Vizio Makes Nearly As Much Money From Ads and Data As It Does From TVs (engadget.com) 55
In Vizio's first public earnings report today, the company revealed that in the first three months of 2021, profits from its Platform+ business -- the part that sells viewer data and advertising space via the SmartCast platform -- were $38.4 million. Engadget reports: As execs said on the call, the company continues to court relationships with brands and agencies, following the same plan laid out six years ago with a business built on its Inscape Automated Content Recognition tech. Its device business (the part that sells TVs, sound bars and the like) had a gross profit of $48.2 million in the same period, up from $32.5 million last year. While the hardware business has significantly more revenue, profits from data and advertising spiked 152 percent from last year, and are quickly catching up.
Vizio did say that hardware profits were affected by products getting stuck at ports due to a shipping glut that has impacted many companies over the last year, buts forecast is that Platform+ revenue and profit will continue to grow in Q2, as device profit margins "trend toward the single digits." Vizio said it now has 13.4 million active SmartCast accounts, with viewers spending 52 percent of their viewing time on SmartCast inputs (the built-in apps, or casting from another device). 34 percent of viewing time went to linear TV, with 7 percent for game consoles or over the top devices. If you have a Vizio TV, you can opt out of anonymized tracking by following these steps.
Vizio did say that hardware profits were affected by products getting stuck at ports due to a shipping glut that has impacted many companies over the last year, buts forecast is that Platform+ revenue and profit will continue to grow in Q2, as device profit margins "trend toward the single digits." Vizio said it now has 13.4 million active SmartCast accounts, with viewers spending 52 percent of their viewing time on SmartCast inputs (the built-in apps, or casting from another device). 34 percent of viewing time went to linear TV, with 7 percent for game consoles or over the top devices. If you have a Vizio TV, you can opt out of anonymized tracking by following these steps.
Another reason (Score:3, Insightful)
I've had to switch back to computer monitors instead of buying last-gen TVs as a substitute monitor.
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I feel similarly.
Vizio "upgraded" my TV recently. It's buggy, full of adds, and doesn't work as well.
It used to just let me use it as a Chromecast, and turn it off easily with Google Home (obviously I'm not concerned about the data harvesting). Now it rarely shows up to cast to (requiring the use of their terrible apps) and I need to find the remote to turn it off.
Don't Connect It (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have a Vizio TV, you can opt out of anonymized tracking by following these steps.
Or just don't connect it to the internet
Re:Don't Connect It (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what I do. My 'smart' TV is used like a dumb TV and has no network connections. Which just pushes the tracking down to the next device. Turns out pi-hole is pretty effective for Roku.
Re:Don't Connect It (Score:5, Informative)
or if in Europe just do not agree to use of your data for tracking. A company cannot refuse to provide a service in the customer does not agree to their data being taken, sold, etc. It is not quite as simple as that but use of personal data needs agreement. I suspect that there is much use of personal data that breaches the rules - but enforcement is another matter.
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If you are implying that they might be lying then I hope you are right. A nice big GDPR fine would be welcome about now, we could do with the cash to pay for the pandemic. Could probably sue them personally too.
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Re: Don't Connect It (Score:2)
Soon they will start using cellphone networks wether you like it or not
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Re:Don't Connect It (Score:5, Funny)
How long does it take the on-board processors to crack your neighbor's wifi password?
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How long does it take the on-board processors to crack your neighbor's wifi password?
Apparently it doesn't need to [slashdot.org]. It just uses any WiFi it wants.
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Or just don't connect it to the internet
Doesn't that negate every internet-based TV service? (you know, like Netflix, Youtube, Amazon Video, etc.)?
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I like third party boxes like the Apple-TV which means I don't rely on the TV vendor to update the built-in app's. At lease the app versions on the Apple TV box get regularly updated, AND they stop the TV vendor from being able to track my viewing habits. Win all round!
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I thought all profit was from ads (Score:2)
I thought all of their profits had shifted to ads and selling client data. I thought that was the main reason why a Sony 75" TV costs less than a 30" big screen 20 years ago.
