The March 13th International Herald Tribune tells us that Google now has the ability to sell ads real-time to corporations. This is called real-time bidding.
After tracking that you have just bought a golf club, google can then immediately open up bids for ads that are related to golfing and display it on your screen within seconds.
This is the latest development in the technological advances of consumerist capitalism. More than ever before, technology has brought individuals closer to corporations, and corporations closer to individuals. Individuals can now purchase commodities of their taste more quickly than ever before. Corporations can also sell with more discrimination, targeting only costumers who are interested in their products. Real-time bidding has revolutionized advertising, infinitely shortening the time between the creation of an advertisement and its display, its location of appearance, and its audience.
Thus, we also witness an ever increasing mode of technological control. Corporations have an increasing power over information, in this case control over individual and consumer preferences, and ultimately, all that which makes up the life of a consumer. It is the next stage in the development of consumer capitalism: the individual as consumer is broken down to the most definable units of measurement. The utility function at its very best.
We also see the collapse between what we consider to be public and private realms. With real-time bidding, the internet, which we consider private in the most physically intimate sense (after all, we do sit behind our computers at home with our closed doors), now becomes a source of information for public corporations. We no longer have a real sense that what is physically private is in fact private in any spheres of social life.
Despite this, we all benefit from such developments in consumer capitalism such as real-time bidding. Who doesn't want an ad to a golfing club after having bought their first golf club? Must this be so bad after all?
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