Two weeks ago, a patent filing by General Motors was uncovered that proposed using data collected from its OnStar service to tailor public advertisements to individual drivers.
Like the billboards Tom Cruise encountered in Minority Report, the OnStar-linked ads would be tailored to passing motorists based on personal information they'd shared with their telematics service. Perusing the patent's text, nightmare scenarios flooded our thoughts. Kids in the backseat? Be prepared to see ads for Happy Meals and nearby amusement parks. Headed to the doctor's office? A friendly reminder to schedule a colonoscopy, in flashing 40-foot letters.
The most alarming aspect of the patent is how it proposes gathering personal data. Expectedly, the patent covers the use of location-based information from OnStar's turn-by-turn navigation system. But more intrusively, it also includes the use of in-vehicle cameras to determine unspecified demographics of vehicle occupants. Even power seat positions could be used to estimate the age of a driver.
Scary stuff. But put away the roll of tinfoil, because this patent probably isn't going anywhere soon – or ever.
Like any tech company, OnStar routinely files hundreds of patents for any innovation that might be even remotely valuable to their future business interests. Patents are filed as soon as new ideas are conceived, and the process is often done just to make sure nobody else profits off the idea in the future.
In OnStar's case, the company let us know it files about one patent application every five days. This one was filed in August of 2010 and sat through a quiet period of public comment until Jalopnik took note of it. Submitting paperwork to the patent office is as far from implementing a new technology as putting a poster of a Porsche 936 on the wall is to driving like Hurley Haywood.
As for the billboard patent, "It doesn't mean we're ever going to do something about it, and we don't have any plans to ever leverage it in the near future or at all," said Nick Pudar, OnStar's vice president of business development. "We were surprised that anyone noticed it," Pudar admitted.
Sounds pretty cut and dry, eh? Or maybe that's exactly what OnStar wants us to think. Still paranoid, we asked automotive privacy expert and Santa Clara Law professor Dorothy Glancy to take a look at it.
It turns out that OnStar joins Honda, Bridgestone, Apple, RIM and GM itself when it comes to filing patents that cover the interaction between telematics services and advertising. "From what I can see at the Patent Office, there are a lot of issued patents in this technology area," Glancy said, estimating that there are 35,000 targeted advertising patents, 143 of them specifically dealing with vehicle telematics.
"All of this goes to say that the patent application is pretty unremarkable in the patent world," she said. "If this patent ever does issue, it would likely be much narrower than what is claimed in the application."
It's no surprise that there are so many patents filed where vehicle data and advertising intersect. Where you go when you get in your car would be incredibly valuable information for advertisers. With GPS data, they could determine where you shop, what routes you frequently travel, where you work and how often you take a vacation. It's why advertisers love the personal data that users voluntarily give up when they "check in" on Facebook and apps like Foursquare.
According to Glancy, merging telematics and advertising goes "beyond what people expect when they seek navigational guidance or directions to a destination," she said. "I believe that people whose personal location information is sold should be able to know about it, consent to it or not, and also get a share of the action."
That's a concern that OnStar is acutely aware of, and why we probably won't be seeing any ads for big and tall clothing stores flashing at drivers who push their seats all the way back. "I think if this ever did occur, we'd do it in such a way that it makes sense to customers," Pudar said, stressing that any potential use of personal data would "absolutely" require an opt-in from users, and that the burden of safeguarding consumer privacy and safety would be on OnStar.
"If a customer were to choose to participate, it would be very clear what the parameters were," Pudar said. "Everything we'd do would be with customer consent and direct opt-in."
In addition to the privacy concerns, Glancy says that encouraging drivers to look away from the road and up at a billboard is a safety issue. "The contemplated targeted messages would seem to be flashing from one target to another pretty quickly, especially in a congested area," she said. "That seems like a pretty serious driver distraction to me." Additionally, she cited a 1995 study she conducted in which drivers said in-vehicle advertisements were just another form of "visual spam."
All those reasons are exactly why OnStar said that a filed patent for dynamic billboards doesn't necessarily speak to a solid business case for implementing a new technology. "Again, not having plans to pursue this, we haven't thought through the details of what we'd ever do," Pudar said.
That doesn't mean that advertisers haven't, though. "The marketing and advertising community is going to get creative to leverage every technology that's available to them," he said. If a marketer does decide to implement a system similar to the language in OnStar's patent, it'll have to license it through OnStar first.
*Photo: GM *
