
Targeted Ads in Live TV - bookofjoe
https://www.channel4.com/press/news/sky-and-channel-4-broaden-industry-leading-partnership
======
llarsson
In the old days, there was broad demographic targeting such as "daytime TV
viewers are likely of demographic X, hence, marketing to them is offered at
this fee and for these time slots".

This is different. This is about showing your household different personalized
ads than my household, based on data that they don't tell us how they've
collected somehow.

Essentially, TV has been watching you (albeit probably via third-party
collaborating companies), and you're now being personally identified and
marketed to.

Have fun explaining to your spouse why your household's TV is showing more
dating site ads than that of their friends.

~~~
christopheraden
> Have fun explaining to your spouse why your household's TV is showing more
> dating site ads than that of their friends.

The targeting is sometimes only _so_ good. While it works in aggregate well,
sometimes there are laughable targetings, and it also depends on what
audiences the advertiser wants to hit.

I get some pretty strange targeted ads through Facebook that don't seem at all
relevant, and the "Why Am I Seeing This Ad" dropdown has very nebulous
explanations ("Targeting Men between 25-35 in San Francisco"). I would imagine
this problem to be similar with targeted ads on Live TV unless they keep the
ads pretty generic or have vastly better targeting than FB or Google.

~~~
fyfy18
For some reason recently I've been seeing a lot of datings ads on YouTube. Not
that I've been searching for anything like that. First it was Christian dating
services (I'm not Christian), but clearly that didn't spark my interest so now
they've starting showing me ads for Muslim dating services (I'm also not
Muslim). I'm excited to see what's next :-)

~~~
tempWinHater
Are you at least religious? Seems like a very specific subset of dating
services.

------
mabbo
Is this news to people?

A decade ago, as an intern at Google I was chatting with another intern about
this. She described exactly this sort of system. Google had bought up the ad
rights to an entire cable network across a few states in return for the data
on what channel each TV was on, and if it was on or off.

Based on that, they built profiles of how many people lived in each house,
what their likely age/demographics were, what times they watched TV, etc, and
targeted ads so that you and your neighbor watching the same channel got
different ads.

She wasn't speaking hypothetically. This was the team she worked on.

~~~
duncan-donuts
This was my reaction, too. People have been talking about doing this for a
while. The first time I heard someone talking about it seriously was in like
2012, and at that point it didn't seem experimental in any way.

------
tenebrisalietum
For the US, the new ATSC 3.0 standard talks about a "return path" where it
sounds like your non-cable, non-Internet broadcast TV will be somehow sending
data back to TV stations.

~~~
NegativeLatency
[http://unisoft.com/atsc/atsc3.0.html](http://unisoft.com/atsc/atsc3.0.html)

> A return path via the internet enables a variety of interactive applications

Sounds like they’re using the internet based on this page and others I
searched, but yes still troubling.

I set my router to drop traffic coming and going to my smart tv recently.
Seems like that’s the new future.

~~~
tenebrisalietum
[https://www.atsc.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/12/A323-2018-De...](https://www.atsc.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/12/A323-2018-Dedicated-Return-Channel.pdf)

The piece that talks to the broadcast towers is called the "Dedicated Return
Channel" or DRC. It doesn't seem to have anything do with an existing consumer
broadband connection.

> Dedicated Return Channel (DRC) supports interactive services in ATSC 3.0
> without dependence on other non-ATSC 3.0 network infrastructure. In ATSC
> 3.0, downlink broadcast channel and Dedicated Return Channel for interactive
> services use different RF frequencies (i.e. Frequency Division Duplexing).
> The PHY layer and Media Access Control (MAC) layer for DRC are defined in
> this specification.

It uses a modified OFDMA which I think is similar to 4G LTE

> The DRC uplink transmitter uses Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple
> Access (SCFDMA) as the multiple access scheme. SC-FDMA is similar to
> Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) except for a Discrete
> Fourier Transform (DFT) operation performed before the Inverse Fast Fourier
> Transform (IFFT).

~~~
NegativeLatency
Interesting, thanks for the link

------
bennyp101
[https://www.adsmartfromsky.co.uk](https://www.adsmartfromsky.co.uk) is the
technology.

I had a quick look around the site, but can't see where it says where the data
that they use comes from - other than the FAQs which say you can supply your
own data if you want.

I would assume they are using the open electrol role, postcode data etc to
target specific premises for their "Location Based Targeting" and for the
"Attribute Based Targeting" I guess data from various market research forms
that Sky send out or buy?

