  Category: Culture Last week, Katie Couric had Larry King on The Today Show to promote his new book urlLink Taking on Heart Disease . After a few minutes of amiable PR, Couric took the interview to a more somber place: Mattie Stepanek, child poet and close friend of King, had died the night before of muscular dystrophy. He was 13. (Media analysis note: every story on Stepanek includes this terse reminder of his early end. He was 13. To the contemporary American mind, the poet who died young was not Keats, Shelley, or Byron, but the author of Journey Through Heartsongs , Loving Through Heartsongs , Celebrate Through Heartsongs , Hope Through Heartsongs , and of course Heartsongs . ) Three of his older brothers and sisters had died from the disease in their early childhood, and Mattie himself had nearly died a few times from medical complications.
King said a few words about what a miracle Mattie was and what a blessing it was to have him here on earth for this long and then Couric led them into break. Here's a synopsis of the first commercial: Mom in 1976 looks at son hitting himself in head with plastic bat. Boy then runs into plastic corner, falls down plastic stairs, etc. Mom rolls here eyes, says something I couldn't make out. Next shot is the son, all grown up now (2004). He's got a daughter, running around the house, hitting herself in head with plastic toys, falling down into plastic objects. Grown-up son rolls his eyes, says " It's a wonder she made it to ten . " (Banner runs across the screen, something like "Plastics make us safer.
") Somewhere in TV Land, a secretary blanched, an executive picked up the phone, and a producer wilted. For about a week then, my ears were pricked to the world of advertising, specifically to the question of whether that world can ever entertain such thing as a coincidence. In the Business section of Monday's "Early Edition: Iraq Transfer" NYT, you may have noticed a Nat Ives article, " urlLink Rain or Shine, Win or Lose, This Ad is Just for You .
" As you know, advertisers have failed to adequately micro-manage our purchases, and have done a woeful job responding to demographic fluctuations. The solution is in the works. "Ultimately, national broadcasts could feature different advertising for every different segment of the audience. For viewers, it would mean their cable box can tell which team they are rooting for and, based on the outcome, show them the most appropriate commercial. " It won't be long before the ads are tailored to specific neighborhoods. (United, in the final throes of bankruptcy, has already tested ads which address individual cities, offering both "Chicago, Say Hello to Ted" and "Arlington Heights, Say Hello to Ted. " Ted being United's new, youth-oriented airline. By the way, if you want to see targeted advertising at work, pay attention to the hipsters featured in the Independence Airlines ads on DC Metro walls. That's us--interns and young professionals looking for a place to plug in the ole' I-Pod during our flight to Illadelph for wacky cheesesteak hijinks.
) Is this advertising a problem? I can hardly tell, I'm so inured to electronic monitoring, but I bet the ACLU thinks so. Remember the fuss raised when those urlLink listening billboards premiered out West? They can figure out what station is most popular among a given segment of drivers and change the billboard display to best reflect the consumer interests of that demographic. (That demographic's consumer interests having been previously determined with the help of urlLink The Media Audit . ) And of course there's the recent concern over Google's AdSense Program: a computer algorithm (not a human! point out IPO-hungry Google execs) scans your Gmail messages and performs "the matching of ads to content. " Proving, once and for all, that the medium is the message. Targeted advertising can be scary. Why doesn't it scare me? I agree with the ACLU on most every cause they take up, but I'm not at all concerned about the possibility that advertisers (or even corporations) have access to information which allows them to zero in on my consumer interests.
This has to do, no doubt, with the fact that I've always had my personal data submitted or sequestered by electronic means. I don't even pause anymore when giving out my name (nevermind my social security number) over the internet. I happily tell customer service technicians what my favorite color is or what hospital I was born in. Gmail's privacy concerns will not cause many young people to hesitate because we are not used to being concerned about our privacy. And, I think, partly, we would rather be subjected to targeted advertising than not. Consider spam.
Think of those unsolicited, grapeshot emails from The Better Health Store, promoting new products to increase your libido, or access to Mexican pharmacies, or porn sites. These ads are so annoying because they're not targeted; for the most part, they promote products my demographic is nointeresteded. Car ads are annoying for the same reason--TV viewing would be inestimably improved if people who were in the market for a new car were the only ones who had to watch trucks crawl over rubble or sedans swerve through European allies during every commercial break.
Salesmen are irritating, and anachronistic, for the same reason--in the modern advertising world, with Carnivore-like technology sifting through consumer demographics, there's no excuse for showing up on a college kid's doorstep offering a box of deluxe knives he'll never want. In fact, the average viewer's familiarity with the demographic gradations advertisers rely upon is already so nuanced that one can triangulate one's own position on the consumer interest map simply by paying attention to the ads.
If you see a lot of truck ads, you found the channel for the ballgame, but it's on break. If you see an ad for I-pod, it's probably because the show you're watching is aimed at other culturally informed twenty and thirty somethings like you who have been debating getting one for a few months. My point is that all advertising (all good advertising) is already targeted. Where else but eye-scanning and station-eavesdropping could we have expected advertising to go in the 21st century? Isn't this its next, natural evolution? [Hopefully, the most conservative my posts ever get. ] 
