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Vizio Wants Next-Generation Smart TVs To Target Ads To Households (reuters.com)
Smart TV manufacturer Vizio has formed a partnership with nine media and advertising companies to develop an industry standard that will allow smart TVs to target advertisements to specific households, the companies said this week. From a report: The consortium includes major TV networks like Comcast Corp's NBCUniversal and CBS, as well as advertising technology companies like AT&T's Xandr. Addressable advertising, or targeting viewers on the household level based on their interests, has long been the goal of TV marketers. But TVs lack cookies that internet browsers use to allow ads to follow people around the web. [...] The consortium of companies, dubbed Project OAR, or Open Addressable Ready, hopes to define the technical standards for TV programmers and platforms to deliver addressable advertising on smart TVs, which are WiFi-enabled TVs with apps for services like Netflix Inc and Hulu, by the end of this year, McAfee said. Further reading: In January this year, Bill Baxter, chief technology officer of Vizio, spoke about business of data collection in an interview. He said: It's about post-purchase monetization of the TV. This is a cutthroat industry. It's a 6-percent margin industry, right? I mean, you know it's pretty ruthless. You could say it's self-inflicted, or you could say there's a greater strategy going on here, and there is. The greater strategy is I really don't need to make money off of the TV. I need to cover my cost. And then I need to make money off those TVs. They live in households for 6.9 years -- the average lifetime of a Vizio TV is 6.9 years. You would probably be amazed at the number of people come up to me saying, "I love Vizio TVs, I have one" and it's 11 years old. I'm like, "Dude, that's not even full HD, that's 720p." But they do last a long time and our strategy -- you've seen this with all of our software upgrades including AirPlay 2 and HomeKit -- is that we want to make things backward compatible to those TVs. So we're continuing to invest in those older TVs to bring them up to feature level comparison with the new TVs when there's no hardware limitation that would otherwise prevent that.
I know what kind of TV I WON'T be considering for my next purchase...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
On the one hand, I don't mind if they replace existing ads.
On the other hand, they mention Netflix in passing here - so would that mean Netflix playing on this TV would have ads? No thanks!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I speak for ALL OF US. Nothing more to be said, you can close this thread now :)
[($)]
This is a cutthroat industry. It's a 6-percent margin industry, right?
I'll give you 10% extra if you replace that hardware and software with a couple additional DVI and DisplayPort adapters. You could even make it a swap-out-able module.
But you better be getting enough revenue from them...becuase I'm not going to pay you $2000 for a fucking television you'll make even more off me at the expense of making me sit through bullshit ads.
I automatically don't buy shit advertised to me.
I'll gladly pay twice as much for a dumb tv, thanks.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
...my Vizio tv isn't connected to the internet, nor will it ever be, except for firmware upgrades.
My AppleTV isn't trying to monetize me.
Say what you want but there are positives about this:
1) they're being upfront with their intentions (though I still don't trust them)
2) If they can make money after the purchase of the TV then they have less incentive to design it will intentional obsolescence. (my biggest concern of any smart TV)
3) It may lower the price of TV's
4) I'm confident that while most people won't know how to block the ad-tracking, I'll still be able to allow the TV access to Netflix only and nothing else.
Honestly, the more I read these articles the more convinced I become that I'm living in some kind of satire-based, candid-camera type show. I mean this product idea just screams DO NOT BUY ME on so many levels it simply has to be a wind-up because no sane person would honestly suggest it with a straight face.
The idea that could something that combines the reality-dreck that passes for TV these days with targeted advertising (and I'm going to assume all the spying that goes with it)... I mean seriously, in what alternative universe is that an attractive proposition??? And then to go on and suggest that a person who has managed to score an old-fashioned, non-smart TV would want to retroactively obtain such features... the mind boggles.
To go out of business.
They live in households for 6.9 years -- the average lifetime of a Vizio TV is 6.9 years.
