TiVo Selling Data on Users' Watching Habits 244
Gyppo writes "The San Francisco Chronicle reports that TiVo is collecting and selling data on what parts of broadcasts people are rewinding for review and what commercials they are skipping. The data collection is part of a service the company provides to advertisers and television networks, collecting anonymous data on their users' commercial-watching habits. The data they provide is a random subset of their overall userbase, detailing which commercials are skipped and which are actually watched. The article mentions the possibility for privacy abuse, but with this application of technology Tivo is not providing access to what any one individual user watches via the service."
in CCCP (Score:4, Funny)
Re:in CCCP (Score:5, Insightful)
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Typo (Score:2, Troll)
Re:in CCCP (Score:5, Informative)
There is nothing to see here. It took less than 30 seconds to find Tivo's policy on viewing habbits data.
Re:in CCCP (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in total agreement. I thought it was common knowledge from the start that this was part of TiVo's business model, and is a large part of the reason I've never entertained a TiVo purchase. I just can't see paying a monthly fee to provide a company with data that they're going to turn around and sell. I'll stay with my MythTV system, thanks, and the more-than-reasonable terms that Zap2It offers for providing program listings.
Not surprising. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see a problem, as long as they don't release any individually identifiable data.
Re:Not surprising. (Score:4, Funny)
I've been a TiVo user for years, and I agree - we've always known about this, and I could give a crap.
To be honest, as long as it doesn't have my credit card number and address, I could care less even if it wasn't aggregated and did contain my name, for instance.
Oh, the horror...my big secret would be revealed : I have a season pass for "That's So Raven". I may get denied jobs, housing, or a life mate if anyone ever found out. ;)
I know some people get all uppity over "principle" and "slippery slopes", but really - what in hell is anyone watching on TV, especially in the U.S., that anyone would seriously object to knowing about. No, I don't want my viewing habits published on the web, but on the other hand - what the hell do I really care if they were. The world be damned - yes, I used the instant replay button several times on "Dirt" last week when Grant Shaud from Melrose Place was getting blown by that guy so I could get a good look at his rockin' ass. I have no shame!
If someone doesn't like me because I watch those zany adventures of Raven and her wacky friends, or that I used the instant replay button to get a look at a middle-aged guys ass on basic cable, then they aren't cool enough for me to care about anyway. ;)
In all seriousness, though - I just assume that every bit of data that enters or exits my house is public knowledge. That's why I don't say things on the Internet I wouldn't take out an ad and say in a Newspaper for the world to see - I'm not paranoid and actually think anyone is actively looking, but I just find it good policy. It lets me live my life rather worry-free that something will ever "come back to haunt me".
AE
Re:Not surprising. (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I'm in favor of Tivo going this route for the simple fact that it's extremely unlikely I'll ever be hooked up to Nielsen's TV rating service and I'd like for TV networks to base their decisions on the largest sample set possible. For example, maybe a huge portion of people with Tivos watch Battlestar Galactica but, in a statistical fluke, almost nobody who has a Nielsen hookup does. In that situation, if Tivo doesn't sell their data to NBC/Universal, maybe BSG gets cancelled when as few as 100,000 more viewers - represented by the addition of Tivo's data - could have saved the show.
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I've read all of the replies, but I choose you to respond to as I thought yours was the most well-thought out. Not a single reply told me anything I didn't already know, however - I am aware of all of the issues brought up. I just think that there is a time to stand on principle, and this isn't one of them.
I never said "let them go through everything of mine...etc." I did say that when data comes in or leaves my house via a cable, I understand that that data is not secure from a
Old news? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank goodness for my MythTV box.
Re:Old news? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Old news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, if they were selling my individual data, that would tick me off.
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Its exactly the opposite. They'll work on ways of making you see more of the stuff you'd like to skip.
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But if the shows he wants to watch aren't on, he won't be watching at all and so won't even need to try to skip the ads, will he?
Re:Old news? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe a Good Thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Note who Tivo considers its "clients" to be... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be nice if Tivo would think of its loyal customers as clients rather than a captive audience to sell data about and to force feed advertisements to. I think it is a legitimate point to think that Tivo might wish to consider putting its retail customers first, since without them they are nothing. The attempts to monitize their customers as if they are an asset owned by Tivo seems like a good way to alienate retail customers and to potentially hurt Tivo sales.
