Streaming TV Advertisers Want Better Targeting -- Minus the Privacy Backlash (wsj.com) 41
Advertisers entering the burgeoning medium of streaming TV say they want better measurement and targeting capabilities than they are finding there. But a shadow looms over any efforts to give them what they want: the privacy backlash that has recently put other digital media on the defensive. From a report: That means obtaining viewers' consent to use information on what they watch will be essential for whatever tools emerge as the best way to measure and reach streaming audiences. Online advertising has long relied on technology like tracking cookies and tactics such as retargeting -- following people from website to website to repeatedly show them the same ad for a shirt or a trip they may have briefly considered online. The industry's pervasive monitoring and targeting regime ultimately fueled the rise of ad blockers among consumers, new privacy regulations in Europe and California, and efforts by Apple and Alphabet's Google to weaken some tools on which advertisers, publishers and ad-technology companies have come to rely. Players in streaming TV don't want to provoke the same outcome. "The industry as a whole cannot take the privacy of consumers for granted and make the same mistakes that were made on the internet decades ago," said David Spencer, assistant manager of audience buying strategy for General Motors Co. The risk is growing as more people stream TV over the internet, however, including on television sets that can tell what they are watching.
'Streaming TV advertisers' (Score:4, Insightful)
You pay for the 'service'. Now you're being fed commercials anyway. You're back where you started from.
Re:'Streaming TV advertisers' (Score:5, Informative)
No, you're just uninformed. I see no ads. The people who see ads are either using free or reduced rate tiers, so it's entirely optional. I think it's fine to offer customers a choice like that.
On-demand streaming is still way, way better than cable. I love being able to easily try out specialty services (science, documentaries, anime, etc), and even subscribed to multiple services, it's still vastly cheaper than cable.
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Also I did not say cable is better than streaming, I don't have either one, I have an antenna and a DVR and pay nothing for either one.
I just skip past commercials and pay them no mind.
Even on the odd occasion I'm watching something 'live' I can just mute and ignore them -- but with TiVo I can just pause it for 10-15 minutes and be able to skip past any commercials even if I'm not recording that program.
You're all still not much better off than you were to start with. Y
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Too lazy, could not be bothered, most of the content is not that good and when you see no video advertisements, it doesn't even exist, just the old content you remeber on what ever video streaming service you use when ever. I just keep swapping, just using one or two at a time for 6 months or so, drop them and go with another, watch them for six months or so. Mostly because I am too lazy to get up and swap DVDs I already own.
Content I am missing out on, especially new content, for me, does not even exist,
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No, you're just uninformed. I see no ads.
Product placement and it's likely to get worse.
One thing that has bothered me about streaming services is the lack of notice concerning modifications to content from its original version. I want to know if a show has been censored, cropped to fit 16:9, scenes removed or added and possibly the inclusion of more product placement.
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At present, there are plenty of services doing the right thing (like Netflix). We should reward those services with our custom for now until they actually do things wrong,
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I think it's fine to offer customers a choice like that.
I don't. You're allowing for a slippery slope here: cable used to be much better than broadcast, because there were no ads and consequently shows were designed to appeal to viewers rather than to advertisers. Then some channels started accepting ads, and started making more money than the channels which didn't... Actually, there's a good quote for this from when that transition was happening:
"''We've seen that advertisers are not passive,'' says Michael Fuchs, senior vice president of programming for Hom
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You're back where you started from.
what do you mean?
depending on the streaming platform you were always going to have some form of advertising.some more than others.
what you *win* is a cheaper platform, watching what content you want, went you want, instead of being told what time to what your show must be watched.
not to boot more accessible (basically anywhere with an internet connection)
obviously excluding live events.
who's laughing their arse off now?
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Once again I'm laughing my ass off at you people who fell for 'streaming'.
You pay for the 'service'. Now you're being fed commercials anyway. You're back where you started from.
What are you talking about? The services that have had ads, have ads. The services that have not had ads still don't have ads. Hulu, YouTube, the various live TV alternatives like Sling/YouTubeTV/Fubo/etc.? Sure, they rely on ads, but that's unchanged. It's how they've always been.
Meanwhile, looking at my own subscriptions...
* Netflix? No ads ever.
* Disney+? No ads ever.
* Apple TV+ (via a free year)? No ads ever.
* OTA content via Plex DVR? No ads (thanks to automated commercial stripping), for the most part
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You are seeing ads on every one of those. It just isn't what you would typically relate to ads. The ads you are seeing are advertising of upcoming show. Those usually do it in a banner style ad. In the case of Netflix it even extends to animated banner ads for shows.
That also has
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A) Those aren’t ads in any meaningful sense. Rather than trying to sell you something, they’re simply informing you of additional value you’re entitled to with your existing subscription.
B) They’ve always been there. They aren’t new like the OP was suggesting.
C) Netflix’s animations can be disabled in your profile’s settings.
