For the moment, at Meta, the metaverse is a lot of money invested, but no income yet. Mark Zuckerberg’s new fad is attracting doubts and criticism, but the company firmly believes in it and recently announced its new virtual reality headset, the Meta Quest Pro. And according to some reports, the company would obviously consider using all the data available to satisfy its business model based on targeted advertising, starting with eye tracking.
Meta has thus published its privacy policy regarding the Quest Pro. The document explains: “We collect additional data about how you use your headset (including eye tracking) to help Meta personalize your experiences and improve Meta Quest.” If the company does not explicitly mention targeted advertising, the terms used such as “personalize your experiences” refer to it most of the time in Mark Zuckerberg and his collaborators.
Eye tracking data could then be used “in order to understand whether people are interacting with an advertisement or not”as Meta’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, explains in an interview with the FinancialTimes. Combined with algorithms to read the emotions and interest of users in their gaze, such data could bring targeted advertising into a field never explored before. But, to exploit this data, Meta would still have to succeed in creating something other than a marketing craze for its metaverse. The public, too, is to be convinced.