NOT JUST FUN AND GAMES
Software identifies sounds from movies and shows to create better targeted ads
Software in some game apps can monitor users’ TV viewing with microphone, collecting data for advertisers,
At first glance, the gaming apps — with names such as Pool 3D, Beer Pong: Trickshot and Real Bowling Strike 10 Pin — seem innocuous. One called Honey Quest features Jumbo, an animated bear.
Yet these apps, once downloaded, can keep tabs on the viewing habits of their users — some of whom may be children — even when the games are not being played.
It is yet another example of how companies, using devices that many people feel they cannot do without, are documenting how audiences in a rapidly changing entertainment landscape view TV and commercials. The apps use software from Alphonso, a startup that collects TVviewing data for advertisers. Using a smartphone’s microphone, the software can detail what people watch by identifying audio signals in TV ads and shows, sometimes even matching that information with the places people visit and the movies they see.
The information can then be used to target ads more precisely and to try to analyze things such as which ads prompted a person to go to a car dealership.
More than 250 games that use Alphonso software are available in the Google Play store; some are also available in Apple’s app store.
Some of the tracking is taking place through gaming apps that do not otherwise involve a smartphone’s microphone, including some apps that are geared toward children. The software can also detect sounds even when a phone is in a pocket or if the apps are running in the background.
Alphonso said that its software, which does not record human speech, is clearly explained in app descriptions and privacy policies and that the company cannot gain access to users’ microphones and locations unless they agree.
“The consumer is opting in knowingly and can opt out any time,” said Ashish Chordia, Alphonso’s chief executive, adding that the company’s disclosures comply with Federal Trade Commission guidelines.
The company also provides opt-out instructions on its website.
Alphonso declined to say how many people it is collecting data from, and Chordia said that he could not disclose the names of the roughly 1,000 games and social apps with Alphonso software because a rival was trying to hurt its relationships with developers. (The New York Times identified many of the apps in question by searching “Alphonso automated” and “Alphonso software” in the Google Play store.)
Chordia also said that Alphonso did not approve of its software being used in apps meant for children. But it was, as of earlier this month, integrated in more than a dozen games such as Teeth Fixed and Zap Balloons from KLAP Edutainment in India, which describes itself as “primarily focusing on offering educational games for kids and students.”
Alphonso is one of several young companies using new technologies to enter living rooms in search of fresh information to sell to marketers. Television still attracts almost $70 billion (U.S.) in annual spending in the United States, and advertisers will gladly pay to amplify and analyze the effectiveness of that spending.
Last year, the U.S. trade commission issued a warning to a dozen developers who had installed a piece of software known as Silverpush into apps with the goal of using device microphones to listen for audio signals that humans could not hear to log what they watched on TV. This year, Vizio agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle charges that it was collecting and selling viewing data from millions of internet-connected televisions without the knowledge or consent of the sets’ owners.
Companies gathering such data, especially through games, need to make their business practices clear to consumers “because it’s so inherently unexpected and surprising,” said Justin Brookman, the director of consumer privacy and technology policy at the advocacy group Consumers Union, and a former policy director at the trade commission who worked on the Silverpush case.
“When you see ‘permission for microphone access for ads,’ it may not be clear to a user that, oh, this means it’s going to be listening to what I do all the time to see if I’m watching Monday Night Football,” Brookman said. “They need to go above and beyond and be careful to make sure consumers know what’s going on.”