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Comment by joezydeco | Hacker News Reader

If you own a FireTV stick or display you'll notice that the FreeVee streaming app has started to become more and more prominent. It's deceptively simple - they are taking old shows like Murder She Wrote and streaming them non-stop on a "channel" much like the old terrestrial broadcast networks did. They're solving the streaming problem for older customers that don't grok Netflix or Hulu.

These shows take pseudo-commercial breaks and send you 2-3 ads tailored to you specifically. My wife didn't believe it until I did a simple Amazon search on my phone for automotive batteries. Not more than 30 minutes later the ads switched to some random LiPo battery for RVs.

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Linear streaming is central to PlutoTV, which has been around for a while and is available on many platforms.

It’s not really for people “that don’t grok Netflix or Hulu”. That’s one reason, I suppose, but the stronger reasons are:

1. Licensing and cost nonsense that none of us care about.

2. Channel surfing is an entirely different way to engage with low-attention content and has its own place. You may not “grok it” yourself, but the gist is that it greatly reduces the analysis paralysis of picking movies and episodes and doesn’t make you feel like you’re sitting down to watch something from start to finish. You just surf around and leave something and let it play. The lack of control is intentional and positive, and it can be a great avenue for discovery in a world where every on-demand front page has been lost to poor algorithm recommendations.

The casual discovery was the thing people missed the most about cable TV. This comes close, as in they're linear channels of the same program in most cases, but it's familiar enough to work.

I recently bought a "smart TV" and I was pleased to see that it comes with essentially 'cable TV' (IPTV, I guess?) without even needing to run an app or set up an account. You just click CH+/- or guide and you watch another channel. One of the channels plays 21 Jump Street (the 80's show) and a few other 80's classics, another 2 just play 80's/90's music videos exclusively. I think it's kind of neat that the internet has finally come around to make cable TV obsolete.

> I think it's kind of neat that the internet has finally come around to make cable TV obsolete.

As a counterpoint, decisions by the FCC (during the previous presidential administration), are effectively making the internet a requirement for OTA TV in the new ATSC 3.0 spectrum.[1]

Here’s hoping we get more consumer focused considerations in the future. The internet features are nice (if you have internet access) but shouldn’t prevent a consumer from accessing OTA ‘out of the box’

1. https://youtu.be/nClxgUunmeE

I just watched that video a day or 2 ago. I was pretty surprised to see that, and I agree it makes no sense for the case of broadcast TV. My guess is it's a push from sports networks (90% NFL) and they'll arrive at some "compromise" to only turn it on during NFL and NBA games. Not only is it oppressive to viewers, but I think it's a terrible move for local broadcasters by actively blocking people who are already leaving/left in droves for the internet.

Many broadcasters are positioning to accepted the broadcast part of their business as the freemium entry point into their online app. The ads will never be turned off everywhere but the better experience will only be found over the jump.

Funny thing I discovered with mine, when there's an ad during the show, I switch channel and come back. The ad is gone and I now have a "we'll be back in x seconds" screen.

>I think it's kind of neat that the internet has finally come around to make cable TV obsolete.

That's because internet is cable TV these days.

>These shows take pseudo-commercial breaks and send you 2-3 ads tailored to you specifically. My wife didn't believe it until I did a simple Amazon search on my phone for automotive batteries. Not more than 30 minutes later the ads switched to some random LiPo battery for RVs.

This is so depressing. We're living in the future and it's awful.

Eh, it could be worse. For a while Hulu thought I was Hispanic and living in Texas.

Got a lot of ads for the Texas Lottery with Spanish audio.

Ads are ads as far as I'm concerned. They're all universally trash.

Ads, generically, are one thing. Car insurance when I'm not looking for car insurance. The problem with targeted advertising is when they're for something I didn't know I wanted. A band I like is coming to town, or a product that solves a problem I've been having. because then I'm spending money I wasn't previously going to spend.

Car insurance ads when you know they are paying those millions of dollars out of the premiums that you pay, just so they can tell you how cheap their premiums are. That's what ticks me off!

Insurance involves having a large pool of good drivers to subsidize the bad drivers. So the money they spend to make the pool larger could make things better from you; more good drivers, they pay out less claims, they charge you less. It's one business where the "network effect" really matters, and so it's not a guaranteed waste of money like advertising other products is.

(For example, it really doesn't matter whether you drink Coke or Pepsi. Those ads are just inflating the cost of the product; there are no more efficiencies to be had in the production of sugar water.)

I assume there's some regulation against only insuring drivers with perfect records? Otherwise I think I would have heard of it by now. I see the logic you're using, but considering that almost nobody would have insurance if their lender/state didn't force them to, the same number of people would have insurance regardless of whether they advertised. It's a zero-sum game, no? Separately, the same ads that might attract good drivers to my pool could also attract bad, and sadly I suspect that the people who are persuaded by ads are slightly less intelligent and more risky behind the wheel.

I sometimes spam Youtube’s “visit website” button. Just to cost them money. Now Youtube thinks I’m really interested in [that ad from that day] and now shows me all competitors.

I think polluting the data with random shit is the way to go. The mix of ads becomes somewhat entertaining, including the knowledge that I'll never buy any of this stuff.

Get ad nauseam if you want to scale this

I'll have to check that out, thanks

That was the point behind AdNauseam, I think.

I'd much rather my ads be targeted than generic. It increases value on both sides here.

Comparing against the baseline of terrestrial broadcast, this is a far better experience than before.

You're making the mistake of assuming the ad is for the best offer you'd be interested in instead of the one that makes the most money from you (i.e. the worst one for you). The expected utility to you is negative.

