Dispatches from the Future: Ad Targeting in 2020

Imagining a potential future state for media in our lives

MARCH 21, 2020

The first time it happened, I didn’t even notice. Or, I guess I figured it was just a coincidence. I was sitting on the toilet, catching up on my Instagram and Twitter feeds, and I saw an ad for Quilted Northern toilet paper. “Ha!” I thought, “nice timing.”

But then, it started to become a pattern. Every time I sat down to go, I’d see ads for toilet paper in my Instagram feed. I’d see viral videos for Squatty Potty and other mostly-plastic toilet-related innovations on Facebook. I even saw some video with a C-list celebrity and a toilet seat that squirts hot water on your netherquarters, all with a tap on your Apple Watch.

Once upon a time, advertisers followed me around the web, leaping from banner ad to banner ad, trying to sell me the same pair of pants I made the mistake of clicking on one time. Today, they follow me around my house, waiting for the right moment to pounce and tell me about their wares. Thanks to a series of privacy-eroding legal shifts, advertisers are now able to access geodata down to roughly one square foot, and overlay that with accelerometer data from your phone, feed it through machine-learning-enhanced algorithmic models that allow them to–with crazy accuracy–approximate what room you are in and what you are doing every moment of every day.

I’m sure if you’re reading this in 2017, this sounds slightly horrifying. Don’t worry, by 2020, this will all seem perfectly normal. In fact, you might come to like it. For example: finding that consumers’ impulsiveness is highest in the hour before a sexual encounter, many advertisers have begun targeting offers to consumers based on when they are most likely to be approaching intimacy with a partner. And they’re like, crazy good deals. I’ve probably saved a few thousand dollars on precoital targeted offers.

You’re going to love it here.