Targeted Advertising Coming To Cable TV 171
The New York Times reports that Cablevision Systems is testing a new project in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and some areas of New Jersey to bring targeted advertising to television audiences. "The technology requires no hardware or installation in a subscriber's home, so viewers may not realize they are seeing ads different from a neighbor's. But during the same show, a 50-something male may see an ad for, say, high-end speakers from Best Buy, while his neighbors with children may see one for a Best Buy video game." The test deployment includes 500,000 households, and separates viewers by demographic data from Experian. "Experian has data on individuals that it collects through public records, registries and other sources. It matches the name and address of the subscriber to what it knows about them, and assigns demographic characteristics to households. (The match is a blind one: advertisers do not know what name and address they are advertising to, Cablevision executives said.)"
OK fine. (Score:5, Interesting)
A little weird, but I'm not really alarmed that this is being used. It (for better or worse) is public data - Taking advantage of it to bore me as little as possible with ads seems perfectly appropriate. Frankly, if I have to watch ads, I'd rather see ads for computer equipment and stuff than for My Little Pony Playhouse...
Re:OK fine. (Score:5, Interesting)
Although this also goes in the opposite direction for some. It mentions that houses with children may see ads targetted towards games and the like.
So if you have a baby, are you going to be stripped of watching the "funny" advertisements... usually for more adult things like beer, and whatnot... and be forced to sit through baby-food and diaper commercials? I know they're far and few between, but some commercials are actually fun to watch. Why should being in a specific demographic strip you of that fun?
Re:OK fine. (Score:4, Interesting)
Something just occurred to me. You know there's going to be cases where a couple's baby dies, and the cable company's records don't get updated for a while...
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"Need a funeral? Call Graves'R'Us for all your dead child disposal needs! Catering included, low low prices."
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"This week only, we're having a tufer sale! That's right, two for the price of one!"
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Once the records update after the survey, the couple would be watching ads for assault rifles for the next few months.
"Did the TV show you ads for baby products after your baby just died? Would you like to blast the crap out of it? Why not try our .xx caliber automatic which fires 200 rounds per second...."
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You'll still need the beer.
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Maybe if you would actually know how to keep your baby from having so much psychological pain or having an helicobacter infection, that it cries all day long, you would not have to drink so much beer that it gets even worse.
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Because advertisers back the shows that reach their target audience. A few more dollars for a new series like "Battlestar Galactica," a few less for an aging "American Idol."
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Oh, and any commercial featuring Billy Mays.
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"Gentlemen, the data is clear. Our boys have been through it twice and it's no mistake: canine mastication sells vitamins. And the louder the better. We're going to take this ad campaign coast-to-coast. Dogs chewing on every television set across the country, high-volume broadcasts on tv, radio and cinemas. Gentlemen of the board, this is truly a new era in the marketing of nutritional
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things that I have no interest in (e.g. feminine hygiene products
What, don't you ever have that "Not-so-fresh feeling"?
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I dunno, this is pretty disturbing. If they put targeted ads in cable TV, what's next? Targeted ads in broadcast TV?
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A My Little Pony Playhouse? The spatial warping technology involved in cramming little ponies into a house and having enough room for anything resembling 'play' is intriguing. Where might I obtain these... 'little ponies'?
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Except you won't. Experian won't have details about credit card transactions. They'll see "Oh, he buys a lot of stuff at Fry's, so lets send him electronics ads." What they won't realize is that most of those purchases involve either DVDs or capacitors for microphone modding... the occasional hard drive.... For anything more expensive, I'm 100x more likely to buy online, usually at about half the price.
I'm also likely to spend days or weeks researching purchases ahead of time to zero in on a particular
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I think the broken window fallacy applies here. If they're showing extra electronics ads to me, they're reducing the ads for something else that I might actually pay attention to. You are also assuming that my situation is unique. It's not. Most people's interests are not easy to judge from an outside view with few exceptions. And even if they are, most people aren't interested in ads that match their interests. Ultimately, the purpose of an advertisement is to inform a consumer about the existence of
So, for those of us who... (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, the suspense!
