> The company wants to engage more people with advertising [...]
> Retailers are eager to add new experiences to their physical stores. But many consumers aren't eager to change their habits — and they certainly aren't used to watching freezer-display ads.
> "People really appreciate their routines. They're not always seeking excitement," said Julio Sevilla
Has CNN introduced a parody section when I wasn't looking? Is this some sort of joke article, satirising corporate nonsense-speak and journalists blindly reprinting press releases?
This isn't a matter of shoppers being scared of "change" or disliking "excitement" - nobody is "excited" to "engage with advertising", they're just inconvenienced. This is walgreens making the shopping experience worse in the hopes of making more money.
How someone so unable to speak plainly could forge a career as a professional journalist I have no idea....
Or fudged up the methodology... show them a fridge with a display, ask them "does this look exciting to you?" (without context), they say "yes", "ok thank you, bye, ... next!"
Walgreens reportedly put millions into Theranos. Seems like at some level there must be a lot of pressure to be "innovative" and a lack of understanding how to do it.
This comment reminds me of a brilliant commercial from many years ago, where Trident parodied the X out of Y approve meme: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xAVALXH9nxU
Depends on how you define "experience". Do I want attentive cashiers that are efficient and friendly? How about clear standardized pricing to price compare? Conveniently placed workers that can direct me to the right location? Predictable product placements?
Whether you like it or not, grocery store is an experience. For instance there are considerably cheaper grocers that can fulfill many basic goods (C-Town, Dollar General, etc) but some people avoid because the "experience" is not as pleasant (lighting, color scheme, spacing, etc)
The store is small enough that even if you don't know the layout it doesn't take long to find something. There are only a few choices (if that many) for any given item so you generally don't even think about price-comparing on a per-ounce basis or anything like that. The cashiers are blazing fast. You are in, out, and get on with your day. No they don't stock everything but they have all the staple products you need from day-to-day.
Ya know, I might approve of putting ads on toilet paper. Then I can wipe my ass on their brand and flush it down the drain like it deserves. It'd be cathartic.
It's not "advertisers". It's the actual product brands.
I agree the freezer thing sounds awful and hopefully is just a failed experiment. But products and layout are optimized by the brand. Just take a look at the packaging. Pretty standard comparable size, dimensions that fit in the place they're meant to be stored, meaningful information up front, clear well printed packaging, a million other things. I don't think you're giving enough credit to how incredibly convenient and curated a trip to a modern grocery store in an economically developed country is.
The goal is to sell you more stuff obviously but 95% of the time my interests are aligned with the brand. I don't want to waste time figuring stuff out. They just make it easy for me.
Advertisers work for brands, they're humans who make ads to sell us shit we didn't ask for. Personally I don't care which brand they work for, I want them all to stop. Whether its a blatant ad for a product or a product itself being turned into an ad, its all obnoxious and wasteful
Yeah, and its worse than that. Since the brands are managed by brokers who setup sales, the facing/amount displayed on the shelf, the location on the shelf and the store, and so on.
Toilets have been tried. Generally you can't pee high enough to desecrate the eye-level advertisements at a urinal. Toilet advertisements are much more easily desecrated.
Yes, and imagine having the “experience” of 15 minutes of commercials with your poop session! It’s a goldmine for advertisers!
/s
I hate advertising and actively disrespect people who work in the ad industry. It’s virtually all just disinformation and behavioral modification tricks. The cigarettes for our brains in the 21st century.
I'm not going to stand in front of 6 selections of deli meat and use my calculator and take notes on their price conversions to determine which one to get. I'm going to accept I'll probably slightly overpay and move on with my life.
Exactly. What consumer has a desire for a “retail media company?” Gross. Especially one that’s business model is to interrupt the retail experience to inject non-value added advertising?
A consumer of Walgreen's stock, which needs something new, anything, to juice attention and move the price, since it's taboo to be a public company that just cruises along. The de facto primacy of stock performance in executive qualifications means you have a lot more fridge-screens to look forward to if the initial antipathy toward these fades into begruding acceptance the way they are predicting.
Well, there's some merit to measuring one's shopping in terms of "experience".
Well-laid out spacious store, with good lighting and non-obtrusive background music is quantifiably better than a dirty, cramped corner store with a sus-looking shopkeeper and ethnic music blaring out of tin speakers.
But, clearly, being exposed to #more# ads is not something that adds to said experience positively.
