AdAge just published DISH NETWORK CAN NOW MEASURE ALL ITS ADDRESSABLE ADS NO MATTER WHERE THEY AIR, by Jeannine Poggi (@jpoggi) It ends, "Dish Network began selling ads for Sling TV in programmatic auctions last summer. And in the fall it allowed marketers to buy addressable ads across Dish and Sling TV in a single buy."
My comment::::
"Addressible" suggests personal. So does "programmatic auctions," since those tend to match ads with people carrying spyware injected into their apps and browsers.
Will Dish or Comscore anonymize the Dish customers these ads target? Will personal or household data about Dish customers be shared by Dish or Comscore with advertisers or other third parties?
If I find out either is the case, I'll ditch my Dish account instantly. And I'll do it with great regret, because I like Dish very much and have been a loyal customer since they were Echostar.
One of advertising's charms is that it's not personal. Personalizing an ad turns it into direct marketing, which is a different species—and one hated by consumers even more than advertising. That's why we call direct marketing's most familiar form "junk mail."
The advertising business is now so drunk on the kool-aid of personalization and data-driven-everything-at-all-costs that it has lost track of what made branding work in the first place.
After perhaps a $trillion or more has been spent on personalized "adtech," can anyone name a single brand known to the world that has been made by it?
Targeting ads on TV should be done by program, network and location. Fine-tuning beyond that risks getting creepy. And aiming it with harvested personal data is an affront to personal privacy and morally wrong on its face.
So please tell us if Dish and Comscore are doing that. We customers need to know.
I hope Jeannine and AdAge follow up on that.
It is essential on the receiving end to know when and how ads get personal—and to have ways of turning off the spying that aims them.
Making that happen is the bigger story here. And it can't be more important, because it is only by obeying the wishes of its consumers that advertising will save the soul it sold to the devil of spying-based adtech.