Re:Note who Tivo considers its "clients" to be... (Score:5, Insightful)
What bothers me about TiVo is that they are in a conflict-of-interest situation. They have people buying TiVos (and subscriptions) on the one hand, and they have advertisers and media companies on the other. Let's face it: the needs and wants of the two groups are not usually aligned. At some point, they may decide that the needs of the media companies are more profitable than the needs of the users. (I would argue that this monitoring move is one example.) I would prefer not to sign up with companies that undertaken these conflict-of-interest scenarios.
Obviously it's up to each consumer to decide whether the service TiVo is offering is worth it. Suffice it to say, I'm not convinced.
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If these commercials I'm seeing are reflective of the viewing habits of Tivo owners then it's clear you people aren't properly using the features of your Tivos.
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Why aren't they? ABC, NBC, TNT, etc. need to know which of their shows are being watched, and I want them to know what I'm watching so that they'll keep showing my programs. Those needs seem to line up nicely. Even selling
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Think about it this way: the advertisers want you to see the ads. That's what they are paying for: your attentions. That makes it in the best interest of the media company to provide news, entertainment, or what have you that people like.
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I think it is a legitimate point to think that Tivo might wish to consider putting its retail customers first, since without them they are nothing.
How would their actions be different depending on which customer they put first? Selling that data does not affect the viewers at all.
The attempts to monitize their customers as if they are an asset owned by Tivo seems like a good way to alienate retail customers and to potentially hurt Tivo sales.
The more money TiVo makes from other sources, the lower
No, it isn't (Score:2)
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I've never bought a TiVo (Score:2)
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jeffk
Re:Note who Tivo considers its "clients" to be... (Score:4, Insightful)
Tivo is under no obligation to lower prices to the consumer. The only thing that lowers them is competition.
Usually competition is necessary to lower prices, but not always. For example, if their viewing data was valuable enough, it would make sense to lower prices in order to get more people to sign up, and thus have more data to sell. Take the cable Disney Channel -- it used to be subscription service, then they figured out it was better to have more viewers than the subscription revenue.
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YOU are the product. Your eyeballs are sold to the highest bidder.
The media companies, who pay huge amounts of money, ARE the clients.
OMG! They're trying to make money! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you chose to go with MythTV or Freevo instead of TiVo, your hardware cost will probably be much higher than an off-the-shelf TiVo unit. So yes, TiVo customers have "forked over cash" but they probably forked over less cash than they would have for an alternative system.
As for the subscription price being "over inflated": $13 per month is just under $.45 per day. Is 2 quarters a day really an over-inflated price for a service that automates recording my favorite shows and allows me to fast-forward commercials that I don't want to watch? (Usage data will reveal that I tend to watch the Geico "cavemen" commercials.) Yes, that's infinite magnitudes more expensive than a free service like XMLTV but realistically it's not a horribly expensive amount to pay. If you can't spare $.45/day then you probably can't afford a PVR to begin with.
Yes, I'm a TiVo user and I'm quite content with the service and the price. At the end of the day I don't care if they look at my usage habits because I hope that the companies will finally realize which ads suck-ass. If the big-brother syndrome gets to the point where someday a company won't hire me because The Great Database says I watched too much Aqua Teen and not enough CSPAN... I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
They wan't it both ways... (Score:2)
"for the subscription price being "over inflated": $13 per month is just under $.45 per day."
Um, I can get a month of full internet access for that. Or a month of basic cable. Does the database Tivo supplies cost anything near $13 per subscriber/mo? How a
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Agreed, but finding equilibrium is important because if the equation becomes too lopsided the companies disappear (less content) or the viewers disappear (less marketable population). Neither situation is a truly good thing.
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The cheapest non-dial-up I can get is $40 a month. "Basic" cable is 15 channels. That's less than some markets get over the air. The next level up is $60 a month. So, for basic non-dial-up Internet and the cheapest cable choice that gives me 16 channels, I'm paying over $100. So, for that level of cost for the "basics," why do you think $13 is obscene?