I would love to go to unkept, dirty and disorganized bazaar in Iran. Stores with owners that specialize in a couple of things. A granary for lentils. A butcher shop. A spice house. Complete contrast with Louis Vuitton store you’re describing.
Some people can't tell an oud from a hole in the head. "Good" (in flaming hot Cheeto air quotes) grocery stores pick music to create a safe space where they won't be challenged by other music traditions. Or worse, the places where those traditions blend with Western music. Can't let little Timmy hear a 7th or he might turn out bad.
“Ethnic music blaring out of tin speakers” sounds racist because it is. Please don’t do be like that. Bad speakers are annoying but it’s annoying regardless of what musics so making it racial is not cool. Parking lot music is awful and it’s generic stuff
Online shopping during the pandemic has been pretty great for me. The biggest problem in Australia is that it's very clear the supermarket chains don't process seriously enough - i.e. random substitutions without notification are way to common.
But I miss absolutely nothing about going to a grocery store.
EDIT: in fact in general the pandemic has been pretty good at cutting the number of ads I have to see and hear daily since I've been away from high trafficked areas a lot. That sensory assault I do not miss at all.
I know this will come off a bit spicy, but this is how all of CNN's articles are written, it's just that we're way more sensitive to wording that's sympathetic to advertising. This is how the media shapes language and ultimately shapes people to tolerate the way police treat black people, how the homeless are treated, and so on and so forth.
Precious few “journalists” are journalists in any meaningful sense (I suppose we could say something similar of software “engineers,” but this is a dead horse here)
Call it fake news, propaganda, or the nice PR - but that’s what these “journalists” are. They’re not true journalists but serial killers, wearing the skin of the dying profession.
> “ How someone so unable to speak plainly could forge a career as a professional journalist I have no idea....”
Most journalists are in the ad business - imo this is why they hate Facebook so much, they’re competitors and ad supported news orgs mostly ship a crappier product.
You are aware that the "excitement" came from a quote from a professor. That wasn't the reporters language? That the reporter included other quotes from people who expressed both annoyance at the presence of the ads and how difficult it was to use.
I agree these are a travesty no consumer wants, except I notice they do have a braille plaque and a button with a little grill. I presume they will speak their contents to you if you are vision impaired.
Traditional accessibility features have always been optional. Very important if you need them, but out of the way if you don't. This obviously isn't optional. The trend these days is to hide bad motives behind good uses - like 'lock down all hardware to protect the users' or 'ban all encryption because pedophiles use it'. I'm not implying that that's what you're doing, but this is exactly the argument they are going to come up with.
Another point worth mentioning is that the startup claims that their 'targeted ad' tech is 'identity blind'. (I have visceral hatred towards targeted ads). What is preventing them from making it identity-aware in the future if it succeeds by any chance - especially given the fact that targeted ads work better when it is identity-aware? It will eventually become the real-world equivalent of online cross-site tracking, no matter what the creator claim. Never concede ground to malicious technology just because it has some purported benign uses. Let them just add a braille pad and speaker on the side for users who need it.
this is what i ask about why do we need "Advertising". people do not "WANT" to see adverts, even if it is what has built technologies and paid for advancements.
i would rather stare at a blank wall with a drab white color than watch the newest variety of pizza topping by pizza hut or gilette shaving blade ad.
sure they pay to subsidize tech but i would rather pay to have them not be seen than being forced to watch.
the same is with internet. go and open any website without having ublock origin and you will be surprised or more like outraged because the ad cancer is really really bad.
The Walgreens down the street from me did this. For a month after they installed them, the whole wall of fridges was offline (warm inside and no product loaded), during which time I found other stores and stopped checking. Then when they were finally working, the user experience was pretty bad. In theory, what's supposed to happen is that when you're far away it shows you a giant-font indicator of what's inside, or an ad, and then when you get close, a motion sensor detects that you're there and replaces the display with a map of the contents, that's kind of like looking through glass.
The problem is that the motion sensor coverage area is too small, and the transition to map view is too slow, so you wind up standing in front of an opaque screen that's supposed to be showing you what's inside, but isn't. Then it's faster to open the door than it is to wait for it to change, so you wind up opening the door, searching for the product you wanted with the door open, and wasting a bunch of energy.
That and eye tracking to data mine shoppers' gazes for the benefit of marketing departments (and Cooler Screens) to optimize displays. Truly an "exciting" customer experience.
