"Did you know that whenever you turn on your smart TV, you invite an unseen guest to watch it with you? These days, most mainstream TVs use automatic content recognition (ACR), a type of ad-tracking technology that collects data on everything you watch and sends it to a central database. Manufacturers then use this information to understand your viewing habits and deliver highly targeted ads."
"To understand how ACR works, imagine a constant, real-time Shazam-like service running in the background while your TV is on. It identifies content displayed on your screen, including programs from cable TV boxes, streaming services, or gaming consoles. ACR does this by capturing continuous screenshots and cross-referencing them with a vast database of media content and advertisements. According to The Markup, ACR can capture and identify up to 7,200 images per hour, or approximately two images every second."
Most mainstream smart TVs run automatic content recognition (ACR), an always-on ad-tracking technology that captures images of on-screen content and matches them against a media database. ACR can capture about 7,200 images per hour, identifying programs from cable boxes, streaming services, and gaming consoles. Collected viewing data is linked to personal identifiers such as email addresses, IP addresses, and physical street addresses to create detailed viewer profiles. Advertisers use those profiles to deliver highly targeted ads, driving an estimated $18.6 billion in smart TV ad spending in 2022. Disabling ACR can improve privacy but often requires navigating hidden settings.
Read at ZDNET
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]