TV has always been a box built to sell us things, no matter how the system is dressed up. Today’s next-level sets–and the even smarter ones of tomorrow–want to eavesdrop on and parse our living-room conversations for keywords to streamline the pitches, just like the Internet does. The hope is that this and other shared data enabled by the Internet of Things will lead to personalized ads that attract eyeballs. What’s inside our brains is valuable.

From James Blake at The Conversation:

Set-top boxes are increasingly storing and sharing viewer data with advertisers. Broadcasters are gathering data on viewers when they sign up to their online players and services. ITV, which relaunched its online ITV player as ITV Hub in November, has more than 11 million registered users, for example. Channel 4 meanwhile replaced its 4OD platform with All4 in March. Users have to register their name, gender, date of birth and location; and the platforms also track which programmes they have watched and favourited. We might have thought we were the ones watching TV, but it turns out that the TV is now watching us. 

Revolution will be televised

All this new information can be collated to create highly targeted and personalised adverts. Earlier this month, Channel 4 used the Future of TV Advertising conference in London to showcase the results of what it described as the “world’s first video ad personalisation”: its campaign to personalise Coke bottles in the summer of 2014.

The conference brought together senior advertising figures from around the world, including representatives from the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter. Two buzzwords crept into every session and lunch conversation: “addressable” and “programmatic”. Addressable advertising is about creating tailored adverts such as the Channel 4 examples from viewer information collated from set-top boxes, registration details, or cookie data from online search and shopping habits. Programmatic advertising is about automating the way in which ads like these are bought and sold. Together they are seen as a revolution in TV advertising.•