There's a long tradition among news gatherers to hoodwink readers, listeners, and viewers on this day with some sort of bogus news story that seems "close, but not quite." Because we're all well-conditioned to treat stories on this day with some skepticism, it's pretty harmless fun for the most part.
 
When writing today's Videoactive Report, I considered continuing the tradition. Only problem was, every story I dreamed up didn't seem so far-fetched. More to the point, it seems I run something at least once a month that I greet with extreme doubt at first glance.
 
Technology is developing at such a furious pace (the ad platforms it enables come and go like the Concorde), that there would be precious little difference between my forays at humor and our monthly realities.
 
When I read aout the SpotRunner platform that lets politicians buy pre-made commercials, I at first thought the April Fools Day machinery had just started up early. Then I saw the website was real.
 
Or how about a scenario where buildings and storefronts greet you by name, and send targeted ad messages that by-golly "know" what you're looking for. Well, by reading the right sort of RFID chip on a credit card you're carrying -- and by reading similar chips from your shopping bag's contents -- this actually is possible right now, freaky though it sounds.
 
Movies like Bladerunner and Minority Report did such a great job depicting advertising dystopias that whenever the blogosphere reports on some new privacy-bending opportunity to advertise, references to such classics are now de rigeur. But ad worlds don't bug us in movies because they're fiction -- and future-based fiction at that.
 
In a way, advertising's place within science fiction offers a permanent record of our April Fools Day impulse, predicting futures that in time won't seem foolish at all. So as you skeptically dismiss everything you may happen to hear on this day, don't be surprised when the next time you hear it, it's true.
 
No fooling.