At least yours appears to be trying to do something. The Walgreens that have them around here just have the screen on a static display of drinks (about half of which are actually there when you open it.)
It could be that the fridges behind the screens are better insulated than transparent ones. But having to open them to see what's inside certainly makes it cost more.
It's quite likely that the screen generates a lot of heat that it's pushing back into the cooler. It's probably more than would have been absorbed from ambient.
So now you're paying twice for energy: once for the display, and again in increased refrigeration costs.
I wondered why people hated them so much as the description in the article seemed decent. It even seemed like it could work ok if the screen layout were efficient.
Thanks for clarifying that its not just a solution in search of a problem but a really horribly implemented solution.
My experience is the same. It does eventually show you what’s inside, but it’s not faster than just opening the door. I think something like AR would make a better experience.
It turns out that making a digital display work as well as human vision is a monumental technical challenge. For instance the makers of microscopes have only begun making research quality microscopes where you actually want to use the digital display instead of the eyepieces, for "difficult" specimens.
I just want Haagen Dazs ice cream. But I cannot see which freezer it is actually in until the ad stops, then it states it is in this particular freezer. But it isn't because they ran out and an employee hasn't restocked.
Next the doors on the freezer will lock until the ad has finished playing all the way through, and the ad will stop playing if you look away in distraction.
Also, the gas will stop pumping if you don't look at ad on the screen on the pump at the gas station and you must also verbally engage with the ad when it asks a question otherwise it stops pumping. If you answer enthusiastically it will waive the $2 surcharge because you had the audacity to use a debit card.
I am so glad I am getting old and will die soon so I don't have to live in this dystopian hellhole the new generation are creating for us.
> Next the doors on the freezer will lock until the ad has finished playing all the way through, and the ad will stop playing if you look away in distraction.
Also, the gas will stop pumping if you don't look at ad on the screen on the pump at the gas station and you must also verbally engage with the ad when it asks a question otherwise it stops pumping. If you answer enthusiastically it will waive the $2 surcharge because you had the audacity to use a debit card.
All this advertising shit needs to so desperately be banned for everyone's mental health but the country would probably lose its fucking mind if anyone tried, so the boring hellscape will just grind on getting worse.
Very true, browsing websites without AdBlock is already horrendous we can't allow it to bleed into the real world. We need to clamp down on ads with legal regulations, everything good is slowly ruined by them. Humans should have the right to live ad free as much as possible.
It already bled into reality. Look at this pic: https://l450v.alamy.com/450v/2g8fn09/an-mta-digital-advertis... It's an MTA customer information billboard in NY: 5% information, 95% advertisement. On this %5 useful space, they have to roll different arrivals, because it is too small to show them all at once. I really wish to the ones, who designed this, to have a lot of money they have to spend on medications.
Praying this startup crashes and burns so I can see what's actually physically inside the fridges again. If I'm in the store, I'm already looking to buy. I don't need more advertising to encourage me.
>To Avakian, it's simply an expected growing pain. Cooler Screens plans to educate >customers about the digital displays and launch features like voice recognition, >so shoppers can ask about prices or item locations.
So unintuitive and user-hostile that you have to "educate" customers about them.
I'm sure Walgreens is being well compensated for this.
I'm going to assume they got a bunch of VC money with a pitch of "we found a space that doesn't have ads on it yet, and we can fix that". And now they're paying more than the value of the ads to Walgreens. They'll probably raise another round of funding off the "success" of this contract, and then bail.
> If I'm in the store, I'm already looking to buy.
Yep exactly. In the big chain supermarket near me they continually play their brand jingle, along with ads for themselves. The jingle is repetitive and simple, just 7 notes that match the syllables of the "lyrics" - a tedious line about fresh food.
I'm already there buying stuff, so can only guess their tactic of spamming the store with their jingle, is based on some theory of reinforcement.
I've also noticed a news radio program I sometimes listen to, is now taking more breaks to advertise themselves. Not programs or content, but just how good they think they are in general, and how trustworthy they are. It's self-congratulatory cringe. The person who decides if they're trustworthy is me, the listener, not them telling me over and over that I should trust them.
> I've also noticed a news radio program I sometimes listen to, is now taking more breaks to advertise themselves. Not programs or content, but just how good they think they are in general, and how trustworthy they are. It's self-congratulatory cringe.
