Category: Yahoo!

The role of interactive marketing and how it influences individual and group behavior must become a greater part of the debate about our digital democratic future. The U.K.’s Royal Navy’s interactive “Get The Message” multimedia ad campaign just won the “Grand Prix” at the fourth Interactive Marketing and Advertising Awards. Read this excerpt from New Media Age Magazine’s special supplement on the Navy’s successful digital marketing effort to drive recruitment.

“The ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have made the job of recruiting for the armed forces one of the toughest briefs out there. Recruitment levels have been on the wane for several months, with many servicemen and women leaving when their tour of duty is over, and not enough new recruits signing up owing to preconceptions about what to expect from a life in the forces. This was the problem facing the Royal Navy, which wanted to attract a demographically broad audience of 15-24-year-old adults to dispel myths about what it’s like to be part of the Royal Navy, and to show the human face of the force so it would be considered as a viable career path…Digital creative agency Glue London and mobile agency Sponge
came together to meet the challenge. The target audience was broken down into three attitudinal groups: ‘optimistic achievers’, ‘enthusiastic followers’ and ‘unfulfilled potentials’. It was identified that these groups had different recruitment journeys online, going through the phases of inspiration, consideration, information seeking and persuasion…Lifestyle, gaming, sports and music sites were used to reach the target audience and creative executions were specifically designed to suit these sites, while being as impactful and dramatic as possible…a personalised interactive piece of viral content was created that enabled potential recruits to engage in a deeper level than is possible in an ordinary ad. Users went online to choose a specific branch of the Royal Navy…the create their own message within the video content that could be sent to an email address or mobile phone…The campaign was a resounding success…secured 50,000 emails for the Royal Navy to use…Interaction rates were high…the ‘Mine’ ad… [had] almost 2m people [interacting with it].”

Barry Diller’s Ask.com has unveiled a new service called “AskEraser” that is designed to help address some of the privacy problems intrinsic to digital marketing. It’s also an effort to gain some attention for a search service long under the interactive shadow of its competitors–especially Google. Ask only receives approximately 5% of searches, compared to Google’s nearly 65%, according to Hitwise. But Ask’s new plan is more in response to the building pressure for government safeguards growing in North American and in the E.U. Without the growing call for policies and the various efforts to force the FTC to start paying more attention to consumer privacy (such as our series of complaints that led to the recent “town hall”), companies such as Ask would not readily try to differentiate themselves by being more privacy-focused. Although we do applaud its move. But there are glaring problems that underscore why the U.S. requires a single national policy designed to protect all of our digital information.

For example, Ask’s recent $3.5 billion deal with Google for search display advertising would allow the search giant to gain access to some of the data. There are also some critically important exceptions to what AskEraser can do. For example, in its revised privacy policy, Ask explains (our emphasis):

“Third Party Service Providers. Some elements on the Sites, such as news content, our Smart Answers, or the sponsored links advertising on our search results pages, are supplied to us by third parties under contract. In those cases, we may supply some information we gather from you to those third-parties so that they can provide those elements for display on the Sites. Information that we may share with third parties is: (a) your Internet Protocol (IP) address; (b) the address of the last URL you visited prior to clicking through to the Site; (c) your browser and platform type (e.g., a Netscape browser on a Macintosh platform); (d) your browser language; (e) the data in any undeleted cookies that your browser previously accepted from us and (f) the search queries you submit. For example, when you submit a query we transmit it (and some of the related information described above) to our paid listing providers in order to obtain relevant advertising to display in response to your query. We may merge information about you into group data, which may then be shared on an aggregated basis with our advertisers. If you provide us with answers to voluntary survey questions, we may present this information to our advertisers and partners in the form of grouped statistics compiled from our users’ answers to such questions. These third party companies have their own policies as to record keeping and data retention. Even if AskEraser is enabled, your search activity will not automatically be deleted from the servers of these third party companies.”

Some privacy advocates suggest that this announcement shows the “market” is working. No doubt, that’s what Google and the other online advertisers opposed to a serious privacy policy will echo, whispering it to regulators, lawmakers and journalists. Self-regulation, especially with loopholes and exceptions, is no replacement for meaningful consumer protection for all Americans. That’s why a national privacy policy is required.

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As part of the ERISA process, a Carnegie Mellon University Heinz School & CyLab research project was presented in June 2007 at a workshop on “Security Issues in Social Networking. “Imagined Communities: Awareness, information sharing and privacy in online social networks,” was the title of the presentation by Alessandro Acquisti (with Ralph Gross) [available along with other papers for download]. It included a survey of students in 2006 that explored their perceptions about how private was their data. Here’s one of the findings from the powerpoint presentation given in June. These should help galvanize policymakers into taking action–before the FTC is held responsible for failing to protect the nation’s youth.

“Facebook‘s privacy policy,revisited

“Facebook also collects information about you from other sources, such as newspapers and instant messaging services. This information is gathered regardless of your use of the Web Site.”
67% believe that is not the case
“We use the information about you that we have collected from other sources to supplement your profile unless you specify in your privacy settings that you do not want this to be done.”
70% believe that is not the case

“In connection with these offerings and business operations, our service providers may have access to your personal information for use in connection with these business activities.”
56% believe that is not the case
Control: perusal of privacy policy does not improve awareness

In the summary, they report that:

“Only a small percentage of Facebook users changes the highly permeable default privacy settings
As a consequence, a considerable number of users expose themselves to various privacy risks
An individual’s privacy concerns are only a weak predictor of his/her membership to the network
Also privacy concerned individuals join the network and reveal great amounts of personal information
Some users manage their privacy concerns by trusting their ability to control the information they provide and the external access to it
However, we find evidence of members’ misconceptions about the online community’s actual size and composition, and about the visibility of members’ profiles
We documented changes in information revelation behavior subsequent to pracy-related information exposure.”

