July 23, 11 min read. Listen to article 4 min. If you need to use targeted adtech to convince your wife to want sex, you are a wanker. In both senses of the word. This is , so we all know today how marketers and tech companies use online tracking to deliver direct response and sell personal data. For better or worse, most consumers seem to accept it. But there is a new — alleged — platform that embodies the worst of where surveillance marketing can lead. The Spinner purports to let individuals influence the behaviour of others through tracking that displays tailored news articles on websites that the targets visit.
The primary example that the company highlights is that husbands can subliminally convince their wives to initiate sex more often. He then sends the URL in a text message to his wife with, presumably, some cover story. When the wife clicks on the link, a cookie is downloaded to the her phone. What about the stories I write or who I am as a human being would make you think I wanna write about this?
Doc Searls, an adtech critic and the editor of Linux Journal, condemned the idea on Twitter. The Sun in the UK, not surprisingly, published a sensationalist article last week about the platform without bothering to verify anything.
The Spinner itself is evil — that goes without saying. If any husband would use the platform on his wife, I am sure she would kick his ass to the curb and force him to listen to Nickelback albums on repeat until his head explodes. I do not even understand how a cookie could control which articles appear on major, third-party news outlets. There is a website that looks like it was created by a child in junior high school and includes a home page stock photo of a woman, for some reason, brushing her teeth.
The main advertisement is a video consisting of a fake news anchor and a fake reporter saying a fake script. This might not be a surprise, but The Spinner may not be entirely on the up and up. I did some digging. I emailed the address listed on the website. I asked if he could create a dummy account so I could see how the whole thing works for a column for The Drum. His curt reply? Later, Shefler sent me this text, which he said was what people receive after their paid registration.