D) I never said I was completely ad-free, so I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to get at. You seem to think you “g
"Advertisement" can die a painful death. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an entire "industry", dedicated to nothing but manipulating people with the most vile and psychopathic tricks, to waste their time and money on bad choices they would not have made with an informed mind. Without daylight fraud and sleaze bags to rip you off, there would be no advertisement. A simple database of products/services and properties (in verified measurements with standard methods and units) would be all that would ever be needed. Maybe with reviews, but ONLY by people you personally know.
If you cannot finance your services (yes, services) with normal honest payments, e.g. because it is abundant or simply lame, then it's not worth surviving.
So ... boo hoo.
Re:"Advertisement" can die a painful death. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a form of price discrimination. People who can't afford to go to theater and opera watch the boob tube, and the cost of producing media for the boob tube is subsidized by people who have enough money to buy the garbage that is advertised every 13 minutes.
We'll be right back with more explanation, but first, a message from Smiling Bob about an all-natural enhancement supplement!
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I think it's better to say that advertisers have basically "tragedy of the commons" themselves to death.
There's nothing wrong with the most basic advertisement - a simple display of whatever it is you're selling along with a description of what it does. The design of the display, the marketing copy, all of that is essentially advertising: trying to convince people they should pick your product from the sea of other products.
The problem comes from ads that are placed where people don't want ads. And, yes, so
Targeting or... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the main objection to advertising that tracks consumers isn't the resultant "targeted advertising" but more advertising that badgers someone incessantly because they looked at something once a week ago and now the algorithm hits them from all directions with "relevant" ads for a month.
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That's the challenge to advertising. Most people have pretty well-defined spending habits, and relatively few people are regularly looking for new ways to spend their money, especially compared to increased consumption of something they already buy. So as soon as someone hints that they may be interested in something new that costs money, advertisers try to seize that opportunity.
Yet they never seem to realize that overdoing the targeting is likely to backfire.
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Well, it depends, but right now, if advertisers spend more for ads people click on, the actual metric being optimized by the ad networks is showing ads that people are likely to click on.
Which means that the ad networks (not the people who are paying for the ads) optimize less for showing ads that might produce sales, and more for showing ads that produce clicks. (This is also why you get ad campaigns designed to trick you into clicking on an ad - whoever designed it is getting paid by click.)
This is subtle
Why do they need it? (Score:3)
For over 70 years, the broadcast TV industry has had ZERO ability to directly target ads. Why do they need to be able to do that now?
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Nielsen gave them pretty good stats on the exact type of people who watched every show. Those ads were certainly targeted.
Re:Why do they need it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nielsen is horribly inaccurate. [nytimes.com]
All the streaming services have FAR more accurate [avclub.com] statistics.
Ironically, Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu WON'T share their metrics. Good luck getting actual metrics out of them. They are that insecure.
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Nielsen still exists for online streaming, and is based on the same opt-in approach as it previously did.
https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/... [nielsen.com]
What is the next excuse?
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If you believe what some people tell you, these corporations can know more about you than you know about yourself. With that they can manipulate the hell out of you with specifically targeted ads.
If you use 'social media' like most people do, use your real name everywhere, buy things from Amazon, have Google accounts (and also buy things through Google shopping), then they can indeed know more about you than you know about yourself, because the
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They don't need it. They want it. And they wanted it 70 years ago but there was no practical way to get it. Now it's practical.
Premise is wrong... (Score:2)
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Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
If people are streaming something, it's something they picked. You don't need to know who is watching, you can already target ads by the movie/TV show type.
If someone is watching science-fiction, there's a good chance he's into computers, technology and electronic gadgets.
If someone is watching a cooking show, there's a good chance he's into food, recipes, spices, kitchen appliances, etc.
They already have targeting data, they're just not using it.
TL;DR Stop trying to track people dammit!
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Professional Voyeurism (Score:2)
Advertisers are abusing the young (Score:2)
Young people have no personal experience with the past; their metric for "normality" begins with some point in their childhood and they do not learn to have a perspective informed by history until they are taught it (or not at all if not taught). This is not unique to the current generation (though the current generation is rather uniquely being NOT well educated about the past by their elders). This works to the advantage of many industries and politicians, but in this case it works to the extreme advantag
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So we try to tell them 'your very-much-valuable privacy is being invaded, your very-much-pri
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Well that depends, will they still be able to micro-target political ads and lie incessantly? And most of all if their voters don't care then they would rather do what pleases their corporate masters. Same goes for the 'left' which is just the other pro-corporate party.
Ads = no (Score:2)
>"Advertisers entering the burgeoning medium of streaming TV say they want"
And I say they need to goto hell. NO ADS. If your service makes me watch ads, then you don't get my money OR attention. Period.
Oh, and go ahead and rip on cable TV all you want, I haven't watched an ad on cable in 20 years: TiVo/DVR.
Then make it opt-in. (Score:2)
They could have this now if they made it opt in and tied it to benefits like a free month/year of service. They could announce this after a big monthly price increase.
Then, why they don't ask? (Score:2)
No what they want (Score:1)