~~~
dannyw
Data aggregators and warehouses that will sell you practically anything the
entire marketing industry knows about you, for pennies each ad bid.

Seriously, ever added a credit card to your Google account for android apps?
Google knows all your MasterCard transactions. Probably the same for Visa,
just unleaked.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-
an...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-and-
mastercard-cut-a-secret-ad-deal-to-track-retail-sales)

~~~
Nextgrid
Does anyone know if there's an easy way to buy such information? I'd like to
buy my information just to see what this cancerous industry has on me and
where I need to improve my privacy efforts.

~~~
martin_a
Just go to those companies and ask for your data. GDPR is your friend.

------
torgard
Slightly off-topic, but what the fuck have the font designers been smoking?
That looks absolutely terrible!

~~~
cameronbrown
I think that's their corporate font. Works fine for big text on a telly I
guess.

------
JohnFen
> Early this year, Sky and NBCUniversal announced that AdSmart would expand to
> the US with both broadcasters taking the first step toward creating global
> premium video offering.

It looks like this garbage is coming to the US as well.

~~~
throwanem
It certainly is. Broadcast companies have been working toward it for years;
I'm no longer in that business and haven't acquainted myself with recent
developments, but you'd be kidding yourself to imagine it won't be here soon.

------
herghost
The "value" of a "bundle" service like Sky has been under scrutiny for some
time - from the mandatory bundling of 300 crapware channels just so you pay
for the one channel that shows anything worth seeing that people grew tired
of, to the Netflix model, and now to the further Balkanisation of content
that's ongoing with Prime, Disney, NowTV, etc.

It seems Sky has decided to invest in monetising those who remained above
incentivising a return for those who cut the cable.

------
Nextgrid
> both Sky and _Virgin Media_ households

Glad I left those monkeys even if it means paying 6x more to a different
(business-grade) ISP but at least none of my money is used to finance cancer
like this.

> match their own custom audience segments across Channel 4 platforms in a
> cookie-less, GDPR compliant way.

I don't understand how this can be GDPR compliant. It seems they are using the
Facebook approach of "both sides have PII and only exchange hashes of such
PII" but as far as I know whether it's the actual PII or the hash, as long as
it can be used to uniquely identify the user it still falls under personal
data as per the GDPR, and I don't think "targeting cancer on live TV" would
fall under legitimate interest.

------
tyingq
The recent Emmy awards are evidence that old school broadcast/cable tv with
commercials is dying quickly. Most of the popular categories were dominated by
streaming, commercial free shows. Hopefully this nonsense is part of the final
death throes.

I do remember, though, that US cable was originally mostly commercial free,
and the streaming services are already starting down that path in a few areas.
Sigh.

~~~
chillydawg
Streaming shows may be commercial free, but they're absolutely packed with
product placement and other subtle shite that's akin to paid articles
pretending to be content in newspapers. I actually prefer my ads nicely marked
so I'm not having to second guess whether they're drinking pepsi for a reason
or because $$$.

~~~
MiroF
As long as I'm confident I won't be fooled by product placement (I don't buy
consumer goods I see on celebrities or in shows), I'm happy to have whoever
does fall for this continue to subsidize my uninterrupted viewing as long as
the placement isn't too ridiculous.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _I don 't buy consumer goods I see on celebrities or in shows_

Does this mean that you go out of your way to avoid them? Or that you don't
believe you're influenced by them?

~~~
MiroF
I go out of my way to avoid them generally. If they're spending their budget
on advertising, I can usually find a similar but less advertised product
priced cheaper

------
Mindwipe
This has been in place on other channels for some years in the UK (and other
countries, though Sky is definitely a market leader in actual widespread
implementation).

It is worth noting that the US and UK aren't really equivalent here, as the UK
broadly broadcasts the same channels nationwide all day with already existing
slight differences for geographically relevant advertising, not just during
primetime. In some cases this is handled on a satellite platform like Sky by
broadcasting 20+ regional variations of a channel, and that is literally nuts.
A solution like this saves an awful lot of bandwidth.

