Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re a customer of Verizon‘s, you’ll want to keep your eyes peeled for an email, text message, or notification mentioning the carrier’s new “Verizon Selects” program. In exchange for sharing your data usage, such as location, web browsing, and mobile app usage data, you’ll get targeted advertisements delivered to you by either email, text messages, or other forms of mobile advertising.

Right off the bat, this definitely seems unsettling. However, Verizon is making the entire program optional, so when they ask you if you want to take part in the program, you can simply reply with a “no” and Verizon will leave you alone. Granted, the carrier probably didn’t want it to be optional, but they were mostly likely forced to ask customers.

Opting in, though, will score you a coupon or “some other form of reward” from Verizon. Whether or not the coupon or reward will be worth giving up your data is still yet to be seen, but most likely, it isn’t worth it. Customers will probably want to know what coupons they’re getting in return before handing their data over anyway.

For what it’s worth, we’re extremely skeptical that any customer would be willing to voluntarily hand over their usage information in return for a coupon, let alone more annoying marketing notifications, but at least Verizon is asking instead of simply forcing it on us. Offering an opting-in option is always the way to go, but a lot of companies still aren’t there yet, and they may never be.

Verizon to start targeted advertising this week, will be optional is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Just last week, Facebook decided to make some big changes to how it deals with user feedback on privacy issues, but one of the changes in the updated privacy policy went slightly unnoticed. Facebook says that they can now use the data it has about your likes and dislikes to show you ads outside of Facebook. In other words, the social network giant can display catered ads to you when you’re not even browsing Facebook.

Facebook needs to make their investors happy, and the only way to do that is generating revenue through different avenues, such as advertising. As many users know, Facebook has already scoured its social network with sponsored this and sponsored that, as well as catered ads based on user data. Now, the company is looking to expand that outside of Facebook’s fortress.

One way that Facebook is looking to earn some revenue is through an external advertising network, which uses information about users and their activity on Facebook as a way of targeting ads on other websites. Venture-capitalist Chris Dixon says that “an external ad network is inevitable. Google proved this model with Adsense.”

While Dixon says that it’s almost impossible for other ad networks to compete with Adsense, “Facebook’s traffic is so great now that an external ad network might increase their revenues by 2x or so.” That would essentially boost Facebook’s yearly revenue to $10 billion. Of course, the only websites that you would find Facebook ads on would be those that the social network partners up with, so don’t expect every single website to be filled with Facebook ads, but it’s said that Facebook will start with Instagram to test out its external ad network, and will move onto other sites where they will attempt to partner up with them in order to serve catered ads.

[via GigaOM]

Facebook will be sharing your data with other websites is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

In an attempt to get more marketers to buy up advertising space, Facebook has announced that it will soon be giving retailers feedback on the sales they receive through ads on the social networking site. This new sales tracking tool is currently being tested, so it isn’t available to all retailers yet, but Facebook told Reuters that everything should be fully implemented by the end of the month. Just in time for the holiday sales rush, which we’re guessing isn’t a coincidence.

This obviously works in both directions, as it allows businesses to see if they’re making a return on the advertising money they spend at Facebook. If they are, then it encourages them to advertise with Facebook in the future and could even pull advertising money in from other businesses. That, obviously, would be a good thing for Facebook, so you can bet the company is hoping for results that show the ads are working.

Facebook users don’t need to worry, however, as the company’s advertising product manager David Baser told Reuters that the sales tracking service doesn’t give retailers any personal information. It will tell retailers if you clicked on an ad and then proceeded to purchase the item, but other than that, retailers won’t know anything that could be used to identify you. Baser also said that sales tracking has long been a requested feature from Facebook’s retail partners, so they’re finally about to get their wish.

Another benefit of this new sales tracking tool: it will help advertisers determine who to target with their ads. Since they’ll have sales tracking data, they’ll know which demographics responded well to their ads and which didn’t. Check out our timeline below for more information on Facebook!

Facebook launching sales tracking for retail partners is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Whether we like it or not, advertisements are a vital part of our Web browsing experience. It’s what enables us to read, watch or listen to most online content for free, like the website you’re on right now. But sometimes these ads can be intrusive or slow down your browsing experience. Hence the popularity of ad-blocking software like Adblock Plus. Now someone’s come up with a hardware equivalent of such software.

Invented by Chad Russell, the AdTrap is an open-source device that has a wider reach than any ad-blocking program. The AdTrap blocks online ads for all devices – from a desktop computer to a smartphone – in the same network. You simply plug the AdTrap in between your modem and your router, then reset your modem. Any and all ads should be gone when you’re back online.

Fortunately the AdTrap also has a whitelisting feature so you can instruct it to display ads on certain websites – *hint hint* –  or let certain ads through. You can actually do much more than that if you have the know how, because the AdTrap is designed to be hackable.

As of this writing a pledge of at least $99 (USD) on its Kickstarter fundraiser qualifies you for an AdTrap. If this device is successful, I’m guessing Russell and company are going to come out with a router (or a modem-router combo) with AdTrap built-in.

While Apple‘s many commercials can be considered “cute,” if you will, some may say that they’re still missing a little bit of pizzazz that would make them even more attention-getting. From the guys who brought you those funny Siri parody commercials, comes a new fake advertisement for the Microsoft Surface tablet.

The fake ad commercial is based off of Apple latest iPad mini ad where it plays a piano duet next to the 10-inch iPad. The folks at LaughPong decided that the ad needed a bit more Microsoft Surface mixed in, so they made a quick parody ad that makes you wonder why Microsoft didn’t come up with a similar idea in the first place.

The fake ad definitely portrays the Surface tablet as an all-out, in your face device that’s ready to take on the world, while the iPad remains a subtle piece of technology in the background. Obviously, that’s not how it is in the real world, but I’m sure Microsoft would love to think of it in that way.

Honestly, the fake commercial is so good that if it were actually real, it would probably convince us to go out and buy a Surface tablet right now. We all know advertising can reel us in using mysterious tactics, but after watching that, we wouldn’t care one bit. However, let’s hope that Microsoft can make a dent in the tablet market with its new offering anyway.

[via Cult of Mac]

Microsoft Surface parody ad takes on the iPad is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.