Last November, my CDD and USPIRG filed an amended complaint with the FTC asking it to crack down on behavioral targeting, including its role in the subprime mortgage lending crisis. We are glad Senator Dorgan and others raised concerns that the FTC is failing to do its job in this critical area. Online mortgage lending–and related financial matters–requires serious consumer safeguards. Online marketers–including search engines and social networks–have looked the other way while a great tragedy has befallen so many in the country. We are urging Senator Dorgan to examine the CDD/PIRG complaint, and help get the FTC and other regulators on the case.
Category: behavioral targeting watch
Behavioral targeter Collective Media looks to hire
It’s always useful to examine the employment listings. Here’s one from Collective Media, which claims it offers “Targeting like no other. Our comprehensive targeting capabilities are unrivaled in the industry. Not only do we have the premiere technology for content, contextual and behavioral segmentation, we have the expertise to make the most of it…By leveraging partner Personifi’s context targeting and powerful taxonomy, Collective is able to offer advanced audience behavior targeting…
- Collective tracks frequency and recency of past visits to assign a behavior segment to a user.
- Collective then targets these users across our network of publishers to extend reach to any audience segment.
- Understanding people’s interests and actions allow us to reach them at just the right time, place and with the most appropriate message.”
So in case you want to apply for Ad Operations Client Manager, you will need to appreciate that Collective’s “Ad Network Management Platform (AMP) is the revolutionary platform…to manage the thousands of sites and billions of ad impressions that run through its network each month…reaching more than 140 million unique users monthly.”
(PS: Given Collective’s use of DoubleClick, it will be interesting to see what Google’s role will eventually be).
WPP’s 24/7 Real Media pushing “psychographic targeting” to “drive buyer behavior and brand affinity”
The online advertising industry is throwing rocks at our notions of consumer protection in the digital age. Don’t they realize a serious public debate about all this is required before they engage willy-nilly in advanced targeted?
Here’s an excerpt from WPP’s 24/7 April 28, 2008 release:”…announced that it is the first media network to deploy psychographic targeting through a partnership with Mindset Media, LLC. The new Mindset Buysâ„¢ will enable brand advertisers to target consumers with specific personality traits that drive buyer behavior and brand affinity across a broad range of consumer goods and services.Brand advertisers have long known that consumers’ states of mind can determine what they buy and what brands they choose, but advertisers have lacked an efficient way to target mass audiences of people with the right psychographics.
Now advertisers can make Mindset Buys on 20 different elements of personality, including creativity, assertiveness, self-esteem, and spontaneity. Each Mindset Buy on 24/7 Real Media can reach millions of U.S. consumers with the same personality trait, on a completely anonymous basis. The 24/7 network reaches 150 million unique viewers each month, across more than 1,500 sites globally…Psychographic targeting through Mindset Media represents the latest addition to 24/7’s advanced portfolio of targeting solutions, which also includes lifecycle management, search retargeting, geo-demographic, content, behavioral, retargeting and custom. Many of these can be combined to form an endless number of specific targeting options that can be delivered to any digital medium.”
From Mindset: “Our proprietary table of elements makes Mindset targeting possible. The table comprises 20 personality traits that drive buyer behavior and brand affinity across a broad range of consumer goods and services, from beauty care to banking, cars to credit cards, food to pharmaceuticals.”
Update: DM News quotes a 24/7 and a Mindset exec.: “[S]imply put, it’s the ability to target individuals based on what makes them themselves,†said Ari Bluman, SVP of North American sales and operations for 24/7 Real Media. “From a direct marketing perspective, obviously being in front of the right audience that buys a product or is moved by a message is essential,†he said…Mindset Media has identified 20 different elements of personality, which include assertiveness, openness, spontaneity and pragmatism…The goal is to create mass audiences of people who tend to have the same personality type, [Jim] Meyer [CEO and co-founder of Mindset Media] said.
Yahoo! merger or deal watch. privacy division: Yahoo! may expand behavioral targeting
All these privacy, data collection and marketplace competition issues will need sorting out. Yahoo is acquiring “Tensa Kft., more commonly known as IndexTools…IndexTools will add more insight and metrics for online campaigns…” One search column explains the significance of the deal is the “…huge benefit that Yahoo will have is the ability to put their pixels (data collection mechanism) around the web and hence collect data. Which, in turn, will help their Behavioral Targeting efforts, which are currently limited to Yahoo portal only. This is huge!!!
One more request for those friendly Privacy Penguins–the AOL and Verizon deal, please
Dear Mr. or Ms. Penguin: It appears that Advertising.com’s new deal with Verizon brings behavioral and other data targeting to both its broadband and mobile platforms. Please explain what AOL’s recent acquisition Third Screen Media means with its April 14, 2008 release that says:
“Under the terms of the agreement, Verizon will leverage Platform-A’s sales capabilities for all of Verizon’s online inventory and a majority of Verizon’s mobile inventory. In addition, Platform-A will be the only sales organization that can represent Verizon’s inventory in the marketplace and guarantee placement within the Verizon network. All other sales partners are selling on a blind-network basis.