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Yeah... it has nothing to do with economics of scale and improved technology... it's ALL because of "big evil companies and advertising".
That would certainly be true if you saw the same decrease in costs for computers, ipads, cell phones or any other technology product which has been consistently advancing and being produced at greater scale. The cost goes up because the technology continues to be improved. But yet all of those have increased in price (while getting far more for your money, like with TVs).
I'm find it doubtful you will find many reports [usatoday.com] backing up your claim that TVs are cheaper today because of economic of scale or technolog
Re:I thought all profit was from ads (Score:4, Informative)
In 2001, a 42" flatscreen TV cost $8000.
Today, you can buy one for $249 at Walmart.
That is a decline of 97%.
I doubt that the $7751 difference is covered by selling ads.
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The first digital watch (LED, not LCD) cost over $10,000. Now, they're practically giving them away in cereal boxes. Similarly, my current desktop PC cost less than a tenth what I paid for a Pentium1 box...and could kick its ass all over the house.
New (or newish) tech always costs a lot.
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Of course the HW costs aren't significantly covered by ads; certainly HW hypothetical costs from years ago, and not even to a significant extent HW costs today.
The original article's framing is deceptive (sigh). They're focusing on profits, which is odd enough to be plain wrong here. First of all, digital platforms have very low costs, so a large proportion of revenue can be profit - but the same doesn't hold for the physical TV - a much larger proportion of revenue will be due to the devices themselves.
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It's absurd. No one owner is worth that much in advertising revenue to cover the entire cost a TV. Sure, some users might be swayed to buy a new car from Toyota instead of Honda, but averaging out over all users this is miniscule. If the data was sold to both companies then there's no net gain.
Seriously, if I am worth that much money for one device, then PLEASE send me $500 every year and I promise to turn off ad-block and noscript and watch the Youtube ads.
Remember, the entire television broadcast indus
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I'm not saying that if I watched the ads that I would generate that much revenue. But I do not think I or the average person even is generating that much actual value for the people paying for the ads. Some companies out there gave Vizio $38 million; not for ads but just for customer data this might help someone generate slightly more effective ads. It's a huge amount of money, probably overvalued by the buyer, and if my views are worth that damn much then I want to be paid for being exploited. Toss us l
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My next TV probably won't be a Vizio... (Score:1)
Re: My next TV probably won't be a Vizio... (Score:1)
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Vizio has admitted this before (Score:5, Informative)
Buy a commercial LCD (Score:5, Informative)
I have an NEC television at home. For people bemoaning the loss of "dumb" displays NEC only makes large displays for digital signage so they don't contain any "fluff". You can put them on your network locally for control purposes which is pretty handy in some cases but it's just as happy not connected to anything. Samsung and LG have models in the same space outside the consumer space as well. They're also generally built better with better warranties.
You do pay for privilege though, expect to pay more for these.
You can always just not connect a TV to your network but for those with a little extra to spend for the principle of the matter it's something to consider.
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"Yes, no ads. Yes, no selling of MY information. I will gladly pay up to 5 times as much to avoid "smart" TVs."
I get the sentiment, but why do you want to pay 5x as much to skip a few ads and not allow someone to see a list of what you watch? You could just invalidate their data by "watching" C-SPAN or some other channel you don't normally watch when you are gone or while you sleep.
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At least with my TCL Roku TV, it worked just fine as a dumb TV before I connected the network. I could relabel the inputs and everything just worked the way I would want it to, with nothing touching the network.
Re:Buy a commercial LCD (Score:5, Insightful)
Block the device on the router too. This advertising and selling of data is happening at your expense, literally. They piggy back on your ISP, meaning that your monthly fee is subsidizing advertising costs. So set the router to have a bandwidth limit for the TV. Say, 10KB an hour, that should be more than enough for reasonable use.
If the TV makers don't like it, then they should pay for $20/month for an always-on cellular modem and simcard, probably they can get it cheaper in bulk, and the side benefit is that this would encourage better cellular reception in poor areas.
