Smart-TV manufacturer Vizio is teaming up with nine major media and technology companies to create an addressable advertising standard. Called Project OAR (Open Addressable Ready), the participants will define technical standards for targeting specific households and Vizio will build the technology.<\/p>\n
Along with Vizio and its data unit Inscape, the consortium\u2019s members are AMC Networks, CBS, Discovery, FreeWheel, Hearst Television, NBCUniversal, The Walt Disney Co. and Xandr, as Reuters reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n In announcing the consortium, Vizio said that TV manufacturers use different technology and standards to enable addressable advertising. \u201cIt creates a level of complication for (TV networks), and scale is critical,\u201d Reuters quotes Inscape SVP Jodie McAfee as saying.<\/p>\n While Vizio will create the new technology, it will be an open \u201cindustry standard\u201d that competing TV makers can integrate into their products.<\/p>\n Last December, Beet.TV interviewed McAfee at Beet Retreat 2018 about Inscape\u2019s experience in dealing with the Federal Trade Commission on issues involving consumer privacy and viewing data collection. In light of the news regarding Project OAR, Beet.TV is republishing that interview.<\/p>\n Being a pioneer has always carried risks and rewards. Smart-TV manufacturer VIZIO\u2019s Inscape data unit found this out when the Federal Trade Commission a couple of years ago first started looking into what happens to viewer data collected with automatic content recognition, says Inscape<\/a> SVP of Sales & Marketing Jodie McAfee.<\/p>\n Interacting with the FTC \u201cwas a little bit of a bad news, good news situation for us,\u201d McAfee says in this interview at the recent Beet Retreat 2018<\/a>, where one panel discussion was devoted to data and privacy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bad news was we were the first smart TV manufacturer to actually have such a discussion with the FTC. The FTC had never really taken a look at smart TV data collection and privacy regimes around it.\u201d<\/p>\n The good news was \u201cthe fact that it put us in a position to actually sit down with the FTC and say, \u2018okay, what do you want to see? What do you think a privacy regime should look like on a smart TV? So it became more of a collaboration as opposed to the FTC simply throwing down some ground rules and walking away.\u201d<\/p>\n Nonetheless, the FTC fined Inscape for inappropriately collecting viewing data from 11 million TV sets.<\/p>\n