These kind of stories are always fun to analyze using the Socratic method.
-How did you learn about the product?
-Have you ever searched for it?
-Did a friend of yours tell you about it? Do you think they searched for it?
-Are a lot of ads for it playing on TV channels you like? Could instagram know you like those TV channels?
-Is it something your neighbors got? Do you think there has been a spike in shipments of this product to your neighbors?
Eventually people start to “get” that scanning the text of messages is way more helpful for humans than it is for computers. They’ve got other data they can use.
I also have a theory that sometimes when people say "we were talking about <product> and I never even typed it into my phone or anything, and suddenly I started seeing ads for it the next day!" that the person in the story may not have looked up <product>, but someone else in the conversation might have Googled it or browsed an Amazon listing or something and they have some kind of connection in their ad profiles whether it be that they know these 2 people interact a lot, they're in the same geolocation, same wifi network/IP address, etc.
I'm just not convinced of the always on microphones in phones listening for and processing every single thing considering how much battery drain that would cause, whether the processing is done on device or they're sending all that data to a server to be processed.
> I'm just not convinced of the always on microphones in phones listening for and processing every single thing considering how much battery drain that would cause,
"Roughly twice per second, a Roku TV captures video “snapshots” in 4K resolution. These snapshots are scanned through a database of content and ads, which allows the exposure to be matched to what is airing. For example, if a streamer is watching an NFL football game and sees an ad for a hard seltzer, Roku’s ACR will know that the ad has appeared on the TV being watched at that time. In this way, the content on screen is automatically recognized, as the technology’s name indicates. The data then is paired with user profile data to link the account watching with the content they’re watching."
None of the people I know who use those devices knew that was happening, but the info was out there at least. When so many people are watching everything you see and do and say who can ever know what every company is doing or what the source of any one ad is?
> "Roughly twice per second, a Roku TV captures video “snapshots” in 4K resolution. These snapshots are scanned through a database of content and ads, which allows the exposure to be matched to what is airing.
There were users under the impression that Roku was unaware of the content it was displaying? Like 4K snapshot or not, if I know a user is watching an NFL stream, I know that ad played.
> There were users under the impression that Roku was unaware of the content it was displaying?
Sure, they expect Roku would know if they launched Disney+ or Netflix, but not that they would knew exactly what movie you were watching or what specific scenes you viewed and for how long. Same with personal videos cast to your screen via roku. It's pretty reasonable they'd know you were streaming content from your other devices, or which apps you were using, but less reasonable that they'd be watching over your shoulder taking notes.
-How did you learn about the product?
-Have you ever searched for it?
-Did a friend of yours tell you about it? Do you think they searched for it?
-Are a lot of ads for it playing on TV channels you like? Could instagram know you like those TV channels?
-Is it something your neighbors got? Do you think there has been a spike in shipments of this product to your neighbors?
Eventually people start to “get” that scanning the text of messages is way more helpful for humans than it is for computers. They’ve got other data they can use.