LAS VEGAS — Historically, Hollywood has fought P2P piracy with legal action. But what if studios and channel operators could solve the download problem with advertising?
That’s what TruOptik thinks could happen. The Stamford, CT, company’s technology employs “census-level measurement of peer-to-peer file sharing across the BitTorrent protocol” to create “the largest, IP-based non-cookie-reliant data set of entertainment behavior in the world”, according to CEO Andre Swanston.
What does that mean in practice? If you are a network owner watching people download your latest TV show for free, you could serve up an ad incentive or offer to go legit.
Surely BitTorrent users – who, by default, are avoiding paying for content – are a poor advertising target?
Swanston says the data shows otherwise: “These audiences actually over-index on paying for subscription-based video services, they have shown a willingness to binge-watch ad-supported video content, they’re more likely to have a college degree, more likely to have more memory on their computer, to have a connected TV in the household.”
So far, TruOptik has created the ability to make IP-level segments out of BitTorrent users. Now it is also beta testing a data management platform for connected TV, with users due to be named soon.
This video is part of a series produced at CES which are sponsored by Adobe.