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-- Ecks
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It's both (Score:2)
That they only mention one kind of customers when talking about that part of the business is not part of an evil plot. It's just how normal conversations work.
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I hate to be the word police. I really do, but I've seen this word "monitize," (correctly spelled "monetize") creeping into a number of posts. It does not mean what you think it means. To "Monetize" something is to give it legal value as currency. The word you're thinking of is "commodify," or to turn into a commodity (an item for sale).
That is all. Thank you.
Bad Data (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, they could be ignoring Live TV, but... then they're ignoring when people watch live TV, which I think would be fairly important to advertisers.
Personally I don't care if TiVo (or DirecTV) collect viewing habits, as long as they remain anonymous. I just don't think it's accurate at all.
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Also, TiVo changes channels on it's own in order to record stuff.
And since I got DiscoveryHD I
They might have some good assumptions going, but I doubt they're anywhere near accurate.
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Relatively speaking, I'd agree that there isn't a lot on that's worth watching. That's why PVRs are cool- on the 100+ channels in my area, there's only about 2-3 programs(other than the news) I actually consider watching and now I can watch them at my convenience and skip commercials. Auto-ad-skipping would be nice, but it's not *that* difficult to fast-forward.
I think you may have misinterpreted the previous poster. He is not necessarily watching 2 channels for 24 hours a day, but the unit never turns
They've done this since the beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
Please note, that the supermarkets do exactly the same thing. Why do you think loyalty cards exist?
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So you can use your grandmother's phone number and make someone crunching the data wonder how an 83 year old woman bought apple juice in Walla Walla Washington and a bag of potato chips in Rauly North Carolina within 5min of eachother.
re: "Why do you think loyalty cards exist?" (Score:2)
Re:They've done this since the beginning (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's one solution. I prefer simply to use my own recording and playback equipment, thankyouverymuch.
What's your point? My guess almost all the people who would resent TiVo doing this also resent "loyalty cards."
These days when somebody's charged of a crime these days you often hear "Mr. Jone
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I get up in arms because TiVo expects me to PAY for the privilege of giving them commercially valuable information. "Oh, but they give you program listings!" Yeah, so does Zap2It, but they only ask for a couple of brief survey questions every few months and otherwise get no information from me. What's TiVo's problem with that?
Please note, that the supermarkets do exactly the same thing.
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TiVo can make life better for us (Score:5, Insightful)
I think an end result (and to some an unexpected result) is TiVo can make life better for everyone with this "service". I've always been a huge fan of TiVo, since they arrived on the scene, so forgive some obvious bias.
How can they make it better? Tivo can supply information to providers of content, and advertisers more valuable than any surveys or polls. Tivo can give real time info (rolled up) of what and how viewers watch their show (and ads). An end result would (potentially) be eventual extinction of really annoying and bad ads... by dint of the fact noone watches them when given an opportunity to skip.
The same goes for content... if noone records a show, or watches it on Tivo buffer, its well earned demise can be accelerated.
Tivo demonstrated just how granular their data are by their disclosure that the Janet Jackson "clip" was the most replayed segment of the Super Bowl... wth? they actually know down to a few seconds of snippets.
Yeah, there may be privacy issues there... but there are privacy issues everywhere, even when there were (are there still?) Nielsen families. My gut tells me there isn't too much interesting in viewers habits other than what they're watching and how much of they're watching. The game is about making money and selling product.
Tivo finally gives the providers feedback that I'd wished for years ago... immediate, and absolute.
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This presumes a simplistic senario: that we skip bad ads and watch quality ads. This false dichotomy is a misunderstanding of the options that advertisers and media companies may choose to use. The research data could result in more static and boring ads that still can be read while in fast forward mode or more ads superimposed over the regular programing the way that shows are now obnoxiously promoed. You might also
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I wonder if networks would actually look at the popularity of the show, itself, or if they would look at how often the ads associated with that show were watched when determining if they should keep it around.
If it were the latter, then not only would the show have to be good, but the ads associated with the show would have to be good for it to survive.
Nielsen families... (Score:2)
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Or...
