Smart TVs are way smarter than you think.

We recently talked with folks from Zenon Wholesale Marketing who offer marketing for what’s called “OTT” services, which stands for “Over-the-top.”  We’ll share more about what OTT is in a moment.

They told us about just how smart Smart TVs are. They’re “listening” all the time. So when you’re talking about, say, a vacation in Italy, a new Suburu, or that bidet you always wanted, you’ll be served ads that relate to those conversations.

The “Internet of Things”

The Internet of things is every device that’s connected to the internet, That can be refrigerators, voice assistants like Alexa, vacuums, phones and security systems.

Voice recognition technology on our voice-activated devices (which a Smart TV is one) even know who in your home might be asking a question. They know who lives in your home, and can differentiate between male and female voices.

It know the Dad is watching in the living room, the Mom is watching in the Den, and what the kids are watching on their iPads or phones. The technology behind how that’s known was something even they didn’t truly understand.

Your Smart TV is talking to other internet-connected devices in your home.

Your conversations and online searches are collected, and determine what ads are shown to you on your phone’s apps, social media, and internet browsing  – and of course – for streaming suggestions on your TV.

Our devices are communicating with each other: we don’t even have to be interacting with them. But they’re probably not “spying” on us because data aggregators already have plenty of information about us. Of course, we’re not all that concerned about privacy since we keep buying electronics that monitor and track our online activities.

The content collected is anonymized, which means there isn’t personally identifiable information.

It’s not just your Smart TV that’s tracking you.

We’re all part of “the Matrix.” There’s no getting away from it. Data is gathered from all our devices that are constantly tracking and “listening” to us from:

• Our Smart TVs
• Our Phones
• Google and Bing searches
• Podcasts
• Anything we do on our web browsers
• Our online shopping
• Alexa, and
• Siri

One other thing we learned is that Hispanics are, by far, the largest demographic that listens to podcasts.

OTT stands for Over-The-Top advertising.

OTT is an option to cable, broadcast, and satellite TV. As we leave traditional media outlets, we get our media from many other sources, both intentionally and unintentionally.

By the time the average American is a teen, there are already 72 millions data points on them. While there are many uses for Big Data, what we’re going to cover here is how it’s used in marketing.

OTT has been around since 2021, and once you know what it is, you realize we’ve all be seeing it everyday as ads on:

• Video streaming services like Netflix, Max, Prime, YouTube, Hulu and dozens of other services
• Apps on our phones
• Video feeds while we’re pumping gas
• Kiosks in supermarkets
• Geofencing, which are texts sent to us as an offer when we’re geographically near a business.

How our data is collected for OTT.

Many of us think our phones are always listening to us, because of advertisers’ seeming ability to show us ads for things we’ve just talked about. Personally, we haven’t seen any websites documenting our phones are listening without our permission. Yet. Nor can they know what to advertise to us based on what we’re thinking, Yet!

Research has shown, even when not in use, there are Smart TVs that send data to companies like Google, Netflix, Facebook, and other marketers.

How our data is being used.

Essentially, it’s being sold to to advertisers. Not just Google, Netflix, YouTube and any of the 2,000 channels on Roku and Amazon. There’s a huge tracking ecosystem out there.

And our data is worth a lot. Supposedly, the value of an average email address to an advertiser is $89. The data brokering industry is about $200 billion, and growing.

Our personal information is used to serve up ads the advertiser believes we’ll like. And I’d think that’s what we want. It’s better than ads that don’t relate to our buying patterns. And to think: people opt out of being tracked for appropriate ads. We assume that means they’re getting ads that aren’t relevant for them.

Your data is being used to market products and services to you.

Data collected can even target groups that Google limits for the Search ads. OTT can target by:

• Age
• Race
• Language
• Interests
• Whether you’re an undecided voter
• How long you’ve been in your home (for home renovation companies)

As you’ve seen, there are two tiers of video ads: ones you can “Skip” after a few seconds, and ones you can’t. Of course, the video ads you can’t skip are more expensive, so the budgets could be significant.

Not for the small advertiser.

A majority of Zenon Wholesale Marketers are marketing firms and Attorneys. However, they’re not for smaller advertisers. Zenon suggests budgets should start at $10,000 a month.

In addition, the advertiser (or marketing firm) needs to provide the video assets. The cost of even developing a series of basic videos can easily exceed $10,000.

We’ve created 15-30 seconds videos, which are what needed for this type of marketing. The budgets add up quickly, especially is you need to hire professional models. But not all videos require models. See a video we did with a model here*, and ones without models, here and here.

* This 15 second video (for YouTube) is the opening segment of a 7-minute video we put together that shows how On-Page SEO works.

Interested in OTT?

If you have the budget, OTT seems like a good way to go (in our humble opinion). Better than broadcast TV and radio. But as you can see, it’s complex. Like all good marketing, everything is customized for you, so if you want to start the conversation, drop us an email through our Contact form.