That's way to damn short. I've never bought a Vizio, and now know that I probably never will. I'd rather pay more and keep it for much longer. Why do I need to send a TV to the landfill every 7 years anyhow?
You would probably be amazed at the number of people come up to me saying, "I love Vizio TVs,
I probably would be.
I have one" and it's 11 years old. I'm like, "Dude, that's not even full HD, that's 720p."
So what? Perhaps they should look at the quality of the programing instead of the resolution. I'd rather watch standard definition reruns of All in the Family than most of what I saw the last time I watched broadcast TV several years ago. Even if it is in "Super Ultra Double Plus Good 27.53K with HDR".
I currently have a 1080P projector in my media room. Sure 4K is nice an all, but my current projector works just fine. My eyesight isn't getting any better as the years go by anyhow. And for a lot of people, upgrading from a 40 inch 720P TV that they are watching from a 14 foot viewing distance, is 4K really going to be much of an improvement if they go to a 50 inch TV? Plus they will probably need other new equipment to get the most out of it anyhow. If they are using cable, then they're not getting much in 4K anyhow.
For anyone who is interested the modern advertising industry is the brain child of one Edward Bernays who deceived women into thinking that smoking was a sign of their freedom.
I highly recommend a documentary called Century of the Self for anyone who want to see just how we got into the situation we are in now.
For all of the things that a human beings time gets wasted on, advertising has to be the most offensive.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
If this is the way the industry's going, fuck'em.
I haven't owned a TV in 20+ years.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
And this is why my next LCD TV is going to be a large computer monitor, and not a TV at all.
Really why would you want a crap computer that you can't control attached to your TV when you can have a good one you do control.
for it.
I) It was cheap at the time and my previous dumb TV had died
2) It was dumb as dirt. HDMI ports with some CEC support.
If this one goes, I'll probably buy a smart tv (since there aren't any choices) and toss a streaming device on it like an android TV box. Netflix, and kodi support are pretty much all I use, with the occasional chromecast from my computer. If the streaming device dies or needs to be replaced, it's usually less than $100.
No smart TV will have any access to any Internet access. If they start putting 4G/5G sim cards in their devices, I'll be removing them as well.
If the current prices aren't sufficient to support Vizio's profit model, they may want to rethink their business.
That's why I keep notes: to inform my future purchasing decisions.
From my notes today:
Vizio Settles With FTC, Will Pay $2.2 Million and Delete User Data — 6 February 2017
Gotta move a lot of glass to pay a $2 million fine on 6% margins.
No wait—it's only the margins on the televisions that are a thin 6%. Other parts of the business are total payola.
streaming without ads is winning.
Buying physical media with no ads was a good idea.
Not networking a smart TV and using it as a display for no ad streaming services.
More ads is not a good idea.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I've seen situations where two TVs in the same house watching the same cable channel get separate ads... this tech already exists.
I bet they get what they want before I get what I want
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
Netflix already has ads, mostly previews for their original content.
You are thinking of Amazon Prime video, Netflix does not do previews before shows you watch (though it does do previews if you hover over an item, not really the same as an ad).
By tracking your viewing habits, they can give you better recommendations.
Maybe, but the article was specifically about ads...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ian't the whole concept of BluRay centered around such a requirement?
in the UK they recently annouced the ability to track rfid chipped mental health patients via the smart meter on the side of the house. hypothetically, you are sitting in your home surfing porn. what geek doesn't? anyway, you wonder in the television room put on the boob tube and channel surf. normal right? you settle on a movie ... your gf / wife hears it and joins you. your kid hears it and joins you. do you see where this is going? yup, the first commercial break features some donkey dicked black guy balling some tiny white chick...
this is great for the divorce lawyers. honestly, do you really believe they aren't either listening via the tv microphone or watching via the tv camera or both?
"Recommended content" is an ad for something for which you have already paid. Many people are more likely to excuse an ad for something for which you have already paid than an ad for something available for an additional fee.
