THANKS TO GOOGLE, TV ADS ARE ABOUT TO START WATCHING YOU
Article written by Klint Finley, Wired News
GOOGLE IS ABOUT to make ads on television work just like ads on the web. Through Google, advertisers will know how many times their ads were viewed. They’ll be able to target audiences based on location and viewing history. In other words, TV advertisers will have access to the same audience intel online advertisers take for granted.
Finally, after all this time, your TV is going to know as much about you as your web browser.
This stands in stark contrast to the way ads on television have traditionally been sold. Advertisers have had to estimate the reach of the commercials based on services such as Nielsen ratings and have only been able to target ads based on specific shows, not on specific viewers. That’s started to change in recent years, but now that Google is in the game, a future where TV ads work like the web feels inevitable.
Google announced a trial run of its new TV ad-targeting capability in its product forum for Google Fiber, its super-fast internet service available in select US cities. Subscribers to its cable-like Fiber TV package in Kansas City will be the first test subjects for the experiment, which was first reported by AdWeek. “These ads will show during existing ad breaks, along with national ads, on live TV and DVR-recorded programs,” Google said.
The ads will be delivered in real time and matched to geography, the type of show being watched and the viewer’s history. Customers will have the choice to opt out of being shown ads based on their viewing history, much like users of Google’s web services can opt out of being targeted based on browsing history. It’s not clear what “viewing history” means, how granular that opt-out process will be, or whether this type of targeting will be available to both national and local advertisers.
Cable Plays Catch-Up
In many ways, this is exactly what privacy advocates feared Google Fiber would become: yet another way for Google to collect even more data about you. It would be easy to make a “TV watches you” crack, but this is how advertising has worked on the web for at least fifteen years. Broadcast media, meanwhile, has been largely stuck in the dark ages, unable to match advertising to individual viewers or even say with any certainty how many people saw any given ad. But this has started to change.The issue isn’t entirely technological. Cable companies and broadcasters haven’t wanted to charge per view for advertising because, well, they’d probably make a lot less money that way, says Randy Giusto, the vice president of research firm Outsell. “The advertisers want them to prove that the ads are being seen, but it’s never been in the cable operators’ best interest to show those numbers,” he says.
Today, however, advertisers have more options for reaching audiences than ever. For example, political campaigns are now able to measure and test the impact of their online advertising, non-profit organizations can use information gathered from petition sites to target only the most passionate people for donations, and retailers can rely on affiliate advertising they only pay for if someone actually makes purchase.As more advertising shifts to the web and mobile, it only makes sense for cable companies to offer more measurability, even if it means charging less for ad time in the long run. Less money is better than no money at all.
A company called VisibleWorld has long offered advertisers the ability to target cable television ads at the household level, and offers many tools to automatically customize ads based on the region and demographic they’ll likely reach. The Wall Street Journal reported that Comcast is in talks to buy the company. Meanwhile, NBCUniversal is already offering targeted advertising based on Comcast’s set-top-box data, and other providers such as Cablevision and DirecTV are also offering data-driven ad targeting.
As the technology evolves, and if viewers are given more control over what they want to see, this could open a whole new range of possibilities, Giusto says. “What if you could say ‘I just bought a car, so don’t show me ads for car dealerships,” he says. “That would save advertisers a lot of money.”
Convergence
This approach is old hat on the web, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be privacy concerns. Ad targeting and data collection online are already subject to much debate and regulator scrutiny. According to Pew Research, 64 percent of Americans believe the government should do more regulate how advertisers use personal information. And there are social norms to consider. We’re not used to the idea that the shows we watch will be logged and turned into advertising fodder. This may have already been going on for years, thanks to set-top boxes, but Google’s move could raise greater awareness of the practice and finally cause a backlash.Still, with new services like the Dish Networks’ Sling, Sony’s PlayStation Vue and Apple’s long rumored TV streaming service poised to make paying for a separate television subscription redundant, the difference between TV and internet will only continue to blur. That blurring will include a melding of business models, one where knowing exactly what viewers are watching will be worth a lot more than an educated guess.
