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Did you know that whenever you turn on your smart TV, you invite an unseen guest to watch it with you?
These days, most popular TV models utilize automatic content recognition (ACR), a form of ad surveillance technology that gathers information about everything you watch and transmits it to a centralized database. Manufacturers then use your data to identify your viewing preferences, enabling them to deliver highly targeted ads.
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What's the incentive behind this invasive technology? According to market research firm eMarketer, in 2022, advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads, and those numbers are only going up.
To understand how ACR works, imagine a constant, real-time Shazam-like service running in the background while your TV is on. It identifies content displayed on your screen, including programs from cable TV boxes, streaming services, or gaming consoles. ACR does this by capturing continuous screenshots and cross-referencing them with a vast database of media content and advertisements.
According to The Markup, ACR can capture and identify up to 7,200 images per hour, or approximately two images every second. This extensive tracking offers money-making insights for marketers and content distributors because it can reveal connections between viewers' personal information and their preferred content. By "personal information," I mean email addresses, IP addresses -- and even your physical street address.
By understanding what viewers watch and engage with, marketers can make decisions on content recommendations to create bespoke advertising placements. They can also track advertisements that lead to purchases.
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