But seriously, this is at the top of my list with what's wrong with modern advertising - the consumer is paying for it, not the advertiser. Imagine if you had to give money to the post office when you received your weekly Penny Saver circular, or if you had ten cents deducted from your bank account every time you passed a billboard on the freeway, people would be outraged. Instead what happens is that consumers notice that the web pages just start to feel slower and slower so they pay for an upgrade their ISP service without realizing that everything can be fast and responsive once the ads are filtered out.
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Block the device on the router too.
You don't have to block the device on the router "too" if it doesn't have any networking functionality, which is what the OP was talking about. "Digital signage" displays are just dumb TVs. They tend to have exceptional contrast ratios and black levels, too.
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"But seriously, this is at the top of my list with what's wrong with modern advertising - the consumer is paying for it, not the advertiser."
This isn't new. That's how TV, magazines, radio, billboards, and most advertising works. You pay for stuff and the advertising piggybacks with the product.
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Looks like the cheapest one is $1700.
Re: Buy a commercial LCD (Score:2)
Depends on what size you are looking at. For 55" you can get a Samsung QB55R for about $900 but yeah they can be premium priced.
I wonder if the lack of data to sell is factored into the higher price nowadays.
Opt out? (Score:2)
Simple solution. Never let a TV loose on internet (Score:2)
"Smart TV"s are among the most poorly secured, data harvest hungry bits of evil anyone can connect.
Don't let them attach to your wireless APs and tape over their ethernet ports. Let TVs be displays for real secure computing devices (PCs, consoles even sticks) to the internet and use the panel as a display.
And resist the urgings of the TV at every step in configuration menus to connect you. Any functionality you HAVE to go online for you don't need your TV doing. If you have to do firmware upgrades, downl
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and tape over their ethernet ports.
You worried that you might accidentally plug a cable into it?
Don't let them attach to your wireless APs
My Vizio REQUIRES an Internet connection to do the setup. Literally, the remote is useless for doing anything to configure to the TV, you need the app for that. I had intentions of booting it over to a network without a gateway, but I just never got around to it. Whatever, though, its not like my phone, Xbox, PC, Roku, etc. aren't spying on me as well.
Profit, not Revenue (Score:3)
Keep in mind that this is profit, not revenue. Advertising is almost pure profit. From their numbers, they had a 73.6% profit margin on "Platform+" revenue. Hardware margins are usually small, and they achieved 10.6%, which is pretty good.
Probably a better way of looking at it is how much revenue per-TV they're making. If this is a steady state (which it obviously isn't), and if we suppose that the average TV sells for $453.50 (meaning exactly a million units sold in the quarter), then each TV brought in an additional $52.20, of which $38.40 was profit.
So those numbers are obviously wrong, as the advertising is based on the total installed based, and the number of TVs sold per quarter isn't going to be at all consistent, but it's close enough to guess that each TV sold is likely to be worth an additional $50 to $100 on average.
Interestingly, this means that the vendor has an incentive to sell longer-lasting TVs so that they can keep cashing in on advertising, instead of TVs that fail so that they can sell new TVs.
There is too much "smart" in this world (Score:2)
We are drowning in 'experts', and look at where it got the world to today.
Smart devices are just an extention of all the flawed thinking that is making the world a worse place to live, a little bit at a time.
And now, I leave you with Charlie Chaplin's infamous speech from "The Dictator":
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
you can opt out by... (Score:2)
Not connecting the TV to a network.
I took Vizio back before it served any ads... (Score:2)
Years ago, one of my first flat-screen TVs was a Vizio, and I loved it. This was before they were all "smart TVs"... just a few different inputs and a TV tuner.
So a few months ago I got a new TV for my partner's bedroom and because I loved my old Vizio so much I got a new one. The first annoyance was that it made it hard to get it to do anything unless you first connected it to the internet. Then it had 3 different EULAs it wanted me to click "ok" on, which really bothered me a lot.
But the last straw was
Thats why (Score:1)
Yup (Score:2)
This is why my TV isn't connected to the Internet, why it's connected to an ad-free AppleTV which is connected to the Internet.