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Re:So, for those of us who... (Score:5, Funny)
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But I hope the OP remembered five simple letters - P - R - E - N - U - P.
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You'll get lots of ads for Dateline NBC and Chris Hansen's To Catch A Predator.
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You mean like, when Chris Hansen busts his own son? [youtube.com]
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Married a chick from Eastern Europe [...] Will we get Viagra or Britney Spears Perfume advertising?
File systems ;-)
Re:So, for those of us who... (Score:5, Funny)
He didn't mention the fact he's 32.
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Married a chick from Eastern Europe, who is .. cough, 19 years younger than myself. Will we get Viagra or Britney Spears Perfume advertising?
You sir, are my hero.
He didn't mention the fact he's 32.
Which makes the Britney Spears perfume advertising unlikely then. 13 has got to be way past the target age for that stuff...
No more tampon comercials (Score:5, Funny)
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Never any girls in your house, then?
do you *have* to live up to the stereotype so much?
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Old grammar Nazis never die, their eyesight just fades away...
Uhhh... huh. (Score:2)
So they'll be directing the ads for lovers of painfully loud music to 50-year-olds, while the gaming ads will go to children despite the average gamer being 35. [theesa.com] May I suggest a few more surveys before they roll out their new tech?
Awesome! CV strikes again! (Score:5, Funny)
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Florida Election Ads (Score:2)
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Lots of ads for "Ghost Hunters"!
This is obnoxious (Score:2)
Slowly and inexorably, the media companies push us away.
Once again it's time to suggest (Score:5, Interesting)
That we do a DMCA on people's personal information.
Remove the concept of 'public records' and make it all PRIVATE.
If Experian wants to collect personal information on you, they should have to pay a fee to you and agree to a standard distribution restriction agreement that makes them come to you for permission to distribute the data elsewhere.
Now of course credit card companies have to ask and pay you for the right to get that information but they can also charge higher fees, too.
Violations bring the same penalties as with "pirating" a mp3.
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If Experian wants to collect personal information on you, they should have to pay a fee to you and agree to a standard distribution restriction agreement that makes them come to you for permission to distribute the data elsewhere.
They aren't collecting it directly but getting the information from other sources. In this case then you should be charging those other sources for originally collecting the information and maybe a smaller fee for Experian to use it. One of the sources they are getting their data from is public records though. Have fun tracking down the original source(s) of the information (could be credit card companies which would make sense since Experian is involved).
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You got me thinking... A dangerous pastime, I know.
If you keep a full log of everything you do and what your likes and dislikes are then copyright the journal. So when ever someone uses your personal information you can sue them under the DMCA for copyright violations.
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Maybe we need the equivalent of a union, but instead of fighting for our jobs they fight for things like privacy and civil liberty.
Well actually, we already have those in stuff like the ACLU and EFF. So it's just really the people who don't bother with those organizations that are to blame. If everyone in America gave $1 to either of them we'd certainly have more power.
Not sure of the value of this. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm wondering, if Grandma wants to buy a new video game for little Bobby, how is she going to know about any sales in her area? All she's going to get on her TV is commercials for arthritis rub, denture cream, cat food and the like.
On a related subject, I've also wondered why they target ads to kids anyway. They can't drive, don't have much money and from my experience if I whined and pleaded with my dad to buy me something I saw on TV I generally got sent to my room.
Re:Not sure of the value of this. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly, a lot of parents cave into their child's slightest whims every single time. I've seen brats in the mall that I would have loved to hit with my car for the way they were acting, and the mother is actually APPOLOGIZING to the brat for not buying him the crap sooner.
It would be the children of THOSE parents (although it applies to situations not quite that extreme as well, I suppose) that all the advertisements you're thinking of are for.
