Intrusive advertising? It’s all in your head!
We’ve all seen adverts whilst on the move. Be it billboards, posters on the sides of buses, taxis and in train stations but how about a voice in your head? A lot of people would write you off as a little crazy if you said you’d been hearing adverts for television subscriptions in your head but if you live in Germany and regularly travel by train, it could be soon “the norm”. That’s right, German company Audiva have developed an advertising platform that is integrated into the windows of train carriages to pass messages to passengers leaning their heads against the window.
It uses Bone Conduction Technology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_conduction) which is the conduction of sound to the inner ear through the bones of the skull (it’s what makes your voice sound different when you hear it on a recording or similar) and the devices pass vibrations through the window to your head when you rest on it. How annoying the implementation of this sytem will be is yet to be truly known as it has only been tested on a few trains in and around Munich.
First impressions and comments from those who haven’t tested it first hand do bring up good points though. Imagine spending a long, hard day at work and making your way to your nice window seat on the train. You get comfortable and rest your tired head against the window and begin to nod off when all of a sudden your body is bombarded with “Go to the Google Play Store to download the latest version of our app!” (or whatever the equivalent is in German..). As one would imagine, it has divided consumers and good arguments have been made on both sides but at this stage they’re simply prototypes and the go ahead has yet to be given by the customer that originally wanted to implement them.
The technology is interesting though, many companies have been considering how they could integrate it into their products and what possibilities it could bring in the future. Global giants Google have said that they’ve been looking into using the technology in their upcoming Google Glass “headsets” and this could be the first exposure to bone conduction many people have. Other uses for the technology itself however include streaming music to passengers along with important details that many commuters would like to have available at all times, travel and weather information.
It’s clear that this is going to divide people for some time until it’s tested on a larger scale, would you be open to advertising / services like this or do you want to be left alone to lean as you please? Thoughts and comments below please!