We all remember the talking billboards from Minority Reprt that recognized Tom Cruise as he walked by, looked as his pants and tried to sell him some more. Sure. Well, let's get the internet right first.

There are a variety of widgets across the web that are attempting to front-load the rating process that's made sites like Yelp and Amazon so successful in getting a read on the past success of a product or service. Unfortunately, something critical gets lost when translating a retrospective review into an anticipatory, or real-time inquiry into ad relevance. It just doesn't compute. 

It's long been known that "buyers' remorse," while dreaded by the purchaser, doesn't necessarily hurt the retailer. This is the result of a mental process known as cognitive dissonance resolution. Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person has inconsistent or competing thoughts about the same thing — a love/hate relationship. a person resolves this by seeking a logical or emotional decision regarding the disparity. This happens most often by down-playing the regrettable parts of a decision, and playing up the positive, or flattering elements. 

For example: a person sees two laptops at the store. They entered thinking all they needed was a 13" netbook for email and internet, but they left with a gaming powerhouse with a graphics rendering engine that could rival an Xbox. Now, while they were excited in the store, eventually they will feel buyers' remorse. They didn't need this machine, probably won't use it often, and spent a fortune on it. 

As they work to resolve their cognitive dissonance with their decision, they will consider returning it, they'll feel guilty for over-spending, but ultimately, they will find a way to justify the purchase and feel great about it. How? By ignoring their terrible logic and refusing to admit they they are weak-willed assholes that can be talked into anything by a salesperson. Instead, they will convince themselves that the are a gaming junkie that requires the full breadth of the processing power of such a machine, even going so far as to recommend it to others. This is the power of cognitive dissonance resolution. This is how we become fanboys of a particular product or service. We wall ourselves in one purchase at a time through a survival instinct that forces us to uphold our own egos.

This is essentially the analysis behind the widely misunderstood poem by Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken. In the poem (often misquoted as "The Road Less Travelled," Frost writes about how each road looked exactly the same, bend for bend, leaf for leaf. He couldn't see far enough to discern which was the better path to take. But in the end, he says, he'll tell everyone he took the road less travelled by, and that will make all the difference. Damn tricky poets. 

Now, before I get too far away from the original point, consider this experience in terms of online advertising. Up until the point of purchase, our laptop shopper may have been considering more than one model. There was a mental and emotional competition. During that competition, that shopper witnessed hundreds, maybe thousands of ads trying to convince him to purchase one laptop over the other. One wins. Is the user happy with that decision? Was it the best laptop for his needs? In most cases, that's not a logical answer. Because in the shopper's mind, the best decision he can make is the one that's already been made. There's no looking back. 

Now imagine that purchaser sees an ad for the little netbook he didn't purchase on Hulu the following week. Above the ad is a little box that reads "Is this ad relevant to you." There's almost zero chance the user will click either "yes" or "no." Certainly he will not click "yes." This would be admitting that there was no cognitive dissonance resolution made after the purchase, and that he may have made the wrong decision. Instead, the user will likely scoff at the ad, further cementing his own self-confidence. 

Now an ad for the high-end gaming laptop comes on. If the user is motivated to click on "yes" or "no" at all, he will undoubtedly click "yes." This is an emotionally useful act act toward self-confidence. But it's shit information for that specific retailer. This is old news. This guy's just telling you he's a fan and he'd like you to pay the impression cost to remind him how awesome your product already is. Which i guess has a certain currency to it. 

The way this does work, is if a site like Hulu is able to offer these breakdowns as part of an overall system of product-to-user analysis. If a user has clicked "yes" to a laptop, it's useless trying to push laptop ads to them, because it likely means they just purchased one, hence their enthusiasm for clicking "yes" as part of the resolution model explained above. However, it might mean that they're primed for purchasing a camera or game that would be considered part of the digital ecosystem of that unit. That's were the "relevance" comes into play.

I argue, and intend to support with a simple test in the following days, that people mostly find advertisements relevant or irrelevant based on what they already own. It's a source of enjoyment, self-confidence and bragging rights to see ads for the products you already own and "like." It's a little reminder of what a great decision maker you are. 

People simply don't feel a personal connection to a product or service they haven't experienced yet. In this regard, the question: "Is this ad relevant to you" doesn't tell an advertiser if they're hitting the right user base — it's telling them that there's nothing more to see here, move on. Unless (and this will be part of the test) it proves that users respond well to a product or service that compliments a recent purchase as part of the resolution model. 

My hypothesis is that recent purchases will garner the most "relevance" while complimentary products and services will form a cluster of secondary relevance. The trick, however, will be in measuring their likeliness to go so far as to click "yes" or "no" in order to support this claim. I'm guessing that this part of an advertiser's wet dream of pre-cog targeting will remain elusive. 

To see you own ad board, click on the link: "See more ads" at the bottom right of your Facebook page

The other questionable aspect to this model of advertising is that someone like HP could never go to Hulu and say "we want to run ads to anyone that clicked on Apple's ads." That would likely start a firestorm of retailer-on-retailer lawsuits with Hulu caught in the middle. What's more likely, but uncomfortable, is for an advertiser like HP to have to rely on Hulu's proprietary and confidential knowledge of its massive user base in order to create relevant impressions across their system without much data backing up the ROI on these ads. But they'll get a ton of "relevance" to bank on.