The Sunlight Foundation introduced a new smartphone app that identifies...
The Sunlight Foundation introduced a new smartphone app that identifies the audio from political TV ads and delivers information to the phone about who paid for the ad. The Ad Hawk app for iOS and Android devices uses audio fingerprinting…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
technology from Echoprint to identify the spots, the foundation said. If the system recognizes an ad, it will deliver information about “how much money the ad’s sponsor received or spent, where the ad is on the air and media reports about the candidate or political group” behind it, the foundation said. The foundation said it’s scouring YouTube for the ads, then pairing them with FCC information on ad spending, Federal Election Commission information on fundraising and press releases and news reports. When someone uses the app to identify an ad, the app collects anonymized location data, if users authorize it to, which the foundation plans to use to create ad spending maps, it said.