New App Gives Free Movie Tickets To People Who Watch 15 Minutes of Ads (indiewire.com) 142
MoviePass's original founder and CEO is launching a new company, reports IndieWire, "to score viewers movie tickets for the low, low price of sitting through 15 to 20 minutes of advertisements."
Before you point out that everyone already does that when they watch trailers in the theater, know this: PreShow wants to utilize facial recognition and track how much attention you're paying to each ad. "If it weren't for facial recognition, I don't think we could still do it," Stacy Spikes, PreShow's founder and chief executive, said in an interview with CNET last week. "If not, they could game this all day long."
Here's how it works, per CNET: "Forgoing a password, PreShow's app will only unlock with your phone's facial recognition technology. And while you're watching the ads to earn that free ticket, your phone's camera monitors your level of attention. Walk away or even obscure part of your face? The ad will pause after five seconds."
It's being launched through a Kickstarter campaign, which describes PreShow as "the first ad-supported moviegoer network," saying that the service will be available this July. It also promises that the ad content "is high quality, entertaining, and is an entertainment value in and of itself..."
And though it monitors your face, "Privacy is a top concern. Nobody is recorded, no personally identifiable data is shared, all data is aggregated and anonymized to brand partners."
Here's how it works, per CNET: "Forgoing a password, PreShow's app will only unlock with your phone's facial recognition technology. And while you're watching the ads to earn that free ticket, your phone's camera monitors your level of attention. Walk away or even obscure part of your face? The ad will pause after five seconds."
It's being launched through a Kickstarter campaign, which describes PreShow as "the first ad-supported moviegoer network," saying that the service will be available this July. It also promises that the ad content "is high quality, entertaining, and is an entertainment value in and of itself..."
And though it monitors your face, "Privacy is a top concern. Nobody is recorded, no personally identifiable data is shared, all data is aggregated and anonymized to brand partners."
How is this different (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds exactly like showing up at the scheduled time for any movie in the theater.
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PreShow's app will only unlock with your phone's facial recognition technology. Your phone's camera monitors your level of attention. Walk away or even obscure part of your face? The ad will pause after five seconds.
Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I may have a better one. How about... I give you the finger and you give me my phone call.
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Don't worry, you can probably just play a video of you paying attention to the phone and it'll take in place of you actually watching the ad.
Lo tech / Hi tech (Score:2)
Don't worry, you can probably just play a video of you paying attention to the phone and it'll take in place of you actually watching the ad.
The low tech version:
- Hacked android / app, piping the content of a pre-recorded video into the video input of the app.
(In a couple of months, they'll try various way to fingerprint the input to detect if it's in a loop, clever users will trivially bypass these checks, just by flipping random pixels / adding noise).
The high tech version:
- teleprompter-style two-way mirror like the ones used by every single youtuber.
Except that instead of youtube, the camera is actually the android app playing the a
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I know I know, vid. or it didn't happen [youtube.com]...
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That's exactly what I came here to say.
Though they could use the data usefully even then to train an AI to distinguish between a person watching and a recording (since the recording won't be able to do face and eye motion in reaction to the ad.)
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Don't worry, you can probably just play a video of you paying attention to the phone and it'll take in place of you actually watching the ad.
I was just thinking of pointing the camera at a photograph of myself.
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Sorry everybody. There was a guy in the back who sneezed and missed something. Please stand by as we restart the 15 minutes of ads again.
Why bother? (Score:2)
Don't you have to watch 15 minutes of ads a the theater anyways? How about just go to bittorrent or pay the money.
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Feed bogus video of engaged faces to virtual android devices running the app,
2) Sell the tickets.
3) Profit.
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Cut up and down your arms, not across. Get the job done.
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Print it on a color printer
3) Put it in front of your phone, start the app
4) Come back 15 minutes later
5) Go see a movie for free
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How about just challenging the underlying craziness. So I have largely been video commercial free for quite some number of years, so much so, they have become extremely offensive and aggravating, unless they are well mannered, informative and not full of screaming bullshit (I find nothing will put me more off a product, that the screaming bullshit variety of ads). I do have money to spend and I most certainly could not give a fuck about watching something I find personally intrusive and offensive (with rega
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It's a stupid idea. It'll fall flat on it's face. I'm openly mocking it.
The Flaw in the Business Model (Score:2)
You're absolutely right, and when I learn how to use my mod points, I'll mod your comment up!
It does seem these days that companies are obsessed about getting as many clicks or eyeballs as possible without actually considering who is clicking or... umm... eyeballing.
The only real reason for spending money on advertising is to sell something. Surely you can work out roughly how much money people have got to spend by looking at what they'll do to save money? So... 20 minutes watching ads for a £5 cinema
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Many of the people who go to movie theaters these days are young, and don't have much disposable income. They also are tech-savvy, and will latch on to cheats in a heartbeat.
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Instead of all that crap, how about this one simple trick:
1) Connect VPN
2) Go to any pirate site
3) See a movie for free
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No 'Profit' step.
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Yes. They want you to watch 30 minutes.
Although this will only appeal to the demographic who don't have much disposable income. Not sure how good they are for advertisiers.
Some people are broke but disapprove of piracy.
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Ah, but it doesn't count if you don't watch, so it does face and eye tracking. People are still naive into thinking your views are immensely valuable, but at least in this case you might actually get something back from it instead of just intrusive target ads (though undoubtedly they will sell your data for extra "monetization").
Also, if anyone has see the M.A.N.I.A.C. series on Netfix, this news reminded me a lot of the "Ad Buddy" idea, a person who follows you around reciting ads to you so that you can e
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Watch 20 minutes of ads for the privilege of watching 20 minutes of ads.
