San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
It knows what you watched last night
A spate of streaming services are on their way from major tech and entertainment companies, promising viewers a trove of bingeworthy new shows and movies.
There’s something for advertisers, too: your personal data.
Recent deals involving media conglomerate AT&T, streaming device seller Roku, advertising giant Publicis and other companies have expanded the surveillance infrastructure that operates in the background of streaming services. While viewers focus on the action onscreen, tracking technology quietly sops up information about their habits and uses it to target them with more relevant, traceable ads.
It is a “digital daisy chain of datagathering on viewers,” according to Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. Many streaming customers are unaware that the sitcom titles they prefer, the ads they do not skip, their email addresses and the serial numbers identifying the devices they use are being harvested and distributed. Others willingly opt in to, say, have a record of their recent cooking show binge, watched through Amazon Fire TV, transmitted to an advertiser who can then deliver a recipe book ad to their laptop or tablet.
But recent research suggests that even when viewers try to shield their information from companies that hope to target them with ads, it is sometimes still tracked without their permission and shared with corporate giants like Facebook, Google and Netflix.
“It’s much harder now to grab people’s attention,” said Ross Benes, an analyst with eMarketer. “To reach through the clutter, you need a lot of data. But finding the balance is the trick — you shouldn’t have to read through 80,000 words of legalese when you sign up for a streaming service.”
New services from Apple, NBCUniversal, the Walt Disney Co. and AT&T’s WarnerMedia will start streaming content on connected televisions and devices from Amazon, Google, Roku and more. Verizon will offer a free year of Disney Plus to many of its wireless customers.
Streaming technology represents a tantalizing opportunity for advertisers, giving them more specific knowledge of just who is watching — a change from what they knew about the audiences for traditional TV.
Hulu, a streaming service controlled by Disney, tells advertisers like Kroger and Lexus that it can help them identify viewers by age, gender, location and “interests and real world actions — both on and off Hulu.”
Advertisers are expected to continue shifting more of their budgets away from network television, where ratings are down and ad prices are rising, to streaming platforms, bolstering the amount they spend by 39%, to $3.8 billion, according to adbuying and media intelligence firm Magna. On Roku, more than 3,200 channels support advertising, nearly 1,000 more than a year earlier, according to data from advertising fraud intelligence firm Pixalate.
The data generated by such channels about the programming and ads that customers like to watch is funneled to advertisers by data brokers and other middlemen who talk up their ability to reach audiences “whenever and wherever they happen to be watching.” Roku, which draws more revenue from advertising and related business than from sales of its streaming players, spent $150 million to acquire Dataxu, a company that helps
compete directly with streaming services including Netflix and Apple TV Plus.
“It will certainly boost our numbers somewhat,” said Disney’s directtoconsumer chairman, Kevin Mayer, in an interview with CNBC. “But we also think it is great for consumers. And it is a brand that we’re really happy to be in partnership with.”
TMobile recently agreed to partner with Quibi, a Hollywood startup that plans to distribute bitesize entertainment designed for Millennials, advertisers automate placement online. AT&T’s advertising and analytics unit, Xandr, bought Clypd, which can send tailored ads to multiple devices in a single household. And Publicis’ ability to collect consumer data helped it win a coveted contract to help Disney Plus with its marketing strategy.
Many streaming channels, including those for children, do not clearly disclose that viewer patterns are being tracked and shared, privacy experts said. Last month, a study from Princeton University and the University of Chicago found some streaming channels on Roku and Amazon Fire TV contacting more than 60 separate trackers, including some owned by Google and Facebook.
When researchers turned on Roku’s “limit ad tracking” function, they found that Roku sent information to more trackers than when the function was turned off.
Similarly, clicking on the option to “disable interest ads” on the Amazon Fire TV Stick made little difference in the number of device serial numbers and other identifiers that were sent to trackers.
Tiffany Hsu is a New York Times writer.
The Times reported last week. Quibi launches in April, and the TMobile deal gives it a potentially large distribution platform.
Dallasbased phone colossus AT&T last year acquired Time Warner Inc. for $85 billion, and its entertainment division will launch a new streaming service, HBO Max, next year. Verizon previously delved into streaming with its shortlived Go90 video platform in 2015.
Ryan Faughnder is a Los Angeles Times writer.