> "Roughly twice per second, a Roku TV captures video “snapshots” in 4K resolution. These snapshots are scanned through a database of content and ads, which allows the exposure to be matched to what is airing. For example, if a streamer is watching an NFL football game and sees an ad for a hard seltzer, Roku’s ACR will know that the ad has appeared on the TV being watched at that time. In this way, the content on screen is automatically recognized, as the technology’s name indicates. The data then is paired with user profile data to link the account watching with the content they’re watching." (https://advertising.roku.com/resources/blog/insights-analysi...!)
This is insane. I can't even imagine being at the meeting where this was proposed
"Advertisers want to know when their ads are being viewed"
- "We could work with advertisers to have them add some metadata to the output signal, and detect that on the client"
"Nah, let's just record everything everyone watches, that way we can harvest the data and sell it to advertisers we haven't yet partnered with in the future"
- "Yes, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do and couldn't possibly have any negative consequences. That is unless consumers have a problem with it..."
AFAIK most such systems take greyscale screenshots, downsample them to basically not much more than a thumbnail, and compresses that with a lossy algorithm.
Still though, people watch home video of their kids on their televisions! Some people make home-made porn for their own enjoyment.
Meanwhile somewhere in a data centre in South Korea...
> "Roughly twice per second, a Roku TV captures video “snapshots” in 4K resolution. These snapshots are scanned through a database of content and ads, which allows the exposure to be matched to what is airing. For example, if a streamer is watching an NFL football game and sees an ad for a hard seltzer, Roku’s ACR will know that the ad has appeared on the TV being watched at that time. In this way, the content on screen is automatically recognized, as the technology’s name indicates. The data then is paired with user profile data to link the account watching with the content they’re watching." (https://advertising.roku.com/resources/blog/insights-analysi...!)