~~~
mpalfrey
Multicast via satellite is comparatively cheap really. Especially for lower
bitrate channels. Add into the mix regional opt outs (e.g. local news, local
tv programs) and it's not _that_ bad an option.

Lots of other channels on Sky already use AdSmart. It's a bit weird to have
obviously targeted advertising on UK wide channels (e.g. local car
dealerships).

As a disclaimer - I used to work for the company who created the software Sky
are using for AdSmart.

------
lvturner
I think I'll just go back to piracy...

------
gdulli
While this isn't great, any form of broadcast/cable that can be controlled
with a DVR makes this a non-issue, as I'm skipping commercials anyway.

When ads on TV become unskippable, or continue to get more firmly embedded in
content as with Stranger Things, that's when it gets unacceptable for me.

~~~
JohnFen
The problem isn't the ads, it's the tracking.

~~~
gdulli
The tracking is happening anyway, everywhere. Maybe it sucks, but it's
reality. Netflix and Amazon, not to mention the entire rest of the internet,
are doing it. So if it comes to cable it doesn't differentiate streaming vs.
regular TV. The ability to skip ads with a traditional DVR does differentiate
them.

~~~
JohnFen
> The tracking is happening anyway, everywhere.

Absolutely true, but that not a reason to start accepting it. For me, the
ability to skip ads isn't compelling.

------
rahimnathwani
If you're a Sky customer and want to opt out of AdSmart, toggle off the two
preferences about 'tailored advertising' at the bottom of this page:

[https://www.sky.com/myaccount/my-details](https://www.sky.com/myaccount/my-
details)

------
ohduran
TV has been doing this for ages, although with the capabilities that it has.
So far, you could guess who was watching based on the time of the day, the
time of the year, and some survey data here and there.

TVs are no different from computers nowadays, it seemed like untapped
potential for targeted advertising.

~~~
FussyZeus
> TVs are no different from computers nowadays, it seemed like untapped
> potential for targeted advertising.