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You're right but I will say in some sort of weak defence of many of those parents, that a lot of parents I know are *terrified* of metting out *any* discipline in public, even a harsh word. Whether it's as pathetic as being worried of being seen as 'uncool' to a greater fear of public scorn or the greatest fear of having the police, social services, child welfare, whoever knocking on the door and invading the home and family. In our current society there's an enormous amount of pressure on this generation o
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From what I see, things are different now. Sending a kid to his room is pointless and that's usually his favorite place to start with, plus parents with more money than time or energy tend to spoil kids(*).
Anyway, even if your dad sent you to your room when you asked him for say, a video game, it doesn't mean that when it was time to actually buy you buy he wouldn't get the one you asked for.
(*) Not ever
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On a related subject, I've also wondered why they target ads to kids anyway. They can't drive, don't have much money and from my experience if I whined and pleaded with my dad to buy me something I saw on TV I generally got sent to my room.
Are you kidding? Child marketing is a huge industry. Coincidentally, I'm pretty sure Dante reserved one of the lower circles of Hell for child marketers.
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No, that's for child molesters and people who talk in the theater.
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You've made the assumption that advertisers don't know that Grandma buys the occasional video game for Bobby at Christmas. Don't worry- she'll get those ads too- they will just appear at a frequency appropriate to her visits to Gamestop.
What I wonder is what kind of ads they'll show my MythTv box. I suppose the equivalents of ExtenZe and Internet Millions would by bigger hard drives and air-in-a-can respectively...
Don't use their boxes (Score:2)
Unless cable has infinity bandwidth or they place insertion device at each home for each TV, this will not work.
Now it you pay them for their box, then they have an insertion device in your home.
Why would you pay them for the right to sell you to an advertiser? Why are you not getting your TV for free then instead of rising rates?
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Once the system goes digital, all subscribers will be identifiable by the MAC address or UID of the cable box. One could argue that ad targeting is one of the primary reasons it's going digital.
The really bad news is that although many cable boxes are hackable [usbjtag.com], and the UID can be changed, it would either be a telltale sign to the cable company that the box has been hacked, or you just end up getting someone else's targeted ads.
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You give the industry way too much credit for forward-thinking.
Every time a cable company takes down an analog channel they can put up twelve digital (SD) channels. That makes operators salivate.
All other effects of digital (VOD, HD, interactive TV, targeted ads) are things that the operators go along with grudgingly, at best.
(Of course, I'm speaking about the operators as "institutions". There are many brilliant, forward-thinking people involved, but they're hopelessly outnumbered by maintainers of the s
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This is only on digital. And they surely aren't sending a different ad to each subscriber. In all likelihood they're transmitting two to four ads per service.
Digital cable video bitrates are highly variable. There is no technical impediment to sending out multiple A/V streams on the same service at the same time without increasing the total bandwidth used by the service. Of course, video quality will suffer, but a significant portion of ads are "talking heads" anyway.
Furthermore, it would be quite possi
Sounds like a good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Why should I watch commercials for tampons, tinned soup, and shampoo? Show me Apple ads, Best Buy ads, trailers to movies I might like, etc.
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When ads come on that I don't like, I have a reason to get off the sofa, take a leak, and grab another beer. If they show ads that are interesting for me, I am liable to wet the sofa, and go thirsty.
testing a new project in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and some areas of New Jersey
So what ads do they show to Tony Soprano's crew? New concrete overshoes? Brass knuckles half off at Thugs'R'Us?
Soon you'll be having ads for your ads (Score:2)
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What is the point of giving you Apple or Best Buy adds... It sounds like you are already a fan. Trailer to the movies that you might like may work. Why don't you mail the MPPA your taste in movies and they will email you a newsletter weekly for all the movies that fit your demographics.
No more hoveround commercials (Score:2, Funny)
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The targeted ads will have nothing to do with the channel you're watching, so if bad commercials make you turn away, they will now make you turn it off entirely.
Also, there will be no way to indicate to the cable company that you dislike certain ads, nor would they let you tell them what ads to run even if there were.
