to my parents may focus more on Social Security.

    It's actually more surprising to get ads for small service companies far outside my area, which seem to be simply wasteful. Why would I use a web design company 500 miles away?

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Angry Jesus on Tuesday March 18 2014, @11:08PM

    by Angry Jesus (182) on Tuesday March 18 2014, @11:08PM (#18378)

    Politicians love to target segments of potential voters with appropriate messaging.The postal mailing I may get will have things about supporting schools and traffic, the one sent to my parents may focus more on Social Security.

    This is waaay more precise [pbs.org] than that. This is about tailoring their lies^h^h^h^h^h ads for you based on the ~1000 different data-points that companies like BlueKai (now owned by One Real Asshole Called Larry Ellison) and Axciom have on you plus every tv show you've ever watched, every song you've ever listened to, every game you've played, even what you did in those games.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by twitter on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:43AM

    by twitter (3904) on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:43AM (#18406) Journal

    Microsoft uses its services for political purposes, not just money, and that's why this is disturbing. ">Back in 2007 they censored TruthOut and convinced almost everyone but Google to do it at the same time [dev.soylentnews.org]. Microsoft has always been more of a political movement than a software company. Gates made an empire of lies [techrights.org] to serve himself.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Open4D on Wednesday March 19 2014, @09:38AM

      by Open4D (371) on Wednesday March 19 2014, @09:38AM (#18530) Journal

      Back in 2007 they censored TruthOut and convinced almost everyone but Google to do it at the same time.

      Your hyperlink for this didn't work for me. I had a quick search myself and all I found were rebuttals: 1 [carlhutzler.com], 2 [sethf.com]. Seems that this 'Truth Out' site was being a bit spammy. On this Truth Out page [truth-out.org] I can see a link to "AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications [truthout.org]", but it gives a 404.

      Your techrights.org link was interesting though.