I'm surprised that streaming boxes don't pause the stream when no one is looking, so the consumer has to watch the ads to continue play. This could be marketed as a feature.
On the one hand you prevent anyone else from using it for a period of time, but on the other hand you give them ideas that they might not have had.
Well, for 20 years, not forever.
Imagine if I had patented "System for using the Internet to distribute misinformation regarding respiratory viruses, so as to maximize deaths during a pandemic." Facebook would show up later and already be illegal, and a lot less people would have died of COVID.
I doubt the example in your second paragraph is remotely plausible. But I can see how someone might come up with a better example.
Btw, violating a patent isn't illegal in the criminal sense of murder being illegal. As far as I know patents are more about civil liability, and you'd have to sue Facebook for damages, don't you?
That would make doing business quite a lot more expensive for Facebook, of course. But wouldn't ban what they are doing outright.
I don’t know if it’s narcissism or a human way of justifying their actions. For humanity’s sake I hope the latter.
That said, one way to look at it from an advertiser’s perspective is that if you spend money on anything, then relevant ads must exist, and they will continue to try to find them. If they can’t find them, they’ll still continue to spam us with irrelevant ads because they still work a little; statistically, a few people will buy the product for every million people who see the ad.
I spend money, and I even sometimes spend significant amounts of time trying to figure out what to buy when I need something I don’t know a lot about. I also spend far more time than I want to trying to ignore ads I don’t care about on the internet and YouTube, just like I used to with TV.
Those are two separate time sucks, and I’d love to have ads at least be teaching me impartial information about whatever it is I’m shopping for, and help me figure out what I need. It would save me time if I could merge ad watching time with shopping research time. Google and advertisers would love that too. But the level of invasive privacy compromise that would bring would be a million times worse than the bad situation we already have, I’m not willing to accept it.
And “advertorial” is not a web-era idea; the travel, sports, entertainment etc sections of the newspaper, and most of local television news, looked like news but were essentially all paid content one way or another.
Some English-language (probably machine-translated) article: https://www.archyworldys.com/prima-will-not-back-down-televi...
I wonder whether this will be the beginning of the end of the classic TV.
[1] (in German): https://www.luzernerzeitung.ch/wirtschaft/neue-regelung-fern...
Where is the nearest Prodafanilexicol store?
When does the sale end?
How many satisfied customers does Megacorp have?
Ok, enough people have answered correctly now, we will tell the players to come out for the 2nd quarter.
"The viewing behaviors may include the viewer [108] watching an item of linear video content, or watching a combination of items of linear video content. Additionally, the viewing behavior may include an action performable by the viewer [108] and detectable by one or more sensors [106], such as a depth camera."
"However, in some embodiments, physical awards may be granted. Such physical awards may include coupons, products, etc., given to the user. To grant a physical award, an entity associated with the user-viewing goal, such as a user-viewing goal creator, may be notified in order to grant the award. In other embodiments, a remote computing device which stores user profile information, such as the digital media delivery service, may be notified to grant the award."
https://fortune.com/2013/04/30/sony-patent-is-hilarious-terr...
> a user is watching a television program which is interrupted by an ad. The ad instructs the user to say the word “McDonald’s” (MCD) to speed things along.
Oh, there is a need, alright. If they claim they're not interested, it's time to shift strategies[1]. After all, nobody's immune to advertising[2]. I'm sure there are more relevant studies that prove even ad-averse individuals are still susceptible to them. It's just a matter of finding the right _kind_ of advertising to reach them. Doing this effectively is what gets you promoted in adtech.
Advertising is a cancer on society.[3]
[1]: https://wistia.com/learn/marketing/the-psychology-behind-why...
[2]: https://knowledge.insead.edu/marketing/think-youre-immune-to...
[3]: https://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html
(It seems to be a battle of content, with all sides fighting for all that long-term MRR, and no-one really has a monopoly on great content. Which is actually pretty great! Of course local stations don't have great content because their sample size is too small.)
[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvnba/moviepass-20-wants-to...
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/moviepass-track-eyes-phon...
At least on desktop, when letting background tabs play some youtube playlist it will stop after a while with a “are you still watching ?” popup.
SponsorBlock. It changed how I consume YT. It has saved me a ton of time.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90185994/sony-files-patent-to-ma...