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You may recall how much I resent advertising swallowing up our entire landscape, exemplified by how difficult it has become to enjoy a baseball game in between ads.

I may have neglected to mention (on anywhere but our Red Sox "gamethread") a recent development in the decline of civilization. During Blue Jays games, Rogers SportsNet is now squeezing in ads in between pitches. Pitch is thrown, ad opens, ad closes, next pitch is thrown.

Do you hear me? Are you getting this? They are showing ads IN BETWEEN PITCHES!!!

And yet, to my amazement, James sent me one that might actually be worse.

Anyone who watches even a bit of TV has had the teeth-grinding experience of ads (usually for other shows on the same channel) being shown at the bottom of the screen. These in-show ads have become larger and more intrusive, with more moving animation, often blocking the show you are watching. Now it gets even better. And by better, I mean worse.

Click and watch. The original post James sent is here: a site over-run by ads.

And from Allan: In advertising these days, the brass ring goes to those who can measure everything — how many people see a particular advertisement, when they see it, who they are. All of that is easy on the Internet, and getting easier in television and print.

Billboards are a different story. For the most part, they are still a relic of old-world media, and the best guesses about viewership numbers come from foot traffic counts or highway reports, neither of which guarantees that the people passing by were really looking at the billboard, or that they were the ones sought out.

Now, some entrepreneurs have introduced technology to solve that problem. They are equipping billboards with tiny cameras that gather details about passers-by — their gender, approximate age and how long they looked at the billboard. These details are transmitted to a central database.

Behind the technology are small start-ups that say they are not storing actual images of the passers-by, so privacy should not be a concern.
"Privacy should not be a concern." Thanks, advertisers! We trust you to keep us safe!