Verizon will continue to use Platform-A’s mobile ad serving platform, Third Screen Media, to manage the sale of its mobile web advertising. Third Screen Media’s advanced mobile advertising options include geographic, demographic, and content targeting, display, and sponsorship opportunities on Verizon Wireless’ portal, sections and article Web pages. The Verizon ad network is available to brands and agencies wishing to buy advertising on Verizon Wireless Mobile Web pages…”
We await, kind Privacy Penguin, for an answer. Thanks.
PS: Please include any details about the sharing of consumer data from either the broadband or mobile platforms.
U Penn Prof. Joseph Turow responds to the
Randall Rothenberg of the Interactive Advertising Bureau lobbying group wrote a commentary where he made a number of misleading statements. He incorrectly characterized the work of Professor Joseph Turow. Prof. Turow, a leading academic expert of the online marketing industry, is on the faculty of the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Here is Professor Turow’s response:
“In one sentence, Mr Rothenberg manages to make two fundamental misrepresentations. What I really say on page 2 of my 2006 book Niche Envy (where the quote originates) explicitly relates to marketers use of surveillance technologies without consumers understanding: “Over the long haul, however, this intersection of large selling organizations and new surveillance technologies seems sure to encourage a particularly corrosive form of personal and social tension.” Nor do I anywhere lament the passage of the three network universe. For example, I explicitly state in Breaking Up (on page 199, for example) that three network era had its own forms of social exclusions and state that “that “the proper response to this hypersegmentation of America is not to urge a return to the mass-market world of the 1960s and 1970s.” My conclusion: when I see Mr Rothenberg quote someone I will be sure to check the source to make sure the passage has not been wrenched from its context. I should add, too, that I accept the need that digital interactive media have for target marketing and database marketing. But there are many creative ways to meld data analytics and their implementation with openness and public engagement. I fear that Mr Rothenberg”s policies and writings indicate he will lead this important organization in directions that are misguided for marketers and for society.
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AOL should also explain for our EU friends
AOL’s articulate chief privacy officer Jules Polonetsky says he will be responding in his blog to my citing some of Advertising.com ad copy promoting its behavioral targeting. I hope he also explains, to help out privacy and consumer advocates in the EU, what Advertising.com’s UK division means when it says:
“Behavioural Targeting is the most dynamic way of reaching the right audience online. Using our Behavioural Network and LeadBack technology, we can target a pre-defined audience segment based on user behaviour on the internet.
There are a number of different ways we can create these audience segments:
- Advertiser LeadBack
We are able to target users across our network based on their behaviour on advertiser websites (e.g. partial conversion, abandoned shopping cart). - Audience LeadBack
We are able to target users across our network based on their behaviour on publisher websites (e.g. viewing product review sites). - Search LeadBack
We are able to target users across our network based on their search engine activity. - Creative LeadBack
We are able to target users across our network based on their interaction with ads served outside the Advertising.com network.
By establishing certain user traits or demographics within an audience we are able to target those individuals with the most relevant advertising or simply reach those same users in a different environment.”
and when it says that: Advertising.com employed its web marketing solutions to drive high-volume subscriptions for Vonage. From advanced targeting to view-through tracking…Advertising.com’s AdLearn optimisation technology analyzed user response data, accounting for thousands of factors – including behavior, geography, hour, creative, website and more – to determine optimal ad placement based on the highest expected number of subscriptions generated for Vonage… Vonage also sought a solution to convert those users who clicked on the ad but did not complete a subscription. Vonage implemented Advertising.com’s LeadBack behavioural targeting technology to anonymously track consumer activity on the Vonage website, e.g., abandoned subscription form. After exiting the website, consumers who had not completed a subscription received targeted ads designed to drive them back to the Vonage site.
In order to accurately track the success of the campaign, Vonage leveraged Advertising.com’s view-through tracking technology to match conversions occurring in the days following the initial impression.”
and with: “MediaContacts came to Advertising.com to drive sales of Volkswagen’s Jetta A4 model… Advertising.com created a custom subnet within its extensive network comprised of consumers who had researched cars online in the past six months. Ads featuring the Jetta A4 model were targeted to this subnet and were designed to drive consumers to Volkswagen’s website where they could configure their ideal version of the A4 or request more information from a local dealer.MediaContacts also leveraged Advertising.com’s LeadBack behavioural targeting technology to anonymously track consumer activity on Volkswagen’s website, e.g., did not configure an A4. After exiting the Volkswagen website, consumers who did not configure a vehicle or complete a request for information received targeted ads designed to drive them back to the site to complete the unfinished action.”
and please also explain what you currently offer via Time Warner’s recently acquired Tacoda. For example, when it says that (our emphasis):
“All 4,000 plus partner sites in TACODA Audience Networksâ„¢ carry tags that reflect the interests of the audience that view that page. Every time a user visits any page, that tag information is added to a cookie on the user’s computer and a profile of the user’s interests quickly builds up. Before they are added to a segment in the database though, individuals must have demonstrated an interest in specific content at least two to four times in the past 7-30 days (this period varies to account for the differing lengths of the purchase cycle for each segment). Such is the size and scope of our network that over two billion new web behaviours are added to the database each day – making it one of the top ten largest commercial databases in the world.”