You're missing an important nuance. The best advertisement is for a product that, in expectation, makes the most money from me. My relative interest is still important, and you can't just jump from the fact that somebody is making money to the unfounded claim that the "expected utility is negative."

When I buy an item I'm making a decision that the marginal value of that item to me is worth more than the marginal cost. If the ad is targeted, a transaction is more likely to happen. Transactions happen when both parties derive utility from them.

If you advertise only high profit items without concern for the probability of transaction, your audience will not buy anything or end up buying the same item from somebody else.

It's not just that someone is making money. It's not a friendly old man at the local bookstore giving you recommendations based on your tastes. It's a system where all of the battery vendors are bidding in real time to be the one you see, and the most dodgy one with the best margins is the one that can place the best bid, causing you to get the worst possible deal.

These systems are not for your benefit. They are meant to use any information they can to extract more from you.

You assume that they value longterm profits over shortterm ones.

As a customer, you will try of course to get the best deal. The best deal for you is the worst for them, so the target of advertising is convincing you that you are getting the best deal while actually giving you the worst possible.

Targeted advertising is not giving you better deals, but providing you with a greater mismatch between your expectation and the reality. You may get a better deal out of it, but that is an unintended side effect

>You're making the mistake of assuming the ad is for the best offer you'd be interested in instead of the one that makes the most money from you (i.e. the worst one for you). The expected utility to you is negative.

A customer buying something isn't a zero-sum transaction. My default assumption is that the product that stands to make the most money from me is the one that would most benefit me. For example, the grocery store sells apples, which I love, and chicken gizzards, which I don't love. The product which I want most (apples) will stand to make the most money from me. If I didn't know that apples were for sale near me, or that a particular store had particularly delicious apples, I would benefit from that and so would they after I spent my money on them. Win-win, not zero-sum.

That's again assuming the system is making good recommendations for you. That's not what they're meant to do. A much better analogy is you go to the grocery store. The clerk knows you like apples and says "hey, I've got a bag of Johnny's apples here for $6", and pulls out a bag with a sticker that says "Johnny's" on it. Next person comes in, and the clerk offers them a bag of Dan's apples for $3.

The bags come from the same orchard. Same tree. You paid for a sticker. The clerk just knows you make enough money not to notice because they have a dossier on every person in town.

It's not even that... they aren't recommending Apples at all, but they're going to try to get you to buy something else that is more profitable. It's like going into the store and then they're like "Here's a bag of oranges."

If the system has a higher expectation that you will buy the apples, making them the more profitable option to offer, it'll do that. So people aren't entirely wrong in that way. But the point is even when it's "helpful" (by coincidence), it will still do everything it can to screw you. And yeah it'll happily offer you oranges if it thinks it can get you to bite. Or beer, particularly if it knows you're an alcoholic!

> My default assumption is that the product that stands to make the most money from me is the one that would most benefit me.

Well, see, that's where things like cigarettes, liquor, and gambling just blatantly violate that assumption. Ads are psychological manipulation for the advertiser's benefit, hands down.

> You're making the mistake of assuming the ad is for the best offer you'd be interested in instead of the one that makes the most money from you (i.e. the worst one for you)

You are making the mistake of thinking that this is a zero-sum game. The product that makes the most money is not necessarily the worst one, it might actually just be one with higher margins or even an actually superior product that just lacks mindshare; in the end, buying it might still add value to your live.

Markets like Amazon are already full of people who will sell the exact same product with a computer generated brand name at slightly different markup. Even "trustworthy" brands do this kind of thing, and have for a long time. A system that knows everything about you (their goal) and tailors ads to you (or manipulates your ability to find offers) will inevitably converge on something that sells you the same thing, but at the maximum price you can be expected to be duped into.

I wouldn’t because it means they spied on me more often and more effectively. Broadcast TV was one-way except for Nielsen people, and they at least got paid.

Not necessarily, it could mean the ads get better at tricking you into buying something you never use, or that it adds greater costs to the supply chain for something that you would have found out about via conventional means anyway.

"Targeted" ads are not targeted though, they're just trying to sell you the same thing you just bought. It's the most annoying, stupidest, and least effective form of targeting they could possibly use.

PlutoTV is the same. I used to put on the Geek & Sundry channel and get ads from my employer.

I know what you mean but I can't help but imagine a 60 year old man pointing at the camera and saying, "Get back to work, Steve."

> imagine a 60 year old man pointing at the camera and saying, "Get back to work, Winston Smith"

FTFY

Now that's targeted advertising!

I can think of something even more evil. What if ad networks allowed the advertiser to SUBSCRIBE to events generated by the ad viewer. For example, XYZ Toothpaste Inc gets a web hook that Targeted Consumer 123 has just started streaming TV Show "Foobar".

It's not quite what you're describing, but look up demand side platforms. At scale, advertisers are given the opportunity to bid on real time events.

It's funny reading offhand remarks like this because I laugh and then remember I'm well past 60

Should employers advertise how good it is to work, to their own demographic?

Terrestrial cable is the same, too. I had a normal cable package for awhile (around 2020) and the advertisers clearly knew that my wife was in a particular medical category.

Same w/ IPTV services like SlingTV, which I also used for a little while.

Amazon Video is also now including FreeVee garbage entries blended into “included with” results and it’s easy to miss unless you train yourself to check the source line above “Watch now” before pressing play. It seems this is mostly evident when looking at Customers also watched recommendations but I’ve seen it happen in the home sections, too.

I hate it.

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