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Microsoft Watching What You Watch
Arkham writes "According to this Wired article, Microsoft
has contracted with a company called Predictive Networks to track the viewing habits of Microsoft TV devices. The Predictive software creates a "Digital Silhouette" that is described as being able "to tell them that Joe watches a lot of baseball, likes Situation Comedies, and
responds favorably to commercials that use humor."." I've always said
that I'm cool with my Tivo tracking what I watch, provided it never tells
anyone my name and address to anyone.
If it meant I watched more
targetted advertisements, I'd fast forward less.
If I see a big face wearing glasses show up on my TV I'm chucking a hammer through it!
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Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
...Web sites across the Internet are tracking which ad banners you see and click on by using a sophisticated "cookie" file.
This article would be "news" if we weren't already familiar with the technology, I think.
On Sky Digital TV in the UK, there are advertisments that carry an on screen reminder to 'click now' for a free sample. Clicking takes you to an advertiser's page that can then connect through your phone line to send your address details.
To step up to 'buy now' functions isn't that much of a stretch of the imagination.
pronoblem
I think privacy went out the window a long time ago with marketing, but we have to consider that our privacy has two parts: our unique life, and our generalized interaction with this world. If you look at my mail, I bet you could guess that I work on computers. That's fine as far as I'm concerned, and I think privacy on a large scale is still very much in tact. Microsoft doesn't care that I went to Meijer this morning for coffee, and that it was exactly 3.5 miles from my house, and that I walked about 20 steps to get into my place. That's my privacy!!! Not the fact that I work in computers. Yes I would like less junk mail... no I do not want my government records available for download, but as far as everything else, I accept that this is what drives the money around.
I think they said it can create a 'profile' based on remote control usage, so it the remote is doing a lot of channel surfing and stops at a particular show and some ad, it can record that "user 1 likes such-and-such", then another user may only change channels between shows or whatever and records what on during that useage pattern. Kinda like analyzing how different people type to distinguish who's at the keyboard, a hunt-and-pecker or a speed typist - then they can record what content is being typed for two different users even tho they don't id by logging in, retina scan or whatever.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I can't get too worked up about this... as long as the consumer knows when he buys a Microsoft TV product that it 'comes with' this kind of monitoring. That, to me, is the key -- full and open disclosure, and a consumer educated enough to know what that means.
Really, if you have a Yahoo 'home page' configured, you're already providing information about your preferences -- voluntarily -- albeit on a lesser scale then what MS TV will do.
If you use one of those 'shopper discount' grocery store cards, you're also providing this kind of information, in even greater detail. If you purchased a pregnancy test or jock-itch ointment last week, it's in a database somewhere if you use one of those cards, and the fact that they don't individually target you NOW for marketing based on this information doesn't mean they won't in the future.
From the above article: "...61 percent of retailers surveyed either have or plan to have frequent-shopper programs. Already, more than a quarter of all supermarket sales are tracked with the cards."
That shopper discount card sounds much like what MS TV plans:
"Scott Oddo, director of research at Predictive Networks, said the collected information does not connect viewers' interests to their names or other personally identifiable information."
M$ Maketeer#1 Joe watches a lot of baseball, likes Situation Comedies, and responds favorably to commercials that use humor.
M$ Maketeer#2 He sounds like our kind of brain-dead moron.
M$ Maketeer#1 Send him a brochure.
Ummm, I would highly suggest that you do a little refresher from Econ 101, and don't think so highly of yourself. The companies couldn't care less about you personally in terms of pricing. You are just one of several million customers. The price of their goods is easily summed up in one sentace:
Charge the price that maximizes profits.
It's really that simple. As you raise your price, you sell less, as you lower it you sell more. Each and every person has a different threshold for when and how much they buy (and it varies day by day). So the job of a company is to find the price point that maximizes profit. If you sell too cheap, ya you sell a lot, but it doesn't make up for cost. If you sell to expensive you make more per unit but don't sell enough units.
Well because the objective of companies is to make the most money, the price that they seek is the one at which all the costs and profits balance the best, and they make the most profit. Now of course there are other factors like when competitors get into price wars and such, but all other things being equal, a comapny is going to charge the price where they make the most profit.
Now they don't need any kind of special traking cards to determine this price, inventory control can tell you this. You charge a buck, you sell X many units/wekk. YOu rase the price toa buck and a quarter and now you only sell Y many. Then you just do the math, and figure out where you make the most money.
They care about your data for reasons of marketing and such, not pricing. The methods for figuring that out are very, very old.
However, there's a reason why I actually like Tivo's data collection. I think Taco's dreaming a bit as far as actual targeted ads go (at least for now), but there's a more important benefit: Aggregate viewing statistics are more or less what're commonly referred to as "ratings". Ratings determine whether shows live or die. They determine how much many a network gets from a show's advertisers. This, in turn, determines how much money goes into a show's budget. It should be obvious why having my viewing habits correlate with TV studio's spending is A Good Thing.
To provide a slightly more concrete example, however, I give you "Family Guy". It's a funny show, it has a decent geek following, and it runs in a time-slot that's otherwise dominated by stupid reality TV. The network it's on, Fox, keeps playing the stupid game of repeatedly cancelling the show and then bringing it back. Apparently, they decided that last week's ratings were going to decide whether or not they cancel the show yet again. I recorded the show on my Tivo and watched it. Assuming that Fox subscribes to Tivo's viewer information, that's one more vote in the "Keep it on the air, dammit" column. Even better, given that viewer statistics are collected from a relatively small portion of the viewing public, it's a disproportionately large vote.