At the CES yesterday they had a panel session called "Inventing TV 3.0 – Defining the set-top-connected TV, streaming media adapter, downloadable consumer experience".

This was an industry group to discuss emergent trends in the marketplace and without a doubt the data mining applications as being pioneered by Time Warner in the US are at the same time the most exciting and invidious development of the intraconnected TV scene.

Time Warner cable has been anonymously collecting data through set top boxes and use of "switched digital video" in in the USA in markets covering 10 million consumers in New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles areas. They claim that as the data is being collected at the "macro" level that they are not crossing legal privacy barriers but the result is that Time Warner cable is able offer a potential advertiser exacting demographic information.

The current crop of Tvs are tending to offer web based browsers that are primarily limited to arranged content sites such as YouTube and Google by an arrangemnt between the manufacturers and the media agency. This continues to perpetrate the residential media metering from your time of purchase of that product.

Trust me .. the manufacturers of certain TV lines can software update your own TV so that it can direct your web opportunities if you are using their built in browser. It would seem that we are increasingly being drawn into the advertisers dream world of immediate and direct demographic information that is undoubtedly capable of being processed to an individual level via agencies such as social media and branded search engines.

I think there is a lot to be said for erecting certain barriers beetween oneself and the brave new world of direct digital marketing. Be uncomfortable about purchasing or purveying product that is financed by a marketing function. As a trad retailer we exist in a commercial environment where a consumer makes that fundamental choice to come in and look and then purchase if they want or not.

In The new age of exact client profiling you will be precision targeted by sales engines with products and services before you even know that you wanted them ...

As a typical user of facebook I myself have been apparently and correctly categorised as a consumer of electronics and motorcycles of a certain age and as such am besieged on the side columns by perpetual offers of related products ... alas on principle I have declined to click on these links thus far.

The only Google ads I would perhaps click on are actually my adverse competitors pop ups on Google Search ... knowing that they are paying a dollar each time I click.

Sadly one cannot believe that any corporate entity such as Google or Facebook or ... NewsCorp ... would actually care for me as anything but a lowly plankton in the consumer food chain and I therefore strongly object to my own data being mined in their favour ... and I'm sure they don't care ... If only they could ever prove themselves as being in some way benevolent for example as with Wikipedia you wouldnt mind.