They make a connection between what shows people skip ads for, and stop buying ad time on them. The shows you
Old news (Score:2, Interesting)
Danger of abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
This attack may come from someone who cracks the system and uses it to spy on others, or the attack may come from law-suits which (for whatever reason I can't currently imagine) demand that TiVo turn over records of what a particular person was watching. Or maybe this attack will never come.
I would argue that avoiding these kinds of systems is not paranoid... moreover I would argue that avoiding them is necessary. Do not let yet another system be co-opted to monitor you! Even if it is 'for a good cause' (and I'm not convinced that advertising is 'a good cause') it can eventually be used against you.
In short, I'm just going to add this to the list of reasons I prefer MythTV. My device, my control, my privacy.
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You mean like the government deciding that some things are inappropriate to watch and they want a record of what you've been watching? They do the same thing already with books if they think you're a "suspicious" perso
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And a automatic commercial-skip function that works remarkably well.
How will they ever know people are REALLY watching (Score:2)
about people that have TiVO, why is TiVO allowing the advertisers to know when people do this anyway? how much money does it take to buy TiVO and its initial rules of total privacy by the viewer?
Remember Janet Jackson? (Score:2)
It shouldn't come as any surprise that three years later, they're finally selling that information. The surprising thing is that it took them this long to decide to sell it. This really isn't any different than the Nielsen rating. Actually, TiVo can replace the Nielsen rating because that uses rough estimates of # of
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But that self-selected group of subscribers is probably not statistically representative of the broader viewing public.
I'm not sure that that's true. According to http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623007 [clickz.com] -- 12% of households have a DVR. Sure, there's skew there, but if anything, it's a good skew. DVR owners:
Isn't that the advertiser friendly demographic? Has money and wants to spend it on the latest labor saving toys?
Nielsen has the reverse skew. It requires people to be willing to accept the inconvenience of an outside service tha
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Except that they don't pay the Nielsen viewer anything?
Or that the Nielsen, Arbitron, etc. respondent willingly agreed to provide information on their viewing, listening habits?
Or maybe that the folks at Nielsen provide a clear and unambiguous privacy policy" [nielsenmedia.com]?
ahhh this is old (Score:3, Insightful)
OpenCable (Score:5, Interesting)
The cable TV network just became a lot more like an internet, and the Internet just became a lot more like a TV network. For those working on it ourselves, anyway.
So when does MythTV make TiVo look like the Web made AOL look?
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Unless of course the Republican FCC [google.com]'s last ditch effort before the new Democratic Congress replaces them to deliver the reasonable rule wrapped in a "poison pill" of draconian overreach succeeds. Tie up the "controversial" extreme r
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(along with IPv6, which is finally moving along)
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This distinction is wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
This distinction is wrong. Anonymity and privacy are two completely separate concepts. A person's privacy can easily be abused even if his data is kept anonymous. Most people understand information being kept "private" to mean used only for the limited purposes for which they disclosed it, and not re-disclosed in any manner,
I (Score:2, Interesting)
dupe story? (Score:2)
Amazing how you are all missing the point - HRM (Score:3, Interesting)
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For one thing, Tivo doesn't sell the hardware without the subscription any more. It's considered to be one product. For another, even when they did sell them separately, the cost of the hardware has always been heavily subsidized by Tivo, and the end user would end up paying for a fraction of the manufacturing costs. Therefore, I think it's a stretch to say th
This is brilliant! (Score:5, Funny)
This can only result in more nudity on TV. Woohoo!
OK, it'll be naked people holding pepsi bottles, but what the hell. Maybe they could do something with them, hint hint.
What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh come on. Everyone with a TiVo (and even those without) should know that TiVo collects this type of anonymous, aggregate data. Haven't they done that since the beginning? Did you really think they wouldn't provide that data to third parties?
And frankly, I think it's a good thing. You guys bitch and moan when your favorite TV shows get cancelled because the Nielsen families' interests aren't representative of your own. You guys bitch and moan about advertisers not making more interesting commercials. Well, here you have TiVo, making geek-friendly devices collecting television data about shows and commercials that tech enthusiasts actually watch, and now you guys bitch and moan about that too.
