Google recently announced an update of their “Goggles” app (currently running on phones that run their Android OS, and iPhones running iOS 4), which leverages existing commercial systems – barcodes etc. More notable is the ‘augmenting’ of traditional print advertising by enabling image recognition of those advertisements and thus providing digital information and links concerning what is featured in the adverts. As a Google blogger explains:
Goggles will recognize print ad and return web search results about the product or brand. This new feature of Goggles is enabled for print ads appearing in major U.S. magazines and newspapers from August 2010 onwards.
This is an interesting example of the ‘reterritorialisation’ (described by Martin Thayne in his paper at Paying Attention). The apparently fixed form of engagement with print advertising that relies on suggestion and a form of ‘inscribing’ memory is, with Googles, reframed as an immediate transaction for information. The specificity of the locus of engagement, the flicking through of a magazine the passing glance of a billboard is re-commodified as a calculable form of engagement: the advert can be ‘scanned’, links can be followed (the ubiquitous ‘click through’), which could (potentially) directly lead to a sale. The process can be followed and thus statistically modelled, in turn being integrated into estimates for ‘Return On Investment’ (ROI).
Not only, then, are our digital interactions tracked and modelled but so are our physical interactions. Tie this data to contextual data such as time of day and location and advertisers potentially gain a powerful means of targeting potential customers in particular places and at particular times. Of course, this relies on people actually using the software and ‘clicking’ on print/billboard adverts. A peculiar demographic might then potentially drive advertising strategies. For want of an example, and to misuse a stereotype, thousands of teenage boys scanning the latest lingerie advert would certainly skew such a statistical model!
Joking aside, the ongoing development of these ‘augmented reality’ applications offers the potential for the forms of real-time commercial digital tracking and modelling of our interactions with data to extend into everyday physical activities, thus further ‘reterritorialsing’ spaces of work, travel etc. as spaces of commerce.
