BluScreen is a real life Minority Report type concept application which will beam advertising at us based on preferences stored in our Bluetooth enabled mobile phones. The idea is that we set a preference saying that we like, say, MP3 players and receive a ‘reward’ of a discount if we accept a personalised advert beamed at us any time we pass a relevant shop window display. It’s quite interesting actually, and takes targeted advertising to a whole new level.
Within a ubiquitous environment, market-based approaches can be used to select the most appropriate material for a public display, depending on factors such as the audience’s preferences and diversity of interest. Likewise, strategies used by agents to compete for customer attention should strive to be rational, based on contextual observations of user-preferences within the local environment, and should include a reward mechanism based on audience responses. Ubiquitous devices such as bluetooth-enabled mobile phones, can be used to uniquely identify and detect the presence of individuals within a localised environment, without the need for deploying bespoke hardware.
