I thought one of the benefits of shelling out a monthly fee for a streaming platform like Hulu or CBS All Access was that you could watch your favorite shows without ads of any kind. A crucial scene in your favorite show won’t be interrupted so that Limu Emu and Doug can tell you that Liberty Mutual customizes your car insurance so that blah, blah, blah.
There are still ads on streaming platforms, and dark money groups can target political ads with creepy precision, according to a study by the Mozilla Foundation. The study focused on six streaming platforms: Hulu, Roku, Tubi, CBS All Access, YouTube TV and Sling TV.
It’s hardly surprising that
Most streaming platforms offer very complex ad targeting tactics. Many allow political advertisers to pull in third-party data, which means that viewers generally could be targeted with political ads based on causes they support, political party affiliation, their voter registration status, or whether they have cast their ballot already. Non-political advertisers have access to even more complex, programmatic tools.
That sounds fair, but...
All six streaming platforms [analyzed for the study] operate with narrow definitions of "political" or "election" advertisements, which are typically defined as ads supporting or opposing political candidates, campaigns, or ballot initiatives. It's unclear how platforms treat other kinds of issue-based or otherwise political ads.
For example, would an ad from the so-called “Doctor Patient Unity” be considered “political”? That one wasn’t supporting or opposing incumbent senators, but rather its purpose was to scare those senators’ constituents into telling the lawmakers to vote against government rate setting for medical billing.
The study couldn’t say because it gives the platforms (except YouTube TV) failing grades on transparency. The study does give the platforms credit for good policies but notes that “there is no information about how those rules are enforced in practice.”
I did not read the whole study, but I did read the section on CBS All Access, because that’s the streaming service that seems to have the most shows that interest me. The study gives CBS All Access an overall grade of C.
CBS seems to have strong policies in place aimed at vetting political ads and preventing platform abuse, enforcing rules similar to those it applies to broadcast television. However, the platform does not provide comprehensive ad transparency tools to enable researchers to ensure the integrity of the platform.
Political ads are preceded by a pre-roll message and followed by post-roll message marking the ad as a paid political advertisements. Also, to be shown on CBS All Access, a political ad has to meet more or less the same requirements for airing on a CBS affiliate, which makes perfect sense.
However, the study seems to accept at face value the assertion that “CBS thoroughly reviews every political ad for accuracy before running it.” So, if CBS affiliates in Michigan have run Republican politician John James’s extremely deceitful ads, those ads presumably also pass muster for CBS All Access.
For example, one John James ad uses the fact that Senator Gary Peters (D-Michigan) missed a few low-stakes hearings where his presence was not explicitly required, and draws the conclusion that Peters is an “invisible” and “do-nothing” senator.
Never mind that Peters has nearly perfect attendance for roll call votes, for starters. Nor mention the fact that Peters is on quite a few influential committees, and committee meetings are often scheduled in conflict with one another, so that a senator is forced to prioritize attendance.
In the latest deceitful ad, John James claims that Peters exempted himself from the Affordable Care Act. If that’s not a flat out lie, it’s surely missing a lot of context that would make it sound a hell of a lot less sinister.
James also claims that he has the same health care plan as his employees. Presumably the health care plan at James’s company is a very good plan. And since James has created hardly any jobs, his company can afford to give that good health plan to its few employees.
John James, job creator. ** Jobs created with tax breaks did not last long.
On the other hand, I haven’t seen any James ad in which he claims to be a “job creator.” Maybe that would get his ad rejected. So he settles for shooting an ad in a warehouse, wearing a safety vest, as his employees zip around on forklifts in the background.
A political advertiser on CBS All Access can target viewers based on genre. For example, if they think viewers of The Good Fight might be more inclined to their message than people who watch Danger Mouse, they can so target their ads.
From what I’ve seen of The Good Fight (all of Season 1 was broadcast over the air once Season 3 was available for streaming), it is not quite as political a show as The Good Wife, which The Good Fight is a sequel to.
Political strategist Eli Gold (Alan Cumming) is an important character through all seven seasons of The Good Wife. Eli Gold very sagely advises Democrats on how to deal with the constant stream of lies and assorted garbage from Republicans.
Like all other shows that originally aired on CBS, The Good Wife is available on CBS All Access. Unlike The Good Fight, which is a CBS All Access exclusive, The Good Wife is also in rerun syndication on various TV channels. Currently I watch The Good Wife on Start TV, which is available on some markets as an “auxiliary” channel with an antenna.
Whether a particular CBS All Access subscriber watches The Good Wife or The Good Fight on the platform, or both, is definitely useful data for political advertisers.
In addition to viewing preferences, age and location data,
people can be targeted based on household income, education level, number of children, or whether or not they are a veteran. Political advertisers can target people based on causes they support, their political party affiliation, whether they are a registered voter, or whether they have cast their ballot already.
The worst part of it is the lack of control. Subscribers can’t opt out of political ads and they can’t get information on how they’re being targeted. Subscribers can request to have their data deleted (you can request anything, really), but such requests will only be honored for subscribers living in California.
It has been mostly for practical reasons that I haven’t signed up for CBS All Access yet. But knowing what I know now, after having read the CBS All Access section of the Mozilla study, sure doesn’t help entice me to sign up.
An argument can be made that targeting is a good thing. On broadcast TV, I see ads for candidates I can’t vote for, such as congresswomen who represent neighboring gerrymandered districts. A streaming platform like CBS All Access would presumably not show me such ads.
But I like seeing ads for candidates for neighboring districts. And maybe seeing a bunch of ads for products or services I would never actually buy is a small price to pay for not having precise data about my TV viewing logged and used by advertisers.
