Automated content recognition (ACR), smart TVs, and ad-tech infrastructure
Ramón Lobato · Convergence The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies · 2025
Smart TVs, which enable unprecedented viewing data to be collected at device level, are reconfiguring business practices in television advertising and audience measurement. Using a video fingerprinting technology known as automated content recognition (ACR), most smart TVs can now recognize virtually all content displayed on the TV screen, allowing precise targeting and re-targeting of ads to users based on their viewing behaviour and prior ad exposure. This article examines how TV manufacturers including Samsung, LG and Vizio integrated ACR technology into their businesses between 2012 and 2022. Drawing on infrastructural theories of connected TV and digital advertising, I show how ACR has contributed to TV manufacturers’ wider goal of becoming digital ad platforms, shifting the underlying power structures of both the consumer electronics and television advertising industries.