The year 1999 just called... (Score:2)
-R
Old News (Score:3, Informative)
Duplicate article (Score:4, Informative)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/03/1
Follow the Money. Data Mining! (Score:2, Informative)
this is called ratings. (Score:2, Informative)
maybe fox wouldn't have cancelled firefly had they known how many people actually watched it.
I also like that they provide info on commercials.
this is the first time, I believe, outside of focus groups that companies have feedback on their commercials.
I personally skip every commercial I can.
I'm all for it (Score:2)
Also, I don't have a tivo, so that helps.
Speaking With Actual Knowledge About the Subject! (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who has owned a Tivo since about 6 months after they first came out. I was told from day one that they would collect data anonymously on me IF I did not opt-out. Now, I thought very seriously about this issue at the time. I normally opt-out of this kind of stuff but Tivo is one of the LEADING examples of hacker friendly companies selling consumer electronics products. I decided that I wanted to support their business plan since thanks to their hacker friendly policies I was able to upgrade my tiny 14 hr Tivo to an 80+ hour Tivo by myself. At any time before, now, or in the future Tivo could download code to detect and disable my hacked Tivo but they don't because they think differently than 99% of the other companies out there! I think they deserve some F***ING RESPECT & SUPPORT for being a company that is hacker friendly.
Remember this is not Sony root-kitting your PC, this is Tivo letting you hack the system they sold you. Not only that, I can only think of ONE other company (Garmin for my GPS) that continues to give me both bug fixes and actual enhancements to a product which is so old. I happen to have a lifetime subscription to Tivo, back from day one, when it only cost $150 and the only money they have made off of me since is from this anonymous data that I voluntarily allow them to collect! Tivo astonishingly, given the quality of their product and hacker tolerant policies, still isn't a highly profitable company. Maybe, the other 99% of the companies have it right economically - screw the hackers - but I think we should give credit to those who dare to challenge the established ways of treating customers. Suing your customers and root-kitting their computers is what we should be opposing not collecting anonymous data with full disclosure and an opt-out option.
Re: Me Too (Score:2)
This is old news (Score:2)
One thing I'd like is the ability to vote thumbs up or thumbs down for commercials. It would be a moderation system for ads. Think of it! Bad, annoying ads would be modded into oblivion. That fartsucking Dell dude would never
Sleeping patterns... (Score:2)
Out of this information they also determined the time that people sleep in front of the television:
- 100% commercial skipping: awake
- 0% commercial skipping: asleep
Other values were not registered.
Um...so? (Score:2)
Privacy Shmivracy... (Score:2)
Everyone complains about how the Neilson system is outdated and doesn't accurately reflect what even that TINY segment of the viewing public watches on their televisions. If Tivo is accurately recording what we tape, what we watch, and what we're actually paying attention to instead of what we have on while we're ranting on slashdot... that seems like a pretty good indication of what kinds of things people ac
Good for TiVo! (Score:2)
Re:And why am I not surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
Except they're not selling individually identifiable information. What they're selling is aggregate data (eg, 12% of commercial skippers went back and watched the new ad for Colgate). Then again, I shouldn't expect you to know that, since it's only mentioned in the summary...
Re:And why am I not surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And why am I not surprised? (Score:5, Funny)
You mean, the Discovery network's new Tinfoil Hat Channel?
Which part of not-tied-to-personal-accounts are you not getting? Personally, I'm happy if the data they're aggregating delivers messages such as "80% of our viewers think your 'Head-On! Apply Directly To Your Forehead' pain reliever ads are the broadcast equivalent of gerbil vomit" to the people who buy, sell, and produce the ads.
Re: They can do what ever they want later (Score:2)
The part where they say they aren't doing it now but don't make a binding irrevocable promise not to in the future. The only way to completely insure that private data doesn't get misused (say, for example, desegregated) is not to collect the data in the first place.
Just because the current management says they won't collect individual viewing habits doesn't mean that tomorrow's management will have the same position, nor any company that may
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Ironically, that is approximately what "Head-On!" is made of...
Gerbil vomit would be at least as effective in treating headaches as the ball of wax that crap is, anyway.
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1. They aren't targeting individuals.
2. We already know what the report says:
"Sweet Christ! They're skipping them all!!!1111"
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