“We watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards,” CEO Mitch Lowe said last week
Jennifer Maas, provided by
Published 8:55 am, Friday, March 9, 2018
Don’t worry, MoviePass has decided it doesn’t need to be with you 24/7.
The subscription service removed its “app location capability” following backlash from users who freaked out when they learned about the company’s plan to track their whereabouts at all times.
MoviePass Chief Executive Mitch Lowe was the one to break the initial creepy news to users at the Entertainment Finance Forum in Los Angeles last week.
MoviePass is a company that offers customers nearly unlimited movie tickets for just $10 a month. The subscription service, led by Netflix co-founder Mitch Lowe, is trying to get people off their couches and back into movie theaters. Just this week, Helios and Matheson analytics announced it’s taking a majority share in the company. MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe stopped by with Ted Farnsworth, the CEO and Chairman of Helios and Matheson, to tell us about the deal. Lowe says that 75% of the company’s subscribers are millennials, and that the low price leads them to go see films they wouldn’t normally watch, just because it’s less expensive. That way, more documentaries and foreign films get bigger audiences. As for what theaters get out of the program, Lowe says MoviePass pays them the full ticket price, and the theater collects all the concession revenue. “Customers spend 123% more on concessions with this,” he adds.
“We get an enormous amount of information,” Lowe said. “We watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards.”
After members of the media and subscribers raised their concerns about Lowe’s comments on Twitter, the streaming service soon issued a statement to clarify things.
“At MoviePass our vision is to build a complete night out at the movies,” the company said in a statement obtained by TheWrap. “We are exploring utilizing location-based marketing as a way to help enhance the overall experience by creating more opportunities for our subscribers to enjoy all the various elements of a good movie night. We will not be selling the data that we gather. Rather, we will use it to better inform how to market potential customer benefits including discounts on transportation, coupons for nearby restaurants, and other similar opportunities. Our larger goal is to deliver a complete moviegoing experience at a price anyone can afford and everyone can enjoy.”
MoviePass then released an follow-up statement regarding the changes to the app.
“This week, MoviePass released a new app update, including the removal of some unused app location capabilities,” the subscription service said. “While part of our vision includes using location-based marketing to enhance the movie-going experience for our members, we aren’t using some of that functionality today. Our members will always have the option to choose the location-based services that are right for them today and in the future.”
Other tech giants like Facebook and Google have come under scrutiny recently for the amount of data they collect from their users, providing privacy policies that clarify their actions to consumers.