“This is the power of a 30-second television commercial with the precision of a piece of direct mail targeted to the individual household level,” said Paul Guyardo, chief revenue officer at DirecTV. “Never before have advertisers had that level of precision when it came to a 30-second commercial.”
The level of precision on televisions has long been a dream for political campaigns, which are decided by relatively small groups of voters. President Barack Obama’s campaign in 2012 experimented with it on a small scale, but too few homes were in broadcasting systems equipped to handle house-by-house decisions.
But earlier this year, DirecTV and Dish Network announced a partnership that would allow political clients to reach into about 20 million households by matching up customers’ identities with their satellite receiver, much like a telephone number rings at a specific handset.
At the same time, NBC and parent company Comcast are opening the door for advertisers to target specific households using video-on-demand services in 20 million more households. The communications giant is not yet ready to implement the targeting during live broadcasts, though.
For the record, I have Direct TV, and I'm not happy with it at all.
The reason I'm not happy with it is Direct TV acts as if the viewing customer is secondary to their mission. And their efforts seem to be geared towards making advertisers money, regardless of what the viewers want.
The DTV thugs claim the "rising costs" are the fault of broadcasters, not DTV. Anybody with a half reasonable brain knows that is a stone cold lie. The truth is that DTV and the cable companies all do the same thing and make the same excuses for price increases. They've been doing it for years. But what they don't talk about in the same conversation is all those price increases have gone to make their bottom line better, not to offer better service to customers. In fact, I can make the case their service has gotten worse, with most channels now showing mostly reruns, and DTV moving channels to upper tier channel packages that cost more, while loading up the lower less expensive tiers with junk channels that nobody wants.
On our channel package, we have at least a third of available channels blocked, not listed on our channel guide. We have zero interest in those channels, which are mostly religious babble and children's channels, along with several Spanish language channels. All junk, yet we have to pay for those channels regardless.
And DTV has risen their rates every years since I've had their service, and in a nasty email I sent them they replied admitting to it, but claimed it is the channels that forces them to raise rates! About 5 years ago, my bill was around $45-50/month. We still have the same package, that DTV doesn't even offer any more, and the price has risen to nearly $80/month, with less channels, some of them having done HD only, while other channels have simply been moved and not replaced.
And the HD thing really gets me fired up! DTV charges extra for HD service, and if you don't pay, no HD, at all, even if a channel like a sports event is broadcast in HD, you won't get HD if you don't have the HD package DTV charges an extra $10/month for. That would mean nearly $90/month for a channel package that is one level above basic, no extra movie or sports channels. THAT to me is outright theft.
And now DTV is selling out their viewers to advertisers with targeted commercials based on viewer data? Did DTV ever ask it's customer base if they weren't interested in being targeted? NOPE. They don't care, and claim it's what customers want. No, it's what board members want.
Cable and satellite services are out of control, and the public is the loser as a result. Same with your ISP. Those thugs are doing the same basic things to internet customers.
It's a fact that the
US has on average the
slowest internet speeds on the planet, with the
highest prices on the planet. It doesn't take an expert to see what they are doing, and being allowed to do, to the public.
