more on Coming to TV: ads about you

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Re: [IP] Coming to TV: ads about you
Date:   Tue, 22 Nov 2005 19:17:55 -0500
From:   Andrew Lippman <lip () media mit edu>
To:     dave () farber net
References:     <43838E82.9080005 () farber net>



For IP, if interested.

With respect to ads about you:

The notion that a broadcaster radiates a signal with no respect for  
whether anyone is interested in receiving it is a waste of spectrum,  
energy, and time.  It doesn't make sense to my students at all --  
some think it is the equivalent of spam.  Personally, I never  
understood why over-the-air broadcasters don't listen, but a back  
channel makes perfect sense for cable.

When I watched the 2000 election returns at CBS, in New York, by  
11:30PM, it seemed perfectly clear that Dan Rather would learn little  
more that night, so he simply ought to have told his audience to "go  
to bed, and if anything important happens, I'll call you..."  But he  
couldn't.

It's also potentially beneficial to narrowcast advertising.  Twenty  
years ago, a Peabody, Mass.,  cable system tested phone-in requests  
for ads that were then queued on three dedicated channels.  People  
did it.  Many ads are both interesting and informative the first time  
you see them; some countries used to place them all at the ends of  
programs and people willingly remained tuned in.   I might consider  
explicitly telling "The Daily Show" or CBS what I wanted my ad  
profile to be like.  I'd even write a program to keep it current:   
"tell me about energy-saving thermostats real soon..."

It's quite a different matter to monitor what you view from a  
recorder, and quite another matter to take information without  
asking, and this is indeed an assault on commonly accepted norms of  
privacy with respect to television viewing.  There is no reason for  
those norms to change or be dictated by the provider.  It won't last  
as such when we start watching TV off the internet anyway.

The fix is simple.  Just open the recorder architecture and the users  
might make something good out of this.  A back channel can't be a bad  
idea in principle.  In this case, it is not the technology that is  
awry, it is the business plan.

Andy Lippman
MIT Media Lab


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