We have criticized both Facebook and MySpace regarding their expanded data collection & targeting efforts. Incredibly, Fox doesn’t think MySpace has a privacy problem. As reported by Online Media Daily [reg. may be required. our emphasis]:

While touting early results of the social networking site’s behavioral ad platform, which launched last month, FIM Chief Revenue Officer Michael Barrett also assured a packed room at the UBS 35th Annual Global Media and Communications conference Monday that MySpace’s ad strategy wouldn’t run afoul of privacy concerns that have tripped up rival Facebook’s Beacon program. “We’ve heard loud and clear there’s a growing desire for regulation for the Internet in general, and now targeting specifically,” Barrett said. “We are going about [targeting] in a very up-front, opt-out way.”

MySpace’s HyperTargeting platform lets advertisers and agencies more easily create advertising aimed at specific user groups based on the personal interests expressed in members’ MySpace profiles. Unlike Beacon, which broadcasts Facebook users’ activities on outside sites, Barrett said the data mined on MySpace for advertisers’ benefit is from information “freely and openly” provided in users’ profiles.”

What’s that again? Does Fox Interactive believe that just because users place information in their profiles, it’s open season for data collection and hypertargeting? The mining and harvesting of member data is bringing home the dough, it appears. FIM’s Barrett claimed that the new hypertargeting program has “led to a 50% to 300% gain in click-through rates for participating advertisers and a 50% gain in CPM rates.” Here’s a News Corp. Tv series pitch for post-writer’s strike. How about an animated series entitled “Fox in the data collection henhouse.”

PS: Mediaweek reports that “Barrett said… the site mines its vast database of user-reported preferences to produce better targeted ads (reaching self reported travel enthusiasts with travel ads, for example). Barrett reported that the new product had identified 549 specific, targetable groups on the site, and will yield over a thousand by the end of the year…MySpace will also be “able to leverage its database of user-supplied information to sell targeted ads around video.”

Facebook has been whispering to reporters–and also saying publicly–that the recent backlash over its new expanded targeting system comes from a “marginal minority” of people. Other industry executives are telling journalists that only “old” people are concerned about privacy; in their view, young members of the public don’t care anymore.

Such callous expression of disdain for privacy suggests a senior management problem at Facebook (as well as at some other major interactive marketing companies). As users, consumers and citizens begin to recognize the growing threats to their privacy and its implications, we expect to see more members of the public become involved. Privacy is a fundamental aspect of civil rights in the digital era, and is also connected to such issues as network neutrality, equitable broadband access, and diverse media ownership. It’s not going away–only getting stronger. Now will Facebook, MySpace, Google and the others lead–or have to become the focus of organizing campaigns designed to make them responsible corporate citizens? Governments will need to play a more active role as well. We will be covering this issue, as we explore where interactive marketing is taking our global society.

Statements on Facebook and Privacy

From: Jeff Chester, Executive Director, Center for Digital Democracy

Kathryn C. Montgomery, Ph.D. Professor of Communication, American University. Author of Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet (MIT Press, 2007)

Chester: “Facebook still doesn’t really want to face-up to its many privacy problems. While it modified one aspect of the Beacon system as a result of organized pressure and regulatory concerns, serious safeguards will be necessary to address the range of practices in Facebook’s new targeted marketing system (from social ads to insights to the role of third party developers). Facebook’s members should have the power to decide how their data is to be collected, analyzed and used for commercial purposes. This will require Facebook to more seriously address how its new marketing system undermines user privacy. For example, the Beacon fix still permits Facebook to collect, store, analyze, and potentially use a member’s purchasing data.

“The Federal Trade Commission and other regulatory authorities here and abroad will need to address how the structure of Facebook threatens user privacy. Facebook’s senior managers should also embrace a far-reaching approach to privacy that will make this social network a digital environment that nurtures the individual rights of users. CDD, along with its allies in the privacy community, intends to pursue this case.”

Montgomery: “Facebook should be commended for today’s decision to change some of its online marketing practices in response to user backlash and consumer group pressure. But the slight alterations the company has made in its Beacon program will not address the much larger, and more troubling privacy problems raised by the site’s new digital marketing apparatus. Facebook and other popular social networks have ushered in a new era of behavioral profiling, data mining and ‘nanotargeting’ that will quickly become state of the art unless additional consumer and regulatory interventions are made. These practices raise particularly troubling issues for teens, who are increasingly living their lives on these sites and are largely unaware of how their every move is being tracked. The Federal Trade Commission and the Congress need to take a very close look at Facebook and other online platforms, and develop rules for ensuring meaningful privacy protections.”

The letter sent by Senators Kohl and Hatch to FTC Chairman Majoras this week was well-founded. Indeed, our group pressed both senators for such a letter (and provided modest support in terms of information and analysis). We have also given the FTC abundant information on why the deal is anti-competitive; how it reflects profound market realities in today’s digital ad market (it’s not the dot-bomb era any more); and why privacy must be addressed.

But we see groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) have sprung to Google’s defense. Noticeably missing from its support is a acknowledgment that they are receiving some funding from Google. CEI was just named as one of the policy groups Google will support as part of its new public policy Fellows initiative. CEI should disclose such relationships as it pontificates.