I generally like to apply Occam’s Razor to news that seems speculative.
However the Way Back When machine archived CMG’s “Active Listening” page [0] from Sept - Nov 2023. And the wording on the website appears very clear that a) this is a technology that is actively being used and b) the data is obtained through devices like a smart phone.
Additionally, CMG’s current page [1] describing their “Targeted Display” offering has wording that sounds somewhat like Active Listening. For eg, the page mentions, “Marketing again to customers who are already familiar with you and your brand will continue to draw them in.”
It’s nowhere near conclusive, but it doesn’t appear that the company is making much of an attempt to make clear that they do not listen to devices. And it’s hard for me to dismiss this as complete rubbish.
That's why my theory is a rogue ad sales team. They were clearly making outrageous claims about this technology. I think they were doing it to convince suckers to buy ads from them, and they stopped and scrubbed the evidence the moment people started pointing out that it was basically a big scam.
"Marketing again to customers who are already familiar with you and your brand will continue to draw them in" has nothing to do with audio - it's one of the key ideas behind effective marketing in general (retargeting).
However the Way Back When machine archived CMG’s “Active Listening” page [0] from Sept - Nov 2023. And the wording on the website appears very clear that a) this is a technology that is actively being used and b) the data is obtained through devices like a smart phone.
Additionally, CMG’s current page [1] describing their “Targeted Display” offering has wording that sounds somewhat like Active Listening. For eg, the page mentions, “Marketing again to customers who are already familiar with you and your brand will continue to draw them in.”
It’s nowhere near conclusive, but it doesn’t appear that the company is making much of an attempt to make clear that they do not listen to devices. And it’s hard for me to dismiss this as complete rubbish.
[0] - https://web.archive.org/web/20230923075217/https://www.cmglo...
[1] - https://www.cmglocalsolutions.com/solutions/targeted-display...