Touting a particular feature is generally a sign that you don't actually have that feature.
Food advertised as healthy ("now with 10 vitamins and minerals!") is probably junk food masquerading as healthy. The tomatoes and broccoli in the produce section, on the other hand, have no advertising but you know they're healthy.
Along those same lines, if I have to tell you how trustworthy I am, you should take everything I say with a grain of salt. IMHO you need to find a new (better) favorite news source.
I was so happy moving houses because I’ll stop hearing that jingle. I now have the choice between two supermarkets, and I purposedly avoid the old brand because of the jingle, even though the other seems a bit more expensive. It’s driving up sales!
>The screens, which were developed by the startup Cooler Screens, use a system of motion sensors and cameras to display what's inside the doors — as well as product information, prices, deals and, most appealing to brands, paid advertisements. The tech provides stores with an additional revenue stream and a way to modernize the shopping experience.
I really hate the trend of putting "smart" screens and networked ads everywhere. Those startup bros can go jump off a cliff with their trash ideas.
Is it really so hard for retailers to stick to their core competencies and keep the transaction simple between us? I give them money, they give me goods/services. No need to get random middlemen involved.
If they were just adding screens that created a new means of interacting, that would be much less infuriating. What makes to so bad is the removal of the standard means of interaction, forcing everyone to use the screens whether they want to or not.
If I see these color door screens someplace, I am simple going to walk out and refuse to give that store any business. I refuse to support companies that are actively trying to make my life harder.
I don't walk out. I make a point to open the doors as hard as I can to get them jammed open or bend the hinges a bit. I've managed to break one or two so far.
What proof is there that whoever wrote the comment actually did it? Besides, if they can be broken merely by being opened and closed hard, they aren’t going to stay long anyway.
This already is a core grocery competency. Did you think that the shelf placement of goods was chosen on a whim? Every shelf is a billboard where prime placement is auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Digital shelves are still stupid as all hell, but strictly from a KISS perspective, not a business one. The fact that this approach is so conceptually similar to existing SOP is probably why so many big grocers are getting swindled by this "innovation".
If only you could make the door out of a cheap, hard-surface material, made from abundant raw materials, one that is also transparent, allowing you to see what is inside in real time, with pretty much zero power usage.
I'm skeptical of that claim. The screen has to be really bright since stores are brightly lit themselves. Then you're putting something generating heat right up against the cavity you want to keep cold.
And then there's the accounts of people opening the doors to see what's inside because it's faster, or opening the doors only to find out the product they wanted is actually not there.
It would be shocking and the first time ever if the sales pitch of a product was completely made up and false. And the product turned out to be worse than the current solution in place. /s
Far more energy and natural resources are going to be used to make those big screens than melting some sand for glass. Double wall glass doors with a good vacuum are incredibly effective insulators too. I doubt infrared radiation that goes through the glass is a big concern in the real world--unless your 7/11 is on Mercury.
Glass is very energy-expensive to manufacture. It softens around 1000 degrees centigrade and melts around 1500 degrees centigrade, which makes it incredibly expensive to recycle into a product with a different geometry. For glass bottles at least, "recycling" consists of washing the bottle and shipping it back to the bottler. (Here in Korea, people use the empty bottles as ash trays, and occasionally a bottle with ash still in it is delivered to a consumer, making the news.)
I've never even seen double paned glass doors. That seems like the obvious first step if you care about insulation. (Hmm, never say never, I guess I probably have, I'll have to check walgreens next time I stop in to see how insulated the old doors are.)
I would be very skeptical because the display surface of the door always seems to be kind of toasty warm.
These doors are brightly lit; they are a lot of pixels; each door has the equivalent of a computer and a couple graphics cards in them. I believe that the doors even have active cooling fan vents on the sides (the doors are something like 3 inches thick!).
I've been at a store that used this technology and it was obnoxious. I really don't see how it will catch on or survive in the real world. The cost to run these screens 24/7 is enormous, especially in a world where energy costs are increasing. I doubt the ad revenue they make will come anywhere near recouping the costs after the honeymoon period and investor cash runs out.
It's not just the energy cost, but also the classic problem with IoT: is the company willing to stay on top of security patches and maintain the underlying software? If not, then it's only a matter of time before the software is either abandoned by the company rendering the screens useless, or compromised by hackers to display beheading videos all over the frozen foods aisle.
