Android phones listen for inaudible ad beacons

[Blumlein 88]

https://arstechnica.com/security/20...-covertly-listen-for-inaudible-sounds-in-ads/

Clearly no audiophiles would be taken in by this. The 'inaudible' portion is the 18-20khz range that the article wrongly asserts is inaudible to most people. Maybe an inadvertent triple blind test of whether junk at those frequencies corrupt sound quality?

Or maybe a new possible revenue stream for hirez recordings. The extra bandwidth could connect with hirez phones to allow targeted ad revenue enhancement.

Or looked at another way, not only is your modern affordable tech able to exceed most human hearing abilities, your phone in your pocket does too. A humbling blow to the golden eared ego any way you slice it.

Also I have tested my phone, even posted audio recordings of it playing music to see how audible it was. Maybe that is why it has flat response to 15 khz and rolls off steeply above that, to prevent the ad beacon issues. Have you tested your phones true audio capabilities?

 

[Kal Rubinson]

The "inaudible" signals are intended to subliminally condition those who can hear them to buy. Pavlov's dogs didn't have credit cards.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Pavlov's dogs lived a long time ago. Einstein had no credit cards either.

 

[RayDunzl]

"For anyone down on advertising, the Association of National Advertisers and The Advertising Coalition commissioned a study that highlights some of the industry's big economic benefits. Namely, advertising contributed $3.4 trillion to the U.S. GDP last year (2014), a figure that accounts for 19 percent of the country's entire economic output."

http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketi...-nearly-20-percent-toward-us-gdp-2014-168164/

So...

If we had 5 times as many ads nobody would have to work?

 

[amirm]

Very strange story. I would think the app vendors would get a financial incentive to embed this SDK. But with that company stopping that service, one wonders what is going on.

By the way, they reference the McDonald app. I once downloaded it to find the nearest McDonald not to eat there, but be able to use their restroom. I expected a map with easy navigation to their restaurants but instead it was some crappy search function sort of, kind of listed the restaurants. It was totally unuseable. Clearly the work of consultants milking them for all the had and produced junk. The Burger King one was just as bad.

 

[RayDunzl]

Toilet Finder

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bto.toilet&hl=en

 

[Blumlein 88]

"For anyone down on advertising, the Association of National Advertisers and The Advertising Coalition commissioned a study that highlights some of the industry's big economic benefits. Namely, advertising contributed $3.4 trillion to the U.S. GDP last year (2014), a figure that accounts for 19 percent of the country's entire economic output."

http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketi...-nearly-20-percent-toward-us-gdp-2014-168164/

So...

If we had 5 times as many ads nobody would have to work?

So are you going to put all the apps on your phone simply to increase the GDP?