Thank You, Fox’s Levinsohn. Did You Hear What He Said, FTC?

It always helps to have interactive ad industry leaders make the case for the public interest. So we are gratful to Fox Interactive’s Peter Levinsohn (MySpace, IGN) for telling the New York Times that [my bold] “We have more information about our users, I believe, than any other site on the Web today.” Levinsohn’s comment was to explain the importance of its new interactive advertising technology acquisition, Strategic Data Corporation (SDC). Here’s what Online Media Daily said about the deal:
“Fox Interactive is already taking steps to mine the wealth of personal information found on profile pages on MySpace and other sites to better target ads. “With SDC, we’ll be able to plug all that rich data into their ad optimization technology and be able to fine-tune our ad delivery on a much more targeted basis,” explained Burkart. She said Fox is already working with brand marketers to figure out what kinds of user data are most valuable to them.”

SDC’s technology helps deliver precision targeted marketing. As the new Fox acquisition explained on its site, SDC automatically optimizes the selection of creative for each impression to maximize profitability by combining sophisticated statistical and predictive algorithms, demographic and geographic segmentation, and performance tracking. Our clients typically see network-wide (not just individual campaign) revenue increases of 50-150%. We are so confident of these results that we charge based on the actual increase in profit you measure… Using standard Intel-based servers, the software sustains real-time optimization of over 15-30 million impressions per server per day with a 1-2 millisecond response time.”

Source: “Fox Interactive Acquires Technology Ad Company.” Louise Story. New York Times. Feb. 23, 2007

“Fox Interactive Buys Strategic Data Corp., Plans Ad Targeting Upgrade.” Mark Walsh. Online Media Daily. Feb. 23, 2007

Author: jeff

Jeff Chester is executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. A former journalist and filmmaker, Jeff's book on U.S. electronic media politics, entitled "Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy" was published by The New Press in January 2007. He is now working on a new book about interactive advertising and the public interest.

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