> is the company willing to stay on top of security patches and maintain the underlying software?
It is much worse than that. Even companies willing to stay on top have trouble, can be affected by zero days, data leaks, and eventually stop supporting their hardware.
"The items on display don't always match up with what's inside because products are out of stock."
That's been my experience. If not out of stock, perhaps shelved elsewhere.
Putting signage of any kind on fridge doors in retail is annoying. Just let us see the products. Aisle clutter in supermarkets has become worse, too. In some places it's so bad that it's not worth shopping in person any more.
I saw this company (Cooler Screens) pop up on a job board and I really really did not get it. What problem is being solved by replacing a clear panel with a tv screen only to have to track inventory using shoddy computer vision? Are they trying to save energy by preventing excess opens/closes? Customers already do not trust the “In Stock” status on stores’ websites, if they see an item out of stock on the screen, they will open it to see for themselves and there will be instances where the customer was right to look, further reinforcing this behavior.
This entire product seems like a thinly veiled effort to push more unwanted and intrusive ads. The technologist in me wants to believe there is more to this so I would be happy to be proven wrong, if anyone else has some insight.
Once most of the retailers have installed the product obscuring screens, another startup can produce an Augmented Reality 'x-ray' app that lets you see what's behind the screen by using your smartphone/smart glasses/whatever. They'll make money by selling ads, of course. Another ad-tech company will help a competing retailer place an ad in the AR app telling you about their store down the street that has installed these miraculous glass doors that let you just see their products. The store you're in will pay an analytics company big bucks to determine (in part, from a data feed from the AR app) their customer abandonment rate due to the screens. This data, combined with their competitor down the street taking customers, will allow a consultant to make bank recommending the original retailer install transparent doors. Ah, the virtuous cycle of tech.
> What problem is being solved by replacing a clear panel with a tv screen only to have to track inventory using shoddy computer vision?
Ads. They can make you look at an add at eye level on something you need to look at ( because you want to know if there's pizza or whatever there). It's a potentially pretty valuable ad for "super discount on X" or even regular crap.
The "problem" being solved is that the manufacturers of the products sold at Walgreens (presumably) profit from their sale, which means there is room for Walgreens (and an accomplice) to shake them down for a fee and still leave everyone willing to continue the relationship.
This is already done through methods like selling prime shelf space (e.g. eye level) but this only works to a certain extent. Cooler Screens and Walgreens are pioneering a new system where video screens and advertisements are used to further manipulate shoppers towards certain products. Manufacturers who play the game are able to maintain their existing level of sales or even slightly grow them, minus the additional rent they are paying Walgreens and Cooler Screens, at the expense of manufacturers who don't play the game.
This could backfire if the video screens both increase store costs (for the reasons you described) and reduce store revenues from upset customers who no longer wish to shop in such a hostile environment. On the other hand, Walgreens is apparently betting that they have capacity to harass their customers without losing too many of them.
I view advertisements as the second hand smoke of the modern age. In theory ads are only placed by the consent of the space owner, but in practice they serve to pollute our environments in psychologically harmful ways, in the same way second hand smoke pollutes our physical environment.
I wonder when the dystopia of Pohl's comes true. The Space Merchants has some interesting things about marketing. Like beaming adds to screens of vehicles and in future straight to retinas...
At least with smoking, the person who lit the cigarette intends to consume it. Here, even in the theoretical case, the ad serves no purpose to the space owner except to the extent that other people watch it.
"Cooler Screens CEO Avakian said he developed the concept after watching in-store customers whip out their phones to find product information and reviews."
Naturally consumers want less information asymmetry when buying things, that's why they seek external reviews. Let's try to add more to this asymmetry by hiding the actual product behind some manipulative short films!
Besides the annoying reality of not being able to see stock levels on product, when the screens go out (they do), you can't see what's in the cooler without opening the door.
A solution looking for a problem for sure. Maybe next they'll try one of those fancy transparent OLED panels and run ads on it!
It certainly feels like a solution looking for a problem from the customer's perspective, but I wonder whether it is actually worthwhile from an advertising perspective. Perhaps the aggravation to customers costs less money than the revenue of new sales that wouldn't have happened without a giant display advertising to people on the other side of the store.
Bingo. Companies of this size don't make these investments without a crystal clear business model. So while Joe consumer and most of HN decides this tech, I assure you that Walgreens has increased profits by a meaningful amount as a result of this investment.
