The Super Bowl will be played this upcoming Sunday. In my household, my wife will be cheering on the New England Patriots while I’ll be anywhere else, not caring one bit. It’s a ball sport…my level of caring is as bottomed-out as it gets. I’m not even impressed with the halftime show lineup of Maroon 5, Travis Scott and Big Boi. I’ll be doing what I would normally do: dredging the Internet for car stuff. The Super Bowl is big business for television, though: For the 2018 Super Bowl, Nielsen data showed that on average 103.4 million viewers were tuned in to the action, and that was the smallest audience in ten years. It’s hard to compete with the football championship on television, but if Volvo has their way, they will do just that.
Using a smartphone game called “The Longest Drive”, Volvo is intending to straight-up compete with the Super Bowl for viewership. The game works like this: using an eye-tracking system and facial recognition software, the game will monitor how much you watch what amounts to stock footage of the Volvo S60. The three individuals who keep their eyes on the screen the longest will win the opportunity to get a two-year subscription to Care by Volvo. This provides the winners access to a Volvo S60 Momentum, routine maintenance and insurance. It also requires you to return the prize after 24 months…read again, “subscription”.
So, on the one day that most people become football fans, where food and beer are plentiful, would you really rather spend the entire time of the game staring at corporate stock footage of a car that you, a BangShift reader, probably don’t have any feeling for one way or another? We’d need to tape our eyelids open and pray that the adhesive doesn’t fail in order to have a prayer. And someone better have the beer ready, because it’s going to be one long virtual trip.
Now I’m wondering if I can record my face on a computer screen for a short loop and fool the phone app.