I don't love the idea either, but in what way is this worse than ads on Nickelodeon?
Ad supported content has been around for over a century, I think people get a little overworked sometimes about what a great evil it is.
When I look at my monthly video entertainment spend vs a cable bill from my childhood (let alone what it would be today), the quality and options available and the control over scheduling I have vs linear television, I’m not feeling very swindled.
Cable TV programming, by which I mean deciding what is broadcast on what channel when, has long (decades) been a question of identifying the audience for the ads coming in, working out what they want to see, showing it, and billing the advertiser. You may even create whole new channels for this target group. Most consumers get it backwards thinking ads exist to fund channels - channels only exist to show you ads.
Even back in around 2000 in the UK satellite market (which relied on modems in STBs phoning home as the backchannel) the granularity and segmentation of the data backing this was amazing. Unsurprisingly the people I knew in that universe went on to build the current web ad universe.
That's broad targeting. Miles away from hypertargeting/surveillance.
> back in around 2000 in the UK satellite market (which relied on modems in STBs phoning home as the backchannel)
That is a problem, but is also not cable TV.
Are cable modems phoning home?
For most of the existence of cable, there was no way for it to send a signal back. It is not fundamentally based on tracking. The targeting you described in detail is not tracking.
Especially since the correct answer is probably "some of them". I was hoping you could be more specific, since you're doing your best to give an impression of knowledge but not doing much to share it.
And your store loyalty remark was objectively being an ass, that comment adds no value to the conversation at all.
There is a distinct tendency on forums like this to believe if something isn’t widely discussed on the internet then it didn’t happen.
You should stop assuming the worst and being so obnoxious.
You don't think this applies to the store loyalty comment?
I'm not surprised, I wanted specifics instead of implications, jesus. I'm not saying anything "didn't happen", unless you're claiming cable had universal tracking from the start, in the 50s.
And
AGAIN
That doesn't affect my main point, which you keep ignoring.
You ignoring my main argument is far more obnoxious than anything I'm doing.
This is just wrong. You are misinterpreting what I'm saying to mean what you want it to say and not what it does say, then getting confused, angry and demanding answers. It's not a winning strategy.
EDIT: in the spirit of generosity I will add a detail you seem to be missing: those target groups can be very very very very small indeed.
For my main point, I just wanted you to address it at all, whether you agree or disagree, I wasn't demanding answers.
The thing I wanted an answer for was a separate point, which you laser-focused on to mock and not answer. That's not a winning strategy either. And I wouldn't be upset if you didn't want to bother with it very much, but you don't get to just mock it and say nothing else if you're trying to actually have a conversation.
> EDIT: in the spirit of generosity I will add a detail you seem to be missing: those target groups can be very very very very small indeed.
If you make an entire channel, it is not very very very very small!
Unless you're talking about something very different from traditional channels, which again follows my point that it didn't work that way for decades, and satellite didn't have the bandwidth to do that.