They were investing in Theranos right before this, and they're undergoing a massive shrinkage right now. Forgive me if I don't innately trust Walgreen's business savvy at the moment.
I have the feeling that we reached or surpassed "peak retail pharmacy" at some point, but they aren't ready to admit it, so they're going on random tech benders hoping to appear relevant.
We have a few national chains that expanded hugely, probably far beyond their ability to service, as part of a huge turf war a few years ago. Now they're stuck with loads of locations to fill, and mediocre to terrible service in their core-competency. My family members are constantly fighting with the local chain pharmacy just to achieve things like "be able to collect a prescription during the posted hours" because their staffing has been so terrible.
All the while, they're bleeding customers in that space: you've got health plans desperately pushing mail-order, some plans that refuse to treat some pharmacies as preferred (I had to go to a different chain when I actually wanted to use my plan), and customers being more prone to comparison shopping that tells me that my prescription is cheaper to pay cash for at the local supermarket I'm already visiting, than to pay my co-pay-- or let alone the absurd cash price-- Walgreens or CVS wants for it.
But let's not talk about that. Let's focus on the mediocre convenience store bolted onto the side of the drug counter. The one which is nobody's first stop for any given product. We found a way to make it more miserable and now people will buy 4% more of those weird house-brand snack foods!
> The one which is nobody's first stop for any given product.
Walgreens unfortunately is mine for many things, due to being the most walkable location for staples in my neighborhood, but they put zero focus into it here. The last few years have just been a steady stream of stopping into Walgreen for something only to realize that they ran out and never intend to restock.
They make lots of investments that don't turn out. But they never make investments that aren't supported by a logical business model that makes sense for them. In this case, I am certain that tests show people will open doors less (saving energy costs), buy more and more often (ads) and other benefits that outweigh the gallery shouting "this is stupid."
Is it full proof? Of course not. Models are inaccurate all the time. But this article and the comments here acting like this is so obviously a terrible idea are silly.
I recently went to the local Action, and it turns out they were 'running an experiment':
They want to push people to the self checkout as much as possible, so they actually decided to close cashier checkouts for everyone paying with cards. In fact, all cashier checkouts were simply closed, and if you wanted to pay with cash, they had to call around to find a cashier and open one.
Self checkout zone looked like a slice of hell. All self checkout machines were non stop signalling they needed attention from the cashier. The only available cashier, a young girl, was running around like crazy, everybody angry at her, and she was excusing herself to all clients. She was completely exhausted. There was a long row behind the self check out.
I want to buy an USB stick. These are only available at cashier checkouts, and I am not allowed there unless I pay with paper money - this was confirmed by another staff member. I kid you not, you actually can't buy an USB stick anymore, except with cash. So I hid my purchases in a corner (with an OK from their staff of course), went outside the shop, used my bank card at an ATM to get some paper money, went back inside the shop. The girl opened a cashier checkout, gave me the USB stick, and I paid cash and got my change. She actually looked glad to be anywhere else than in self checkout hell for a minute. Meanwhile, multiple people were actually literally screaming for attention in the self checkout zone. When we got back, all 6 self checkout machines were blocked for some dumb whiney reason, and everyone was glaring angrily at both of us for the additional delay.
The basic idea for a shop is: I get stuff, they get money. It seems a lot of the big chains are so far gone trying to optimize whatever metric, they forgot this basic idea.
I worked on a digital signage product back in the early 2010s that used OpenCV to track consumers using facial data. Those front facing sensors are cameras.
The HN user in me suspects some sort of conspiracy of this “startup” paying retailers to do this. I can’t imagine a company unwittingly annoying consumers this much. The whole idea is so unsettling and dystopian feeling, I’m sure even the people behind Cooler Screens knows it’s awful.
I'm certain this was a high-level deal between the two companies, and both executives got a bonus while the lower down in the org chart you go more obvious it is how awful these are.
There's a video in that article too and it shows the stupidity of this design better..
So the transparent doors are now giant screens that show video ads all over them until you're in front of it.
When you're in front of it, it shows all the stuff it may have inside.
The "may" is where the really stupid part of this tech comes into play -- the screen shows what is available on a fully stocked shelf but when you open it to look inside, you can see there may be entire rows/products that aren't in stock (as seen in some customer videos in the article).
