Microsoft made some waves when it announced a controversial advertising method that will be a part of the Xbox One. Specifically, the way the Kinect will sweep the room looking for users and deliver ad content based on the conversations it picks up, leading some gamers to forsake the console before its released on Nov. 22.
Though Microsoft has declared repeatedly that the company will not be giving away or selling a user's data to other companies, it has stated that the Xbox One's dashboard will be designed for advertisers and the device will use the Kinect to offer up advertisements based on the data it collects from a user's conversations. While this has scared off many (even after Microsoft went back on it's always-online policy, and also allowed users to turn off the Kinect even if they cannot unplug the camera) a new article from Advertising Age praises Microsoft's approach.
Yusuf Mehdi, corporate VP-marketing and strategy for Microsoft, was excited about the Xbox One's possibilities in the advertising world:
"We are trying to bridge some of the world between online and offline...That's a little bit of a holy grail in terms of how you understand the consumer in that 360 degrees of their life. We have a pretty unique position at Microsoft because of what we do with digital, as well as more and more with television because of Xbox. It's early days, but we're starting to put that together in more of a unifying way, and hopefully at some point we can start to offer that to advertisers broadly."
Mehdi also pointed out how the Xbox One can be used for creating a huge amount of data concerning the biometric responses to advertising. The Kinect can be used in conjunction with advertising to see how a user physically reacts to what is being presented to them. For example, Mehdi discussed how the Xbox One's Kinect can detect "slight changes in skin tone related to dilation of a blood vessel in the eyeball that responds to heart rate" which will help advertisers figure out how engaged users are with the ads being placed in front of them."
The Xbox One will be available on Nov. 22, one week after the launch of the PlayStation 4.
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