CTV is a giant leap ahead as we search for better ways of doing things that are bad for us.

I’m doing a little project on Connected TV. CTV – aka Smart TV – is basically a TV/computer hybrid, a category of Internet-connected devices that allows viewers to stream video, listen to music, check email, access social media accounts and search movies, photos and other digital content on the Web. In other words, they can perform most any TV- or computer-based media consumption activity.

More than 60 percent of US households have already migrated their viewing to “Internet TV” devices (such as Roku, Amazon Fire Stick, Apple TV, Google Chromecast TV) and services (Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Pandora) as well as multiple Nintendo, Xbox and Playstation consoles. According to eMarketer, “more than 164 million U.S. Internet users access video content via [C]onnected TV devices, and this number is predicted to grow up to 200 million viewers in 2019.”

Advertisers love it because it allows better targeting. As in, it integrates with all those Big Data platforms out there, like the ones used for Web advertising, so that it knows a lot about you. You. You specifically. 

If we’re looking for a silver lining in the CTV cloud, we get fewer commercials and the ones we do get are more relevant. You did an online search for shoes last week? Hey, look – shoe ads on Better Call Saul! This is great news for those of us keen to trade our privacy for convenience so we can spend more money on things we don’t really need.

[sigh]

We live in a Capitalist, Consumerist society that makes hypocrites of us all, don’t we? The only difference between the principled and the clueless is that the principled take years off their lives thinking about it…