• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, July 22, 2013

To be honest, I'm indifferent when it comes to the birth of the royal baby. I understand why it's a big deal, but I've never been one to vicariously live through the personal lives of others.

But, thanks to social media and live coverage of the labour (I'm going with the British spelling here), the news has been unavoidable. I even know the name of the Duchess of Cambridge's (Kate Middleton) gynecologist.

Why on earth do I know the name of her gynecologist?

It's the real-time nature of the world we live in, I suppose. We need to know what's happening when it's happening. It's not a bad thing. It's why Google bought Waze for real-time traffic data and it's why real-time local mobile advertising is starting to take off. One of the major purposes of today's ad tech is to reach the consumer with something relevant when it's relevant.

Well, what seemed relevant to everyone today was the baby from across the pond...so back to that.

There were live royal baby watch cameras all over the Internet before the baby was born. I went to one of them (it was in the name of research, okay?), and BOY was it exciting:

I mean…wow. Can we get another look at that?

Riveting stuff. And you and I got to watch it in real-time. And even if you didn't want to watch it, I'm assuming that you, like me, were kept in the loop anyway thanks to social media.

I wonder how many people will be retargeted today and the rest of this week as a result of recent Google searches of theirs such as "baby" or "when is the royal baby due?" etc.

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