Minority Report - Personal Advertising in the Future
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN uses it as the go-to reference whenever a story involves ad tracking, facial recognition or personalized billboards.
What it is
A one-minute clip from the film Minority Report showing digital signage that recognizes a passerby and personalizes ads to him by name. It depicts a vision of targeted advertising driven by biometric identification.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2016 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Cites newman314 · 2016-02 · on “The Ad Blocking Wars”
So... something like this? [this video] It's scary just how much Minority Report has predicted has come true. It's almost like the movie gave advertisers a playbook.
Cites flashman · 2016-04 · on “Russian photographer matches random people with social network photos”
Minority Report's personal advertising is getting closer and closer: [this video] And they won't even need retinal scanners. Facial recognition will probably be good enough.
Cites tyingq · 2017-05 · on “A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system”
For those that haven't seen it, here's the scene where all the digital signage knows who John Anderton is: [this video] The movie was released in 2002, so fairly prescient.
Cites tyingq · 2017-10 · on “If all cars were autonomous”
Minority Report does a decent job depicting several of these topics. Self driving cars[1], intrusive ads[2], and "no crime". [1] [LINK] [2] [this video] Not bad for a 2002 film adaptation of a 1956 short story.
Cites jalgos_eminator · 2019-02 · on “American Airlines Has Cameras in Their Screens Too”
Imagine if cameras could read your retinas and identify you like in Minority Report ( [this video] ). Though we're not there yet, facial recognition tech is almost ready for something similar.
Cites trescenzi · 2025-01 · on “Used Meta AI, now Instagram is using my face on ads targeted at me”
There’s a scene in Minority Report of a mall and it’s basically this. The billboards scan you and then target you directly as you go by. [this video]
Cites supertrope · 2026-02 · on “What Your Bluetooth Devices Reveal About You”
The Hollywood movie Minority Report has a scene where an advertising display personalizes the ad by your name. [this video]
Critical throwaway94856 · 2019-06 · on “I left the ad industry because of data tracking”
I also work for an ad tech supplier. And yes, there is lots of incompetence and inefficiencies going around. But they sure are trying anyway. I recently saw the Minority Report targeted advertising scene[0] as an aspirational video in an internal document outlining business goals. [0] [this video]