Published on 10/21/05 at 12:42:51 GMT by Andy Alkaline
...Ultimately, viewers who spend several hours each day before their sets will be paying more to the cable industry to enjoy their favorite programs. But that’s not all they’ll be giving away.
A spate of new companies have rushed forth to offer software and services that will give cable operators more direct access to viewer tastes by cataloguing their VOD choices in centralized databanks. In turn, the cable industry can repackage this viewer data and sell it to advertisers that are eager to fine-tune their product pitches to “high-probability” consumers. And since traditional advertising — in the form of the 30-second spots – is on the wane, advertisers will infiltrate their products throughout the programs themselves as they devise more intrusive methods to hit their targets.
From the industry’s perspective, this technology will make ads more relevant to the lives and needs of their viewing customers. A recent New York Times article casts a rosy light on the new technology: “Instead of commercials being an annoyance, they become information a viewer needs, perhaps even craves.”
But privacy concerns loom large as advertisers could collect more information about each viewer’s tastes than the viewer might want to reveal. The cable industry promises to safeguard this consumer data behind impenetrable firewalls. Recent cases of mass identity theft at credit companies such as Choicepoint and Bank of America demonstrate that these systems are vulnerable to attack...
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