Attention AOL Privacy Penguins: Here’s some copy–written by Time Warner–that you should tell to users
via the Platform-A, Advertising.com multi-page ads in this week’s Ad Age:
Audience insights guide all Platform-A
solutions. Our sophisticated reporting
allows us to discover the behavioral
profile of the consumers who are most
receptive to your message. This
information helps you find target
audiences, understand their demographic,
psychographic and behavioral
characteristics and, ultimately, decide how
you craft and place your brand’s message.
NETWORK REACH
Platform-A reaches nine out of 10 online
consumers.
TARGETING
Platform-A offers a comprehensive suite
of targeting technologies, including:
Demographic
• Age/gender/household income
• Audience affinity
• Cluster solutions
• Rosters/data match
Contextual
• Via content networks and
sponsorships
Geographic
• Data targeting, destination-based
and regional content
Daypart
Behavioral
Vertical
…Our performance
technology continually learns and refines
ad placement across our network based
on observed and expected performance.
Ads are automatically allocated across our
network based on the highest expected
return for the advertiser and publisher.
We also optimize advertising based on
the behavioral interests that resonate
with an advertiser’s key audience.
Leveraging conversion data—anything
from newsletter sign-ups to event
registrations and online purchases—will
increase brand performance and drive
more response with less waste.”
Online marketers want to track you–from click to click to “last ad” click
Microsoft and Google, along with many partners, are working to perfect a consumer tracking and analysis system so they can better figure out who gets to share in the growing online ad revenue pie. It’s called “engagement mapping.” Although if you are concerned about privacy, you might want to say, “let’s call the whole thing off.” Here’s an excerpt from the April 14, 2008 Ad Age article:
“The concept appears simple, but the technology is complex: raw log-file data, time-stamped and collected by ad-serving companies like Google’s DoubleClick and Microsoft’s Atlas, along with a short line of code known as a pixel hidden in web pages, keep a record of each time consumers enter or exit a web page, click on a link or ad and enter information in a search box or application. Those data are fed into software platforms designed by companies such as Atlas, Epic Advertising, Media Contacts and Starcom.
“It’s sort of like reading an advertising diary,” said Ben Winkler, VP-interactive media director at New York-based Ingenuity Media Group, which joined Atlas’ project earlier this year. “It’s like you opened a diary where someone wrote, ‘I saw three billboards, I heard a radio ad, saw a few banners ads, and searched through Google to find and buy the product.’ “
Rather than wait for a crisis to tell the advertising client something isn’t working, media buyers can rely on these data to identify when consumers had contact with the ads, even if it’s an hour, day or week later.
“We know the person saw ad No. 4 on Yahoo Finance an hour ago,” said David L. Smith, CEO at Mediasmith, which is participating in Atlas’ and DoubleClick’s tests with advertisers. “Embedded code in the pixels lets us track the pages and things they interact with on the site.”
source: New metrics give `credit where due.’ Laurie Sullivan. Ad Age. April 14, 2008 [sub may be required]
BT Watch: Social Networks & Behavorial Targeting: “people, not pages” are tracked
excerpt from interview with Andrew Monfried, founder and CEO of Lotame Solutions]: “One of the biggest challenges is that the industry is trying to apply standard behavioral targeting techniques to the robust arena of user-generated content and social media. Emphasis is still placed on contextual relevance when, in reality, that metric doesn’t take into account true behavior and consumer interests. People are commenting, uploading, posting, viewing videos, and using widgets. The key is to leverage this data in a way that will drive performance. Contextual relevancy doesn’t capture those verbs or actions….One of the most critical things moving forward is understanding that within social media, click-through rates aren’t the most accurate measurement of success. A truly engaged user is more valuable than a click… The industry will need to embrace new ad units as well as leverage behavioral targeting as a new way to distribute content…Our technology gathers tremendous amounts of data inherent to user-generated content, and we use this to build targeted and customizable audiences as well as provide monetization solutions. For example, if a brand wants to target consumers who only like The Grateful Dead, we build that exact audience for them… Lotame allows advertisers to touch people and not pages….
Social Networking Meets Behavioral Targeting. Anna Papadopoulos. clickz. March 26, 2008