Web-type ads targetting you at home
p2pnet news view Advertising | TV:- Online advertising companies such as Yahoo, Google, Fa$ebook, NoSpace, and all the rest of them, spend a fortune trying to find ways to make us watch their ads.
They use spy technologies such as intrusive DPI (Deep Packet Inspection, aka Deep Privacy Invasion) to ferret around in our personal and private data which, they claim they’d never, ever, do anything bad with.
No one asks us what we think: it’s like we’re mindless drones waiting complacently to be phked by whoever comes along.
Now “web-like TV advertising has been long-promised, but will Verizon’s FiOS, a relative latecomer to the party, be the first to deliver it?” – asks Advertising Age, with the bland headline, “Verizon Promises Targeted Advertising By End of Year” just as though it’s something everyone is looking forward to.
Shades of what’s to come
“The proposed Google-DoubleClick merger is just one in a recent consolidation wave that includes Microsoft’s purchase of ad serving firm Aquantive and ad exchange AdECN, as well as AOL buying behavioral targeting firm Tacoda and Yahoo buying online ad auction network RightMedia and BlueLithium, an online advertising network,” said CNet News a couple of years back.
“Behavioral marketing is also spreading to social networks, including the popular Facebook, which recently announced a new ad system that has members up in arms.”
And “Behavioral targeting technologies work by anonymously monitoring and tracking the content read and sites visted by a designated unique user or IP as that user surfs the Internet,” explained Search Engine Journal in 2o04.
“This is done by serving tracking codes, which are implemented as cookies, on a user`s computer as s/he is served ads from various online advertising networks. Sites visited, content viewed, and length of visit are then all databased and analyzed to predict an online behavioral pattern for such a user, thereby classifying that user by his/her online demographic. Behavioral ad networks then serve targeted advertising related to that user`s behavioral classification, regardless of where s/he then visit.”
In other words, they’re sneakily following us around online, spying on our every move so they can try and figure out how to Shanghai us somewhere along the way.
Cookies embedded in our PCs keep track, letting their owners know what we’re up to online.
And it’s on the way for TV, except now they want to be in your living room, right there with you.
Targetting homes
The pic comes from Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 movie of Anthony Burgess’ book A ClockWork Orange.
It, “alludes to the prevention of the main character’s exercise of his free will through the use of a classical conditioning technique,” says the Wikipedia.
If you don’t believe you’re being conditioned, think again.
“Verizon will start targeting advertising on a household level by the end of the year, allowing advertisers to target homes, rather than shows, or to buy specific demographics and behaviors via the set-top box,” says Advertising Age.
Has anyone asked you if you’re OK with that?
The assumptions and presumptions are: you’ll be sitting there with your tongue hanging out just dying to be ‘targeted,’ which is to say they’ll use anything their tiny, devious minds can come up with to not only try and make you believe whatever it is they’re peddling has value, but to force it in front of you, whether you want to see it or not.
For this to be effective, the adco set-top boxes will have to come complete with some kind of spy technology — TV cookies, in effect – that’ll phone home with precise details of what you’re watching, when you’re watching, how long you watch for, and so on.
Then they’ll know how to “best improve your television viewing experience”.
Online, we can protect ourselves to a very considerable extent with various kinds of ad blockers and cookie killers.
Will we be able to do the same once web-style advertising hits our home TV sets?
No need to stay tuned.
Deep Privacy Invasion – Canada Privacy Commission DPI site, April 6, 2009
Advertising Age – Verizon Promises Targeted Advertising By End of Year, April 7, 2009
CNet News – Target me with your ads, please, December 4, 2009
Search Engine Journal – Behavioral Targeting and Contextual Advertising, September 1, 2004
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Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
April 8th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
LOL at pics!
April 9th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Oh no. It’s already here.
With digital cable, the cable company can “read” the box and see what channel it’s on. Not only that, they can also see what buttons you are hitting on the remote in real-time. How do I know this? I had a problem with the cable and the support tech on the other end of the call went inside the box and could see exactly what I was doing in regards to what buttons I was pressing on the remote.