Pass.
You forgot the 2 hours of product placements in the movie ...
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Or associated toys/merch for movies set in fantasy worlds.
Insanity (Score:5, Funny)
Surely if you are off the demographic that is willing to sit through 20 minutes of advertising in order to get a free/cheap movie, you are the kind of person who has no money to buy whatever shite the adverts are trying to sell you?
not-torrent (Score:2)
Pandering to the cheapskates doesn't make sense. However, the ad-mongers are desparate for funding right now since a recession is looming.
the ad-mongers aren't the only desperate.
If someone is that cheap, then why are they not fetching an ad-free copy from BitTorrent?
The main point of all these attempts at cheap tickets etc. is to try to get people out of BitTorrent (or Netflix/Amazon/whatever/wtfbbqlol) and *back into* the movie theaters.
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I haven't seen a movie in a theater for about a decade now. First Off-rental DVDs got cheaper than a ticket, and they came with extras besides the movie. Then broadband got fast enough to download them. Sharing a big room with kids using their smartphones isn't much of an attraction either.
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If you value your leisure time at the same rate as your work time, then you can't afford to buy your leisure time.
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Or someone smart enough to just point the camera at another phone playing a video of someone's attentive face.
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Well, if he's dumb enough to not know how to block the ad, he might be dumb enough to actually buy that shit, too.
Endless loop of me being 'interested'. (Score:2)
I guess I'm going to record myself being VERY interested for 15 seconds and just perfectly loop it.
Do 60 minutes of work to get "free" movies (Score:2)
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You poor minimum wage earning bastard.
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Memory is failing you, again, drinkypoo.
That's good (Score:2)
So... (Score:2)
Who wants to join me in a new startup? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I wonder what the going rate on Amazon's Mechanical Turk is to watch a 15-20 minute video..
Revolutionary (Score:2)
Can I pay the regular ticket price and avoid ALL of the advertisements?
Didn't think so.
Black Mirror (Score:2)
How this type of scheme could be worth a free movie ticket is beyond me. But, I suppose some people will do anything.
Anyway... yep... Black Mirror season 1 episode 2 "Fifteen Million Merits" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The marginal cost of showing a film is near zero, assuming it is not sold out and they would have to add another screen. In other words, the cost to the theater is about the same if there is one person in the room, or all the seats are filled. So whatever amount of extra customers they can get in the theater, who will buy drinks and snacks (which is where they make most of their profit) is good. With digital projectors, there isn't even any film wear, like you get with physical film prints. The main cos
Limited time offer (Score:2)
Until "Stacy Spikes" [who?] can convince advertisers that there's premium value in ads force-fed to a population that gets increasingly good at pretending to pay attention to them while doing something else altogether [yes, dear...]
Re-purposing mannequins (Score:2)
Now we know where all those heads can go when all the stores are shutting down.
Black Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
This was covered in the dystopian future in Black Mirror S01E02. Forced to watch ads from your box.
Ugh. Do not want.
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with the difference being that it was being forced upon with no way to not watch ads.
here people are doing it by choice.
And don't not forget about the trailers (Score:5, Insightful)
So they'll throw a bunch of adds that the people wanting free tickets will have to watch. I bet that will be before the set of ads that is normally played because the theatres aren't going to give up that revenue, especially in the first couple of weeks a movie plays when they get almost nothing (~10%) of ticket sales. Then there's the 15 to 20 minutes of trailers that show us the only good parts of movies that will be on a year from now and if we're lucky those scenes will actually be in the movie.
And if we buy the movie for home use we're stuck not being able to skip past through the FBI and anti-piracy warnings and sometimes even the trailers too. Wonderful if you are watching a ten year old movie on DVD and want to see trailers for movies that came out even before then.
Then they break up the streaming sites into almost 20 sites by the time Disney and all the new ones get introduced. Each one with it's own unique content so you have to subscribe to a whole bunch of them to get what you want. Just like cable and having to get a bunch of packages leaving you with a huge bill every month.
And the corporate big wigs wonder why people turned to downloading content. /rant
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> so you have to subscribe to a whole bunch of them to get what you want.
Nah, if you aren't willing to pirate, just subscribe to services on a rotating basis. When you run out of interesting stuff on one service, cancel and go to the next. By the time you run out of services, and go back to the first, it should have some new content.
Ad Buddy (Score:1)
How soon until friend proxy is a thing too? I need friends to go to the movies with.
Privacy is a top .. ha ha.. concern (Score:1)
Ha hah ah ho ho h o ho ho ho...
How many times has Facebook said this. I think at this point, it's agame for them to see if they can get away with it "just one more time!"
Of *COURSE* this app will violate your privacy. It's just a question of how much.
bait and switch (Score:2)
can you really trust them to give you a ticket after all, it is still moviepass? sounds like another bait and switch scam to me.
Easy to thwart (Score:2)
Funny. I was playing a video game on my phone while i had the slashdot page up on my desktop computer.
Both screens were front of my face. If the phone screen was to do facial recognition I would have no doubt that it would think that I was looking right at it, while my eyes were actually focused on the monitor 18" behind it.
So unless the facial recognition is so good that it can see what depth the eyes are focused at, I don't see this as a particularly difficult thing to thwart.
"Top concern" (Score:2)
"Privacy is a top concern" is exactly the kind of thing that people unconcerned with privacy say.
This is an evil product.
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Jokes on you. I've legally changed my real name to 'Anonymous Coward' and am filing suit for identity theft against /.