I know some people like the “low distraction” of something like CNN’s lite mode but I hate it. Since there are no pictures I can’t see what they’re talking about, and that’s often important for the story (like here).
An ad blocker serves me just fine. Or I could turn on reader mode in my browser. Either way I still get the pictures. And they’re important to me.
This version is much better. Should have been the OP link. Honestly it doesn’t look terrible from a UX perspective while it’s working. Pointless maybe, but it’s much better than some displays I have seen which don’t show all the products on screen at once.
Walgreens has always tried to harvest every single penny they could squeeze from their customers, mainly by selling the customers PII to anyone and everyone, so this is no big surprise to me.
It reminds me of the obnoxious talking gas pumps that play ads while you’re filling your car.
At first there used to be a “mute” button to where you could silence the crap and all the plastic was worn away from everyone mashing it trying to shut it up.
Now I no longer see any option to mute the ads.
I hate ads with a passion and won’t allow them to run on my devices.
Mainly for security and privacy but the aggravation they cause is palpable.
Whenever I work on someone else’s computer and open a web browser I am in shock that people can even concentrate with all the garbage on the screen.
I'd guess it's either a flat-out lie, or they described a hypothetical perfect version of the system and counted someone as positive if they thought there was even one slightly good thing about it.
They are essentially (bar the software) a huge TV (or digital signage) screen + sensors/webcams (and most probably Wi-Fi or similar), possibly with some added extra cost for thermal insulation and/or "side" cooling.
But they are huge, something like 80 cm x 2 m, using diagonal inches something like 85-90.
Wouldn't that have a cost in the 2,000-3,000 US$ range each?
"some" shoppers? Who are the ones who like it? It's a blood nuisance to have to open the door to see if the claimed product is actually there. It's especially bad over the last two years when stuff unpredictably goes in and out of stock.
Is there anyone who actually likes these monstrosities?
Only possible scenario where this might be helpful is on hot humid summer days where the inside of the glass doors are covered in frost because some idiots keep the doors open far too long when choosing their ice cream.
But just having a "dumb" label outside the door would work just as well.
> Walgreens risks angering them by solving a problem that shoppers didn't know existed. The company wants to engage more people with advertising (...)
Contrary to a lot of claims, they are trying to solve a problem. The problem is the problem is of no interest to customers and actually creates problems for customers.
I also wonder how long it will be a benefit for businesses. It is difficult to see how the advertising space can maintain its value if this is rolled out everywhere. It is difficult to see how the advertising space can maintain value once the novelty wears off and consumers largely ignore it. It is difficult to see how stores will manage the expectations and frustrations of consumers.
Back in the 90s during the dotcom bubble, there was a startup that planned to do things like give people free eggs with ads printed on them. I never got any free eggs and I remember thinking if you give everything away by making money on the ads, what the heck are the ads supposed to be selling?
Even without the eggs, that still seems to be a problem with a lot of the internet economy—a lot of ads seem to be directed towards getting people to visit another site here they get—more ads.
I don't think new value is created. What's happening is that value that used to be kept in-house is being absorbed by the AdTech middleman ecosystem.
The classic example: When the local supermarket ran an ad in the daily printed newspaper, the publisher kept basically 100% of the ad spend (minus the marginal costs for newsprint, ink, and the labour to deal with the ad copy. Now they submit an ad to some network which generously kicks some percentage of that revenue back to localnewspaper.com.
In this case, I'd expect that some of the money being thrown at Cooler Screens is coming from other ad spend verticals-- maybe a few less TV ads or one less page in the weekly newspaper circular.
If Walgreens built their own screens it would still be a stupid idea, but it would probably be more cost-effective than paying someone else who owns the technology and is probably mostly interested in making a pitch to go public some day.
This is at least partially about papering over inventory, theft or stocking neatness issues without increasing their inventory on hand or finding enough staff. Walgreens has just about had it trying to make its current retail model work in some markets. Ultimately, solutions like Cooler Screens are stopgaps on the way to smaller stores that just vend, hand out online orders, and other things that don't require managing shelves and aisles on the retail side. (Source: a regional retail manager at WBA.)
I live near a walgreens with this, and the worst part about it is when the screen is broken, and it doesn't serve the basic purpose of allowing me to know what beverages are behind the window.
Actually, now that I think of it when the system is "working properly" I still can't be sure of what's behind the door if I open it.
How many people here who were annoyed by the experience ended up purchasing less or nothing at all as a result?
