That game on your phone is tracking what you're watching on TV even when you're not playing
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Android screenshots of the app Honey Quest, which uses technology that keeps tabs on the viewing habits of its users.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
WASHINGTON (NYTIMES) - At first glance, the gaming apps - with names like "Pool 3D", "Beer Pong: Trickshot" and "Real Bowling Strike 10 Pin" - seem innocuous.
Yet these apps, once downloaded onto a smartphone, have the ability to keep tabs on the viewing habits of their users - some of whom may be children - even when the games are not being played.
It is yet another example of how companies, using devices that many people feel they cannot do without, are documenting how audiences in a rapidly changing entertainment landscape are viewing television and commercials.
The apps use software from Alphonso, a startup that collects TV-viewing data for advertisers. Using a smartphone's microphone, Alphonso's software can detail what people watch by identifying audio signals in TV ads and shows, sometimes even matching that information with the places people visit and the movies they see.
The information can then be used to target ads more precisely and to try to analyse things like which ads prompted a person to go to a car dealership.
More than 250 games that use Alphonso software are available in the Google Play store; some are also available in Apple's app store.
Alphonso said that its software, which does not record human speech, is clearly explained in app descriptions and privacy policies and that the company cannot gain access to users' microphones and locations unless they agree.
"The consumer is opting in knowingly and can opt out any time," Mr Ashish Chordia, Alphonso's chief executive, said, adding that the company's disclosures comply with Federal Trade Commission guidelines.
Alphonso is one of several young companies using new technologies to enter living rooms in search of fresh information to sell to marketers. For all the talk of digital disruption in the ad world, television still attracts almost US$70 billion (S$93.67 billion) in annual spending in the United States, and advertisers will gladly pay to amplify and analyse the effectiveness of that spending.
