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ZDNet
Over the weekend, people got a bit freaked out when Netflix sent out a cheeky tweet, indicating that it was tracking views of its original movie, The Christmas Prince.
Netflix, in essence, has admitted it is analyzing viewership metadata the same way that popular news and editorial websites (yes, like ZDNet, which is owned by CBS) looks at page views in order to determine the type of articles that make the most money and which advertisers are best suited to particular content domains.
This is how the industry of New Media focuses overall coverage and determines appropriate search engine optimization for headlines. Yes, I’m talking about clickbait.
To this, I say: Why are you surprised Netflix is now doing this, too? In fact, I knew this was coming, years ago.
(Source: Twitter)
In November 2014, during the Aereo/CBS battle that was heading for the Supreme Court — which Aereo then lost — I talked about what the future of television might look like should the networks decide that streaming, rather than broadcast, would be its best distribution medium and outlet for overall monetization.
While it sounded ominous at the time, this prediction is starting to look more and more like reality.
Sophisticated analysis and big data decision-making tools will guide the networks in how to target advertising to who is viewing that streamed content, providing more of a precision-guided munition to the eyeballs than the shotgun blast that they have today.
For the advertisers, that’s way better than the tools they have now. Today, all they have is time slots, ratings, and audience popularity based on Neilsen and perhaps DVR data, as well as local demographics.
All of that is legacy technology and vestigial old-school business when over-the-air is gone. Depending on the viewer, who will be profiled based on their social network footprint and historical viewing data supplied by all of their content providers (presumably through business partnerships), they will receive customized TV ads dynamically inserted into their streams. And they will be told what other programs to watch.
If the activities of the NSA snooping on your emails and phone call history creep you out, just think about what the networks are going to do with the information that details what you like and do not like to watch, what parts of it you liked or disliked, all of your favorite things on Facebook, what you’ve been saying on Twitter, what websites you look at, what products you’ve been buying, what books you read, and what games and music you play on your devices.
Netflix hasn’t actually used this sort of information to target advertising, but it’s definitely using this data to determine the future of its programming. In fact, it has been doing this for years.
Read also: Apple to iPhone, Mac users: Here’s why our data gathering doesn’t invade your privacy | Connected cars: What happens to your data after you leave your rental car behind? | What does Google know about you? Its new privacy dashboard should reveal all
The company is only admitting to doing things that its peers in the industry are also engaged in but are not so openly admitting to: The monetization of customer data.
Amazon, Hulu, HBO, and, yes, the streaming services for basic cable channels and network television companies — such CBS All Access — all are engaged in this practice to some extent and mine their data for different reasons and to different ends.