So are those of us who maybe don't want to be advertised to on every surface
of every room at all times just supposed to go live in the woods, or what?

~~~
deogeo
They cut down a few trees near where I live to put up billboards. Your
woodland escape won't last.

------
aeeadf19473af
Disclaimer 1 : throwaway account Disclaimer 2 : Most of this is from memory,
as I've worked on the subject of Smart TVs a couple of years ago.

Now, this comment is about TVs, not computer/streaming/whatever. It should
give some pointers for people who want to understand how we got there.

First a bit of context (feel free to skip this step) :

First of all, there are several competing standards for digital television.
Major ones are DVB (Europe, Africa, part of Asia), ATSC (North America) and
ISDB (Japan, South America), China has its own thing (DTMB). Then, there are
several ways to distribute it : by Cable (DVB-C, ATSC-C, ISDB-C), by air
(ground antennas, named Terrestrial) (DVB-T, ATSC-T, ISDB-T), by Satellite
(DVB-S, ATSC-S, ISDB-S) and lastly by IP. Not everything is supported, of
course. Your US Smart TV won't be able to pick up EU channels, because the
tuner is not the same. Now, historically TV was a one-way communication :
broadcasters sent content, which was picked up one way or another by your TV.
Then broadcasters tried to make the TV experience more interactive. I won't
speculate about the reasons, but fact is that : early 2000-2010, lots of
standards popped up to add interactive capabilities to a television. Things
like DVB-MHP (also called DVB-J), ATSC packages, MHEG 5, DAE, ... Now (2019)
things are more or less settled in the Western world: DVB regions use HbbTV,
ATSC 3.0 regions use ATSC 3.0 apps (they have no names).

Interactive TV : But what is "interactive TV" anyway ? You can already
interact with your TV, that's called a remote control. Well, with those
interactive TV applications, you can interact with the channel. If you a
little rectangle prompting you to press one of the color button (typically,
the red button) of your remote to get more information on the current channel,
or access to additional content, that's an interactive application being
executed on the TV. In HbbTV and in ATSC 3.0 apps, those are Web apps (bunch
of HTML/CSS/JS files + some resources) executing on your TV when you watch a
channel. Now, as a broadcaster, how do you broadcast those application to the
TV ? 1\. You pack everything into the stream and the television executes it ;
there are ways to do that. It's like a pure client-side application. 2\. You
tell the television to fetch it remotely. This way, the television asks to
something else for the content. The TV no longer is a dumb receiver, it must
also be able to contact to the world.

The back channel : This communication interface with the world is referenced
as the "back channel" (or "return channel") in specifications. In DVB world,
the back channel is an Internet connection : whether Ethernet or Wi-Fi. In
ATSC 3.0 world, I can only speculate (I've only skimmed through the specs).
From my understanding, you still can do it the IP way (Ethernet/Wi-Fi), but
there is a specification for another way of communication (may be over
cable/radio), credits to tenebrisalietum for pointing that out in the
comments.

And what about advertising ? Again, I won't make any hypothesis about why
broadcasters want targeted ads. Fact : In recent years the DVB group and HbbTV
association has thought about targeted advertisement. The working group was
named DVB-TA [1]. If you have a TV which is able to execute arbitrary
applications from broadcasters for one, to fetch remote content over the
Internet for two and if you happen to have a profile for the users of a
specific TV set, then it is a not too hard for a broadcaster to create an
interactive application that will replace every "generic advert" broadcasted
by a more targeted one.

As stated, all Smart TVs today fulfill point one, they may fulfill point 2 if
they're connected to the Internet or have an alternative back channel. For
point 3, I only _suppose_ that broadcasters have ways to build profiles on
their viewers.

Other interactions : There are other types of interactions which are part of
the specifications. Things like Companion Screen, where the TV communicates
with a smartphone/tablet. Usually it involves downloading the application from
the TV manufacturer. There are also some specifications which detail some
interactions between smartphone and TVs (though some of it is also vendor-
specific). On the technical side, the two devices must share the same local
network and everything is done in UPnP.

Generic applications : Smart TVs also have app stores, where you can download
and execute applications for the TV's underlying operating system. Android TVs
have Android apps, Samsung TVs have Tizen apps, LG TVs have webOS apps, ...
Those are not the same as "interactive applications" mentioned above
(interactive applications are transmitted/signaled over the digital television
stream, you don't get them from an app store).

Security and Privacy state of the art by memory : Research on the subject
focused on DVB and more specifically HbbTV. wrt security, the two founding
presentations were by Herfurt in 2013 at 30C3, then by Oren et al. at Usenix
Security 2014. On the privacy side, Ghiglieri et al. published multiple
studies regarding the use of tracking technologies inside HbbTV applications.
To the best of my knowledge, there has been no independant presentations that
looked into ATSC 3.0 interactive applications security or privacy
implications. (You can find related talks from the people who wrote the
standards)

[1]: [https://www.hbbtv.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/11/11_Angelo-P...](https://www.hbbtv.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/11/11_Angelo-Pettazzi_How-DVB-and-HbbTV-are-working-
together-on-Addressable-Advertisement_Berlin-2018.pdf)

------
rvz
> AdSmart allows brands to show different ads to different households watching
> the same programme, enabling advertisers to target campaigns based on
> thousands of combinations of demographic, location, interest and lifestyle
> attributes.

This essentially pushes GDPR to the edge in terms of taking your personal user
data and selling it to advertisers. Yes, Channel 4 is kept alive on life
support due to ads, but I can only imagine the tons of data I will hand over
if I connected all my social media accounts to my smart tv, channel 4, sky,
etc.

If that's what they think the future of TV is, then I'd have to call the
library across the road my second home then.

* Also joins Apple TV+ waiting list.

------
agentultra
Sweet! I have waited so long for this. My friends may never truly understand
me but at least my brands will.

