LG jumps on advertising bandwagon, runs over its own customers

Used to be a TV was a TV: a screen for viewing television channels and programs, delivered from stations and networks through a home antenna or a cable set top box. But in fact TVs have been computers for a long time. And, as computers, they can do a lot more than what you want, or expect.

Combine that fact with the current supply-side mania for advertising aimed by surveillance, and you get weirdness such as Doctor Beet‘s LG Smart TVs logging USB filenames and viewing info to LG servers. According to Doctor Beet, viewer activity is actually reported to a dead URL (which may not be, say some of the comments). The opt-out is also buried an off-screen scroll. And LG tells Doctor Beet to live with it, because he “accepted” unseen opt-out terms and conditions.

But wait: there’s more.

If you want to really hate LG — a company you barely cared about until now, watch this. It’s a promotional video for “LG Smart AD,” which “provides the smartest way to reach your targeted audiences across the borders and connected devices with excitement powered by LG’s world best 3D and HD home entertainment technology” and “enables publishers to maximize revenues through worldwide ad networks, intelligent platform to boost CPM and the remarkable ecosystem.” The screen shot above shows (I’m not kidding) a family being terrorized by their “immersive” advertising “experience.”

This promotional jive, plus the company’s utterly uncaring response to a customer inquiry, shows what happens when a company’s customers and consumers become separate populations — and the latter is sold to the former. This split has afflicted the commercial broadcast industry from the start, and it afflicts the online advertising industry today. It’s why the most popular browser add-ons and extensions are ones that thwart advertising and tracking. And it’s why the online advertising industry continues to turn deaf ears and blind eyes toward the obvious: that people hate it.

Clearly LG is getting on the surveillance-based advertising-at-all-costs bandwagon here. The sad and dumb thing about it is that they’re actually selling customers they already have (TV buyers) to ones they don’t (advertisers). Their whole strategy is so ham-fisted that I doubt they’ll get the message, even if bad PR like this goes mainstream.

The one good effect we might expect is for competing companies to sell surveillance-free viewing as a feature.

Bonus link.

When the customer gets the pricing gun

Customers don’t normally operate pricing guns. That’s why we have this old Steven Wright joke:

The lady across the hall tried to rob a department store — with a pricing gun.
She said, “Give me all of the money in the vault, or I’m marking down everything in the store.”

It wouldn’t be funny if it wasn’t a scary prospect for retailers.

But what if customers actually do get that power, on their own — meaning they don’t get that power from any seller, but from themselves. Like they get their car on their own. Or their wallet. Or their browser. Or their email.

For example, what if each of us had a way to publish an offer price to many retailers at once? For example, “I’ll pay $2500 for a Canon 5D Mk III camera.” (In fact I’ve already said that, through a VRM company called Nifti.) And what if I had a way to escrow that money — and that intention-to-buy — at a bank, ready to pay when a seller meets my price and my terms? That’s the idea (though not the only one) behind EmanciPay. It should be a good business for banks — or for anybody wanting to help activity in markets move faster and more efficiently.

There has already been work in that direction, through the companies listed under Intentcasting here, plus the work some of us did with Innotribe, a division of SWIFT. That work began with discussions at IIW around digital identity, personal data and the EmanciPay idea. Once underway, it evolved into the Digital Asset Grid: a way to move data on the SWIFT network that also moves money, with the same high degree of security. Having a secure way to move both personal data and money seemed like good idea, so we created it, and it’s there for the taking.

Meanwile, let’s say that EmanciPay, or something like it, takes off, and the pricing gun really is in the hands of the customer. Will this be the end of the world for mass marketing? Or for anything? Or will it open a huge new greenfield of opportunity, based on much better signaling of pricing — and other variables — by customers?

Like, what if we could signal real loyalty, rather than just the coerced kind we get with loyalty cards? What about convenience? Reliability? Experience with the product, the vendor, and the quality of service?

How would it work if every product we buy, or service we engage, would also serve as the platform for a genuine relationship with maker and/or the seller? This can happen if the product or service comes with its own cloud. Think about that. Your car, your cable modem, your TV, your stove, your dishwasher, your anything can have a cloud of its own, today. Phil Windley calls them picos, for persistent compute objects. When you buy a product with a pico, that cloud might come with all the service materials required, be updated automatically, and contain all the service records as well. And you can add whatever you want to it, or use it as a communications conduit between you and the product’s maker or seller.

This is what makes Fuse (by Phil & company) such an important Kickstarter project. It’s not just a second dashboard for your car in a mobile app. It’s your platform for relationships with the car maker, your mechanic, or others in your family who also use the car. Think of it as a service gun. Or the platform for one.

There’s no limit to what you can imagine if you’re an independent party with full agency, rather than a serf in some company’s castle. Or to what can happen between people and companies that value each other’s independence.