It's bad enough we get ad's on each page of the gu (Score:2)
It's bad enough we get ad's on each page of the guide now they want to push more ad on us how about MORE HD wait DIRECT TV HAS MORE HD better guide with mush less ad's and looks good on a HD TV.
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Uhhh... sattelite and cable have the same number of commercials. Otherise their schedules would start getting out of sync pretty quick.
Just keep them out of my head (Score:2)
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actually, there was no such episode, however Fox did beam a trailer into people's dreams prior to the start of the first season.
Woohoo (Score:2)
Finally no ads with sports, douches,beer,tampons,cereal,toys, insert new pill with horrible side effects here, Depends, advice to see my physician if erection lasts more than 4 hours, pamprin, reducing the effects of PMS, domain registration,...
I could go on all day. the list of things to advertise to me is 1000x shorter than the ads I currently see. In fact I record almost everything that is episodic and skip commercials.
Now women in underwear jumping on trampolines selling the latest FPS game or RPG I mig
The Peter Pan Syndrome (Score:2)
The geek discovers the Fountain of Youth. Or maybe not.
Re:Just gave me an idea (Score:2)
What if, instead of telling these companies what we'd *like* to see, we tell them what we *don't* like. Sure it will be a longer list, but its absolutely less revealing in terms of being able to profile people.
Shooting the fish in the bucket! (Score:2, Insightful)
Today, our advertising is so full of lies and deceptions, only if they would tell the truth, then the consumer would be able to choose what they need and not what the advertiser wants the to want and buy.
Our brains can not tell the difference between fact and fiction. It's our higher cognitive abilities that will reason in hope to find the fact. Advertisements don't give the higher functions a chance to work, subsequently and despite the common knowledge that the ads are just ads, in the long term, we end
No, they just want us to ... (Score:2)
in the long term, we end up thinking what they want us to think.
Think Different (TM)
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in the long term, we end up thinking what they want us to think.
Think Different (TM)
Like that line of Durango commercials that just said "Dodge. Different." And they were right ... things are bigger and uglier than most other vehicles and get really lousy gas mileage. What do you know, truth in advertising.
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Our brains can not tell the difference between fact and fiction. It's our higher cognitive abilities that will reason in hope to find the fact.
Our higher cognitive abilities aren't part of our brains?
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Not after you get married, the wife takes over that job
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Not after you get married, the wife takes over that job
Yeah, no kidding. I'm not even married yet (well, I will be next year) and I'm already feeling the effects. Don't resist, give in to your feelings, let the Dark Side control your actions. Somehow it's just ... easier this way.
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Speak for yourself, you feeble minded clot. I watch a fair amount of TV, and would rather watch 2 episodes of "Lost" rather than any movie that's come out of Hollywood in the last year. "Simpsons" and "South Park" are easily more topical, and funnier, than most so-called comedies. But your point was ads. I watch a lot of commercials, some of which I find informative, and some of which I
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The fact that they got you to go to the dealership to "have a look" means the ad worked on you. Remember, one of the goals of adver
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I disagree about the "Ads are designed to make you buy something". A lot of ads are designed to for what the industry calls "branding". In other words, when you think of an item, they want you to think of their product. Using your example of pickup trucks, you may not want now, or ever for that matter. But say you do decide you need one, I bet the first three things you'd think of would be "Ford", "Chevy", and "Dodge", which would be a direct result of all the advertising you've seen for those brands ov
Could end up being a little too revealing (Score:3, Funny)
Wife - "Wow - the commercials have changed for the worse, honey... Why do we keep getting ads for pay-per-view porn? I hope the neighbors are seeing this 'cause I'm going to complain to the TV stations and I hope they do too."
Husband - "Ummm, yeah. I don't know why... these ads are coming. Don't call anyone, though. I'll take care of it..."
Heh. (Score:2)
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Um, nothing? Do you think anyone would notice a difference?