I would like all TV advertisers to learn, that I, and many people I know, set the DVR to record. Then 10 minutes into the program time, I start watching the recorded version…..ONLY so I can skip or fast-forward through the commercials. (I particularly hate the pharmaceutical commercials and the political ones when they are “in season”.) On the occasion I don’t record a program, I mute all commercials. Statistically, the advertiser THINKS I saw their commercial, but I didn’t. I bet there’s millions of viewers or who do the same thing.
I am a Verizon Fios “victim”. Very often, about 2 seconds of a commercial will start and immediately it will be intercepted by a commercial of what seems to be, a Verizon choice enabled by their control of the set-top boxes. I wonder if a network’s advertiser knows that. I believe Verizon is hijacking commercial space paid to a network by an advertiser, and the Verizon Fios viewers may never see the intended commercial.
I saw a TV program recently explaining how they squeeze many seconds out of a tv program by speeding up the tapes of the programs so they can free up more advertising time during a program.
Also, there is a huge trend to watch TV programs aired on the internet instead. .. even to the point of cancelling their high-priced cable TV provider.
All of these points, seems to me, would alter any statistics that an advertiser would gather from anybody’s “TV watching me” plan…alter them enough to make them unreliable.
Honestly, I’d like to know, with the exception of the very lucrative Infomercials, how many TV viewers actually sit through these commercials. I personally wait for the commercial break to leave the room for a trip to the bathroom or to get make another pot of coffee. We have more and more time to spend on those breaks because of the increasingly less time given to the program. It’s all about how much money can be exchanged between the gangster greedy conglomerates, and how much they can “soak us” for the ability to do it. “They” don’t really give a damn about what you or I want, and too many of us simply accept whatever way they chose to exploit us.
Dumped cable a year ago. I was sick of the same offerings over and over. How many times can a sane human watch ‘Rocky’? Cable TV became an insult to my intelligence and I was party to the crime by continuing my subscription. Now I use Roku and watch mainly Netflix and Amazon Prime-no commercials!!! There are still a few air channels that we watch to catch up on local and national news so we have to put up with some commercials, but like Muriel said, that signals time to let the dogs out, go to the bathroom, or take care of any other business. There are other benefits to this arrangement; now we watch only what we want to watch, pay for only what we really want to see, and the cost has been cut dramatically. I will never go back to cable tv. Now I need to know how Google will track our usage using this system because I know they will figure a way.
Don]t you just love the so-called-free enterprise (: Now, why did we not think of this!
I am always multitasking between TV and working on my computer. I basically tune the ads out of my mind, and anything else. I am use to noise in the background in my home. I do like some of the entertaining ads, but the TV ads just don’t influence my buying habits. I don’t think they will get an accurate count on viewed ads.
We cancelled cable tv about a year ago and bought an antenna to watch tv. We just love it this way and we save a lot of money every month.
Now that this advertising scheme is about to take hold we will not be part of this. These companies are so greedy now that their profits have to be monitored in States, cities, perhaps rural areas too. Don’t they make enough money? Prices are going up and things will get more expensive for people to buy things. Always some kind of gimmick that consumers end up paying for it in the long run. We won’t be part of this. We also buy “off brands” in the grocery store and many times they are better or just as good as name brands.
We think this way of advertising is intrusive and glad we will not be involved.
There is seldom an ad that I pay any attention to. So why do they bother?
the way they advertise on the web has a negative effect on me I try and avoid the product . I hate it when a movie starts playing that I did not start . but hey someone has to pay the bill or there would be no internet but tv is another thing all together . I have a hard time thinking that millions of dollars boost sales . I guess enough people are taken in to pay the ads .
I agree with each comment above. I too am so tired of big business and greed. This greed that is happening now and for quite sometime now reminds me of an old movie called, “Network”. It had William Holden and Fay Dunaway in it and it was about networks taking over. The main thing that was asked was the people of New York, to put their heads out their windows and yell, ” I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”. Well that’s me too, but from my hometown.
My memory failed me, in the movie ” Network ” it was Peter Finch and Fay Dunaway. Sorry, it must have been a senior moment.. as I tell myself and others agree. Anyone over fifty now, it seems has senior moments. I am over 50.