The telephone company version of this is that the SERVER sends the feed to you over a VDSL line. The set-top box sends the request to the VDSL modem (If it’s not integrated) and the modem sends it to the network which eventually ends up at the telco’s servers. Every modem has a unique ID and a unique SSL certificate to authenticate it to the server. Since the server does the authentication, it knows which box made which requests, and what streams are being sent to which boxes.
With this, they can gather enough data for a “targeted” solution. A tomahawk cruise missile coming to a living room near you.
PS: Jon, you have my permission to use this post as you see fit.
April 9th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
AT Maelstorm,
Maelstorm said:
“PS: Jon, you have my permission to use this post as you see fit.”
have you seen the Bell Canada/media/music cartel sites that say (in the terms/conditions) that if you post here you automatically grant exclusive rights to said company in perpetuity?
Do you like asking or giving your permission?
Google doesn’t.
Bell Canada doesn’t
Media doesn’t
MPAA/RIAA/Music doesn’t.
You lost your rights the minute you got on the net.
Now you lost your rights the minute you bought IP-TV, Cable-TV, or a cell phone. (read the terms).
Rights? Privacy? For your eyes only? Permission?
WTF kind of words are those in this day and age?
Get off the crack.
ty.
April 10th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Did we get up on the wrong side of the bed today or what? I don’t live in Canada. I live in the USA, and the last time that I checked, I still have rights, and I have the right to exercise them. Like the right to an opinion and the right to express it. It’s called free speech which is guaranteed by the first amendment. Believe it or not, it still exists. So no, I don’t use Bell Canada. Some of the crap that I have seen people pull elsewhere in the world wouldn’t fly here in the USA. Remember that Canada and the USA are two separate countries with their own laws and ways of doing things. Yeah, we have our problems, but who doesn’t. If you want examples, I’ll cite some of them:
1: The well known one: Comcast blocking bittorent traffic by sending a RST with the customer’s IP address being spoofed.
2: A smaller telco who provides DSL service was caught red handed blocking Vontage VoIP traffic and was fined by the FCC and ordered to stop blocking the traffic. This one isn’t as well known.
3: A few years ago, Yahoo.com in the US (Not Yahoo in France), was accused, tried, convicted, and fined by the French government for propagating German Nazi memorabilia on their auctions. Since Yahoo.COM is for US customers and is wholly operated inside the borders of the US, such things are protected speech under the first amendment, or so a federal judge ruled. The effect of this? The French court ruling was ruled as unenforceable in the US.
4. There was a similar incident a few years back with the Dow Jones news service in Australia. Not sure what was about or what the outcome of it was.
And some of the lame brained things with Canada:
1. To appoint the Governor General of Canada (through whom the PM technically exercises most of his/her powers, some of which are listed below);
Vice PM or vice president? Not sure what that position is.
2. To appoint Senators to the Canadian Senate;
Our senators are elected by popular vote within each state.
3. To appoint Supreme Court justices and other federal justices;
We have that too, but they are also subject to congressional approval.
4. To appoint all members of the Cabinet;
Same as #3.
5. To appoint the entire board of the Bank of Canada;
Same as #3, but we call it the treasury.
6. To appoint the heads of the military, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and other government agencies;
Same as #3.
7. To appoint CEO’s and Chairs of crown corporations such as CBC;
There are no state owned businesses in the US. They are called government contractors. That is withstanding the issues with the meltdown of GM, Crysler, and AIG.
8. To dissolve Parliament and choose the time of the next federal election (within a 5 year limit);
Cannot be done in the US. You can remove a member of a public office by impeachment, and there are very strict procedures to do so.
9. To run for re-election indefinitely (no term limits);
2 terms for president.
10. To remove Members of Parliament (MPs) from the ruling party’s caucus;
Nope.
11. To deny any MP the right to participate in parliamentary debate or run for re-election;
Nope.
12. To dismiss individuals or groups of representatives from serving in Parliament;
Nope. See #8.
13. To ratify treaties; and
Only congress can ratify treaties.
14. To declare war.
Only congress can declare war, or they can authorize the president to do so.
Although we do have the DMCA, but that’s because we were obligated to do so because of a treaty that we signed…The Berne Convention I think.
Cheers.
June 26th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
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