The only way to make this go away is, when you come upon one of these displays, set your items down and leave without purchasing anything. Spend your money somewhere without one while you still have the option.
I saw these for the first time at a Walgreens in Florida recently -- I hate these things -- I want to see what's inside! (and I'm not interested in having to watch an ad before it'll tell me where the milk is). I feel like it's out of some sort of dystopian Robocob/Snowcrash-esque story.
Hey Walgreens, when I see this I’ll just never return to your store to subject myself to this garbage. Same as I never return to gas stations with screeching televisions on the gas pumps or retail stores with a million blaring televisions shouting ads in every isle.
I actually really love the screens. I can’t wait until they open up their developer API! They are offering a starter kit for your home refrigerator where you can practice building ads using their WYSIWYG tool. I’m pretty psyched for the native app toolkit, for now you have to write your CoolerApp in React but pretty soon with the CoolerAppNX devkit you’ll get full native access to the live camera feeds, OpenCV and Google TPU module, even be able to read the cooler temperature in near real time!
Just think of the innovative apps apps apps and experiences we’ll be able to build with those new features! CoolerGraph is coming out soon, can’t wait to attend the hack a thon at CoolerLabs!! They have free Pizza and RedBull!
Cooler Screens CEO is either delusional or manipulative. Or has access to some unusually accurate consumer research that somehow contradicts the apparently incorrect broadly accepted truth.
Lol. When I read the title I immediately jumped to the (silly) assumption that they replaced the doors with open mesh screen doors. Had a real hard time guessing why!
Yep, I had the same first thought, the worrying part is that I immediately thought about something like mesh made of some new material (let's say 3D printed graphene nanotubes) in order to save energy.
Recall that Walgreens has a history of making moronic decisions, like contracting with Theranos in spite of receiving clear-cut warnings against doing so.
This is right up there with gas station pumps that blare video ads at max volume while pumping gas. The “experience” is extra good when a different ad kicks off simultaneously for the person on the other side of the pump, or the next pump over. Somebody should be facing criminal penalties for these.
The Walgreens by my office, in the city, got these. The motion detection seems to work fine. But it’s pretty jarring look at the beautiful, fully-stocked image on the screen but then open the door to find a picked-over, mostly-empty mess.
One interesting thing I’ve noticed about these at my local WGs, they display their product cost next to the retail price when it’s showing the product, so I get a reminder that I’m paying 99 cents for a Arizona tea that cost them 4.
This reminds me when McDonalds cycled through fullscreen ads obscuring their digital menus. They also slowly cycled through menu items and deals, leading to awkward delays at the cash registers waiting to see the full menu.
I don’t get why they would use opaque screens. There are transparent glass screens now, Disney uses them all the time. You could see inside and still display graphics on the glass. Fuck man…
The next development seems easy to predict: users profiling and targeted ads through detection of the passerby's phone Bluetooth BD_ADDR, both at the counter and the fridges.
Working on this must be one of those jobs you take because the pay was good and the interview was easy, so you shrug and take a paycheck for a while. Not unlike most SE jobs I guess
No. Just no. Things like this makes the shopping experience much more unpleasant. I'll certainly avoid stores that use this sort of thing while that's possible.
Freezer doors ice over and fog up? What are you talking about. I don't think I've even seen frost or fog on a freezer door. Maybe around the perimeter of the glass, but never blocking anything. In fact, that would make me suspect everything in cooler got too warm and spoiled.
If people really don't like them, I'm surprised a little mild civil disobediance campaign hasn't broken out, such as wedging the door open after getting something out. They'd soon get the message.
They have cameras on all of them. They could identify you can ban you. But I still agree, they should let in the san francisco shop lifters to smash these unholy screens.
> Retailers are eager to add new experiences to their physical stores. But many consumers aren't eager to change their habits — and they certainly aren't used to watching freezer-display ads.
> "People really appreciate their routines. They're not always seeking excitement," said Julio Sevilla
Has CNN introduced a parody section when I wasn't looking? Is this some sort of joke article, satirising corporate nonsense-speak and journalists blindly reprinting press releases?
This isn't a matter of shoppers being scared of "change" or disliking "excitement" - nobody is "excited" to "engage with advertising", they're just inconvenienced. This is walgreens making the shopping experience worse in the hopes of making more money.
How someone so unable to speak plainly could forge a career as a professional journalist I have no idea....