Your dreams will not be yours anymore New techniques for growing ads with dreams

Similar to the movie Inception, and according to a recent survey, 77% of marketing professionals plan to profit over the next three years, by using dream engineering and technology to cultivate and insert advertisements into consumers' dreams, in an attempt to maximize profits.

The film industry is undoubtedly one of the biggest sources of inspiration in our world, in which modern technology plays a major role in managing and organizing most of its social, economic and entertainment aspects, as well as scientific and practical. Today, scientific and technological development contributes to transforming things that until recently were science fiction into reality.

During the recent period in which there was much talk about the science of dream engineering and the exploitation of modern technologies to market products and commercial goods through dreams as well, the movie Inception, written and directed by Christopher Nolan in 2010, may be one of the most prominent examples of this.

Do you remember the plot of the movie? Cope, the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio, was a very talented thief. However, the places he was targeting and stealing from were not a bank or a museum, but rather he was targeting information in people's subconscious mind during the moment of dreaming, when the mind is at its weakest. But what Cope excelled at this time was cultivating a new idea and changing ideas rather than stealing them.

How did Inception become a reality?

A study prepared by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology indicated the possibility of engineering dreams, and pointed out that the device you designed is able to penetrate dreams and communicate with sleepers. Thus, the movie Inception fell out of the sci-fi category and entered the category of semi-real action movies.

The study inspired claims earlier made by three researchers from MIT, Harvard and Montreal universities of what they called a "dream violation." However, the Massachusetts study looking at how dreaming affects learning is being conducted to better understand and treat nightmares caused by PTSD, according to the official data presented by the study.

Two of the three scientists have developed a device designed to communicate with sleeping people and hack their dreams, which means the process is possible.

In a report published in February 2021, the scientists claimed they were able to share a two-way conversation with a person in the midst of a lucid dream. The sleeper would hear sound signals from the laboratory, and then respond with specific eye movements, in order to solve simple arithmetic totals. This echoes how Cobb's team uses musical cues to refer to the wake kicks featured in Inception.

Engineering of dreams the new market for the world of marketing

A striking point is the interest of marketing companies in the architecture of dreams. According to the 3 scientists who authored the study: “Multiple marketing studies are openly testing new ways to modify and stimulate purchasing behavior through sleep and dream penetration.”

Scientists note that companies are openly testing new ways to alter and drive buying behavior by hacking sleep and dream content. In other words, displaying stimuli before or during sleep to influence the content of the dream turns into commercial and profit-oriented use.

Details on how to do this are not yet clear. However, marketing firms' interest in "dream engineering" is troubling. According to a recent survey, 77% of marketing professionals plan to profit over the next three years, by inserting advertisements into consumers' dreams, in an attempt to raise the ceiling of profits as much as possible.

Hacking dreams

Movies will continue to be technology's most powerful prophecy. No one expected Inception to become a reality less than 11 years after its release, and no one could have predicted that a new profession called "dream hacking" would emerge. Which are used today for commercial and marketing purposes, and may be used tomorrow for more dangerous purposes.

The study authors say it's important to act before it's too late, because while "dream nursery" has practical uses such as treating PTSD, it's only a matter of time before tech companies make digital watches and wearables, as well as apps and other technologies. Those who monitor our sleep start selling that data for profit or use those tools to hack our dreams while we sleep.

The scientists provided evidence for their theory in the advertising campaign for the Molson Coors beer that accompanied the annual National Football League Championship in the United States of America in 2021, promising to provide free beer in return for participating in the "Nursery of Dreams" study. The phenomenon developed much faster after the advertising campaign, which prompted the three scholars to write an open letter in which they strongly criticized the advertisers, and called for the enactment of new advertising legal regulations in the United States. Forty scholars signed the document, demanding that rules be set against subliminal messages in advertisements to ban penetration of dreams.