That could be potentially embarrassing for some... (Score:4, Interesting)
The content of the ads could be a little TOO revealing about people. Imagine this conversation after the Super Bowl party:
"Did you notice that the Smiths had a lot of ads for bankruptcy lawyers? I wonder what's going on with them..."
It's not an invasion of privacy, but it is a subversion of privacy.
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Given that they would be targeting households instead of people, could this also be considered a form of discrimination?
I'm only halfway serious.
5 dollar footlong... (Score:2)
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Hopefully they have "finds Subway repulsive" on file for me.
They do now...
Long Term Progression... (Score:3, Informative)
1. Free TV with commercials
2. Promise of pay TV without commercials
3. Pay TV with commercials
4. Pay TV with commercials and shopping channels
5. Pay TV with targeted commercials and shopping channels
6. Pay TV where they remove your eyes and jab probes directly into your brain so they can harvest your inner most thoughts for a profit
Another reason to remain single (Score:2)
The moment you get a girl living with you, all your ads are going to be for feminine hygiene products. On the other hand, this being slashdot, it is better then the ads we are used to, female depence ads for out mothers.
If you don't like it.... (Score:2)
I posted this in another thread. It is a decent solution to avoid all this, primarily by avoiding the "box". Here are the results he got from making and using this antenna.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1128309&cid=26860051 [slashdot.org]
Enjoy.
""It's really not that tough to make. You could make one yourself just as easily in an hour or two. Construction is as follows:
Make eight Vs from 16" lengths of coat hanger, with stripped insulation at the point(EDIT: Guess he means the plastic coated coathangers). The mout
People still watch TV? (Score:2)
I'm serious. WTF?
Wait till they combine it with good animation (Score:2)
Using the technology the animation houses and gaming industry already has, the demographic data available, and the fact that your cable company knows your name --
You can get to that creepy place where the talking head on tv turns and talks directly to you by name, then tells you (based on your debit card use at the shopping center) that your brand of anti-itch cream isn't as good as the one they're advertising -- and with that herpes medicine you're taking you should also try their new herbal product...
How would that work again? (Score:2)
What if the subscription owner isn't watching, but his wife, his children, or someone else?
For those of you who have seen The Network (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, forget television. It is an expensive waste of time. Go out and have fun. Take your daughter out to the park. Get out and enjo a nice sunny day, like we had today where I live. The hell with television. Its time has passed.
That where bandwidth went to!! (Score:2)
Hmmm, it's no wonder that we don't have more bandwidth on Cable ISP's vs other countries. All the bandwidth has been held back to send targeted ads!
Re:An end to offensive ads? (Score:5, Funny)
If they can do that then they can take off the ads for phone sex when I complain! I've been watching F1 GPs in Australia at 11pm and had 6 of them in a row.
On the contrary, it appears that they're already running targeted advertising and have you pegged as belonging to the "sad lonely loser" demographic ;-P
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On the contrary, it appears that they're already running targeted advertising and have you pegged as belonging to the "sad lonely loser" demographic ;-P
He didn't say he was watching it alone :)
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Yes, now they will know that they need to replace them with the gay phone sex ads.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
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Actually, in this case, they're actionable. Um... nevermind.
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I'm just waiting for the next thing that can appear when this technology is applied - the commercial break detector that detects that you have a targeted commercial and instead pauses the recording or displays a neutral image.
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There are ads on Pirate Bay??
Must be AdBlock Plus. :)
I will try to add an exception. They deserve the money.
Although I would prefer PayPal.
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They should do this with television so I'm not paying for 3 fucking sports channels, Cartoon Network, 2 Disney channels, 2 VH1s, 2 MTVs, TLC, and the Weather Channel.
No Joke. What strikes me from the Summary: "The technology requires no hardware or installation in a subscriber's home" So they're lying about the technological limitations of a la carte cable channels?
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Sports.
Some of use watch a lot of live sports, and there is no real way watch them online in good quality. You can't get them from Netflix because they are only of interest live.
Otherwise though I'd be glad to leave the cable company behind.