A thought just occurred to me while was reading about User Centric’s latest eye tracking research on Google vs. Bing. They discovered that the 3-column design on Bing means more people look at the ads on the right. (They also found that most users ignored the “flyouts” that happen when you hover over a result at Bing.com – I hate those flyouts so hopefully Bing can be persuaded to drop them…).
I’m right in the middle of reading a lot of diverse stuff on human attention and vision, to try and get some insight into why people respond to visual cues online. But just this simple analysis of eye movement on Google/Bing did make me think: Why not charge advertisers for looking?
This may not be as valid for text ads as it is for banner ads (which are often more about branding and awareness). As an advertiser, currently an impression is an impression is an impression. But I can see a situation where charges are based on how many people look at an ad, and for how long. Obviously as a publisher you’d then want to optimise your site so that the maximum number of people look at an ad – which would be a much more subtle (and algorithm-driven) process…
In somewhat of an overstatement, that is how a scientist described progress on robot AI over at Willow Garage. Head on over to Willow to see “PR 2 Alpha” navigate into another room, and there plug himself into a wall socket to recharge.
It’s not quite jumping into the car to fetch Pizza, and really, it’s a very long way from our persistent dreams of useful, humanoid robots. That seems to have been the status quo on Robot AI for quite some time now. Behind the scenes though, they promise us, greater things are happening to the code that underlies this sort of behaviour. Certainly these guys, Microsoft, and probably half a dozen others are trying to come up with a Robot OS – a common platform for developing Robot AI on. This should help, but I expect that the leaps/bounds towards humanoid robots will take something more significant.
I spent the morning with the bright students at Hult University here in London who are working on a marketing project for my company right now, and we spent a bit of time discussing how A.I. and those sorts of technologies could start to become part of next wave of technologies. At a stretch, what’s happening with Robots like PR 2 Alpha is part of this (if only he can find a way out of the building…). But I believe it will be this kind of work, combined with a LOT of different, diverse and currently unconnected technologies to make the leap to something that can “fend for itself”.