People have been posting videos of their tvs made for the Chinese market playing commercials when they start up or even switch inputs.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Had BluRay players for years while on dial up with no WiFi, never a problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Amazon's ads are the thin edge of the wedge.
The cable companies did the same shit here, but that was to pad out 22 minutes of content into a 30 minute slot; why pay for showing 3 episodes of a show when you can pay for 2? Then they slid across to actual paid advertisements, because hey, you've already accepted you're paying for TV AND getting ads.
If Amazon don't start at least having an ad supported version of Prime, then I would be very surprised, and I'd expect whatever you're paying now for TV with interstitial ads to be what you pay for the ad supported non-premium service.
In the words of Frito: I can't believe you like money too. We should hang out.
Edward Bernays was born to a Jewish family
A nephew of Sigmund Freud.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
No "Smart TV" for me until I can replace its entire software/firmware load with an open-source alternative.
My family's TV watching (mostly CDs of old movies) is done using a NTSC CRT TV fed with analog video.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Meh."
mnem
and a half.
So...now we'll have to run ad blockers on our TVs?
---------------
Farnsworth: It's very simple. The ad gets into your brain just like this liquid gets into this egg. [He holds up an egg and injects it with liquid. The egg explodes, covering him and Leela in yolk.] Although, in reality, it's not liquid, but gamma radiation.
Fry: That's awful. It's like brainwashing.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Fry: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee!
Bender: Quit squawking, flesh wad. Nobody's forcing you to buy anything.
Amy: Yeah. I mean we all have commercials in our dreams but you don't see us running off to buy brand-name merchandise at low, low prices.
[After a long silence they get up and run out.]
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Took long enough. When I was working at Intel, they were developing a dedicated set-top SOC (Canmore I recall?). The salespeople were all excited and drooling on the meeting table about "a dollar and a dollar"; money from the chip, and money from a cut of ad revenue. The core software came from Yahoo and it was some of the worst code I've ever seen. Ugly inside, undocumented, very broken, and even more ugly outside.
Like all things Intel, much money was burned, flaky dev kits were sent out, and the project killed and the work thrown away.
https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2008/20080820comp_a.htm/
Crazy times those crazy times.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Nobody cares what you watch or what platform you like
They may not care what he in particular likes, but they sure care about what 100,000 people in his demographic like. And he's part of the collective, so to speak. So yeah, they care what he likes, just not him specifically.
In other words you're just another data point to be gobbled up. They care enough to collect the data, it's just not personal.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I will not be buying Vizio!
It's time to start taking aim at CEOs..... with high powered rifles.....
I'd be willing to spend some money to opt out of the surveillance dystopia we continue racing towards. I'd personally be willing to spend $500 to $1000 EXTRA to get a TV which worked FOR my privacy and against any sneaky attempts to collect information about me or target me for advertising. In the area of phones, I currently have an iphone for this reason and I put down money for a "purism" phone for this same reason. At work, I am heading an initiative to physically separate the network from the internet -- since for the most part there is NO good reason why anyone using office resources needs to access internet from the same computer system (we have purchased laptops for those who need to shop or conduct other internet business and these laptops have a separate wifi internet access). On my home computer I block almost everything. But what can I reasonably do about TV, short of not having any? Specifically, why can't I get a TV which is legitimately "smart" enough to act on my preferences to not share my information; to not allow "software updates" (which never seem to add anything I actually want my TV, so they are not upgrades, but clearly are adding more and more of the pork that Google and other evil companies are determined to subject me to)? Why don't I even have this choice? It has occurred to me recently that there ought to be a cottage industry in hacking smart TVs to add advertisement blocking, etc.....but there is a difference between ought and is. And even if there IS such a cottage industry, how do I find them? I've tried searching the internet using all the key words I can think of (e.g., "TVs which do not have android"; "privacy oriented smart TVs"; etc.) but the search results have not been at all helpful. Suggestions?
