Sky TV starts targetted Ads, Tired of London and Start The Week

It's been something of an accepted wisdom that Media messages that 50% of the money spent is wasted but it's not possible to know which 50% it is.
For many years now the idea of delivering messages that are applicable to the target audience has been tantalizingly close but remained  something of a holy grail for marketing departments of many institutions.

The Set Top Box holds the messages for insertion

Some advertising is by it's nature near universal, Coca-Cola springs (but this too can be targeted if the information of what constitutes your household or where and when you shop is known)  to my mind other messages that seek to influence people need to be sent to people in their considering the purchase mode, perhaps something like buying a replacement car.
So when I heard on Money Box that Sky TV in UK was starting to use their STBs to personalize the adverts I was intrigued, modern Set Top Boxes have internal storage that can be the home for 'caching' paid for messages which are then used to replace non relevant advertising.
It seems that AdSmart has started delivering customised messages for clients such as Tesco and RBS (one of UK banks that's currently majority state owned) if you're not happy with this level of granularity you can opt out but do consider that it's widely accepted in the on-line universe that intelligent advertising is the way to go and the use of more selective advertising has been US practice for many years.

When In London

Yesterday when looking for some background on the London Masonic hall I came across this site ( Tired of London ) superb for visitors and residents of this mega world city.

 BBC Radio 4's Start The Week

There are a number of Radio presenters who to me are almost a guarantee of worthwhile listening amongst them I'd include Matthew Sweet, Russell  Davies and Tom Sutcliffe so hearing that Tom was on Start the Week I though this'll be good, it might be heresy but I much prefer Tom to Andrew Marr.
In fact the programme was very good -lots of stuff to think about around what I think of as a very hot topic, Neuroscience and Free Will  - the BBC synopsis is

Dick Swaab who argues that everything we do and don't do is determined by our brain. He explains why 'we are our brains'. The philosopher Julian Baggini doesn't dispute the pre-eminence of brain processes but believes it doesn't tell the whole story

You can listen using BBC Iplayer radio  a programme on TV that brought history to life  for me was The Man who Discovered Egypt it was all about Flinders Petrie who will be a new name to many of us.