I’d much prefer if every reader out there were familiar with Philip K. Dick’s wonderful opus, so I could use some other point of reference than the quite mediocre Hollywood rendition of his work that’s called Minority Report. But, those talking ads that use retina scans to figure out who you are and then address you by name is one of the things that are portrayed well in the movie. And, I’m sure no one wants to actually live to see it happen.

However, as Internet advertising models are evolving, the ads are getting harder and harder to ignore. Case in point - Yahoo!’s SmartAds, a new advertising platform which enables advertisers to create “intelligent” ads that change with context. Yes, we already have contextual advertising, but the ads are simple links, and the context pretty much ends with keywords on the actual site and the visitor’s IP, which can be used to determine his geographical position.

Yahoo!’s SmartAds are going to take this a step further: in layman’s terms, the ads will determine who you are, what are your habits, and what is your location, and serve an ad tailored just for you.

Will the advertisers love this? Sure. What about the rest of us? It depends.

It’s vital that Yahoo! doesn’t cross any privacy boundaries while gathering data for these ads. And, it’s also vital that the ads themselves aren’t too obnoxious. I’d be the first to stop using Yahoo! services if I were greeted by a huge “Hi Stan! Would you like to download a real antivirus program? We know what you’re using now, and it sucks.” banner every time I log in. Am I fetching too far? We’ll see - but this seems to be the direction this is heading.