Not like you can use the TV's built-in tuner anymore, what with cable channels being scrambled. So what reason is there to buy a TV instead of a computer monitor?
I owned a Vizio 55-inch "Smart" TV. Vizio had already gotten into trouble for collecting user TV activity without properly disclosing that. I quickly realized that the "Smart" features of my Vizio were worse than what I got out of my gen. 1 Chromecast. So I disabled Vizio's "Smart" TV functions.
But the firmware of my Vizio TV was terrible. The TV would turn itself on overnight! I would come into my living room the next morning to see the TV turned on, but the remote would not work. The few buttons on the TV including the power button would not work either. I had to pull the electrical cord to get the Vizio pos TV to turn off. This happened at least three times over two years.
Changing channels on the Vizio "Smart" TV was slow. Much slower than my non-smart Sharp TV which I love. And since I was using an antenna, channels with weak signal would cause the Vizio "Smart" TV to strangely change to a channel across the dial (going from something like 45-3 to 15-1 without any user input). I repeatedly hid 15-1 from my channel lineup, but the Vizio would add it back repeatedly.
I finally called Vizio's customer support. The moron from Vizio did not seem to know that channels on physical frequencies (specified in megahertz) are mapped onto logical channels (45-3 for instance). He kept talking nonsense to me. Then when I complained about the firmware problems, what was his solution??? THAT I SHOULD BUY A NEW VIZIO TV BECAUSE THE FIRMWARE ON THEIR NEW TVs WORKS BETTER! I paid Vizio for a final product, not for some piece of shit alpha TV which spies on its users.
BTW, from the Vizio CTOs comments, 720p IS full HD, in that the original HD spec allows either 720p or 1080i. So even Vizio's CTO doesn't know what he is talking about. And no, Vizio does not support their older TVs at least not with firmware that works.
Avoid Vizio at all costs. Vizio TVs suck.
They don't cost "a bit more", they cost several times more for a display of equal size. 55" displays go for anywhere from $1,500 up to several thousand dollars. Yes, it's an option, but be upfront about what it's going to cost.
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
My Sharp BluRay player actually has a setting that allows me to block discs from accessing the network. All I see is a brief pop up that says “disc trying to access network, blocked” or some such, and then it finishes loading. Turning this option on took disc load times down dramatically because they no longer download some crappy new trailer before going to the menu.
Now if only the menu options allowed me to override the built-in ads and skip straight to menu, I’d be happy... why consumers can’t do this on media we f’n ALREADY PAID FOR is beyond me. The only people who don’t see the FBI warning and the preloaded ads are the pirates.
Anybody notice the FCC has been talking and working in this direction almost as if they were industry insiders and not regulators...
This is just a case of a CEO letting the cat out of the bag; they are all seriously working on making this happen and have been doing experiments in this area for years now. The FCC in their pocket moving to make this dream come true is on the edge of happening and at least 1 CEO seems to think it's a done deal regardless of what happens with Trump.
Parent's 2 links are highly recommended; should be required for every citizen.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
like, for instance, all commercial TV broadcasting...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
So I pay Netflix et al for premium content with no commercials and the "smart" TV then injects it's own? When my kids ask me to get a new movie I wait until it is released on B-Ray and then bittorrent it into my networked kodi install. I know 100% what is on my system and that it is safe for my kids to watch. I will quit pirating when my children quit being the product. Until then I feel no guilt or shame in preventing the brainwashing and exploitation of my family. Greedy bastards be damned! I love my older LG television BECAUSE it is dumb as brick.
Bought a new 70" TV (E70-F).
Developed issues within a couple months (kept restarting on itself).
Vizio sent out technician to basically replace all boards.
New problems emerged (backlight flicker).
Vizio wants to replace my TV with a refurbished TV. Says it's my only option.
Terrible.
This is hilarious - thanks!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.