First, let's address this whole scary idea of advertisers understanding / knowing / caring about what you think of an ad. Many of us, let's face it, don't want to see any ads. If you disconnect your cable, you're a good portion of the way there, but you may still see limited ads with a streaming service like Hulu / Hulu Plus.
Hulu Plus has a feature called ad tailor, that lets you skip an ad, replace an ad, or simple choose 'this ad is not relevant to me'. No more tampon commercials for a single guy. I can still go get a snack or walk away when ads come on, but when I do sit through an ad, its now at least 75% of the time for something I'm semi-interested in (games, phones, cars, music, movies, etc.) BUT, I still have to keep picking things when a new ad comes up that I don't like.
So let's take it a step further, if there's a service that anonymously records that it thinks I hated an ad (for aggregate purposes - i.e. out of an audience of targeted gamers, 80% thought the new COD ad was stupid, 20% seemed to like it), AND for me personally - i.e. person X hates all phone commercials, don't show him any,
without me needing to rage about it on a forum, post about it, even click a like/hate button, honestly, I don't care. Good. Let them have my like or dislike. I actually believe that will improve my experience, and possibly even the feedback of whether the ad agency did a good job on the campaign. Really, what's so bad about having an automatic like / dislike option on every ad? I wish such a thing existed on vanilla Cable TV services. I know I'd be hitting the 'hate' button everytime I saw those stupid Progressive commercials.
If I change my mind and don't want Microsoft / advertisers to know my reaction to an ad, I'll put a piece of masking tape over the camera (or hopefully choose the opt-out option). Problem solved. I really don't believe Microsoft is going to upload video of me - if they are, they're fucking crazy, and will turn off most of their audience. It makes a lot more sense for them to record reactions as a value not a picture (smiled, frowned, showed screen middle finger, etc.)
There's a website called GameTrailers. It's full of trailers. AKA ads. People go there voluntarily and watch ads, uh, I mean trailers. There are some kinds of ads that people seek out, and if there's a way to have me see trailers for new games, and not see any Centrum Silver for Women commercials mixed in with that, then I'm not so sure that's a bad thing for me.
Then of course, there's the whole 'I just don't want to see any ads' option. And I agree, there should be an option for that. Opt out of the whole data submission thing, stay off of Xbox Live, use your game console the same way you did your NES. There's a market for that, and Microsoft should just shut up and collect the money from those people too. It's all about choice.
That's completely different though. I use my PS3 every day and I haven't seen those "ads" in years. You have to actually select that Icon in order to see them. And if I remember correctly it displays whatever is new or selling well on PSN. It's not like the Xbox where if you like it or not you have a Doritos add on your dashboard
That's not how it works by default, I believe. The PS3 shows you ads automatically when you logon AFAIK, unless you turn it off (an option I much appreciate).