Category: Time Warner

Project Canoe: Data-mining and Viewer Monitoring for Ad Targeting—-for banks, dog food, and your Cable Company

The cable TV industry’s interactive advertising consortium called Project Canoe is steadily moving ahead with plans that will harness more cable viewer data for profiling and targeting. Here’s some excerpts from a Hewlett-Packard blog:

“…Canoe’s first national go-to-market product is called Creative Versioning Platform which marries the cable industry’s ad zones with demographic databases, and this will offer national advertisers more targeted, relevant and effective advertising with commercials that run simultaneously across the national market with different messages and tags…

So who might this impact… How about consumer banking? Although there is a major consolidation in recent weeks with consumer banks, they still have specific audiences they are trying to target with their diverse banking products. Imagine Bank of America’s Private Wealth Management group only targeting household income over $150k with one specific message and another message for free checking account for households less than $75k. Or how about Purina dog food for only dog owners? Did you know that 40% of all U.S. TV households own a dog? The opportunities are endless.

Data – will be a major emphasis in Canoe’s charter…In the very near future, Canoe will have the ability to measure and monitor viewing via their set top boxes, second by second data by each box. Look familiar? That’s right, the Internet! These boxes will have in-dept and granular data for programmers and advertisers alike…Request for Information (RFI) – another basic feature with high potential…Pretty powerful stuff – high level of tracking…

T-Commerce…What could be better – you buy it during your favorite show, have it billed to your cable bill, have it shipped to your house (as the cable co. has your address) and you pay for it at the end of the month.

So who might this impact….How about credit card companies to begin with! And if the cable company offered to finance the purchases, they could create their own finance companies – similar to auto dealers. That’s called “extra income.”

source: The Changing Face of Media. Oct 6, 2008.

Facebook ad targeting system is using the “keywords in people’s status messages”–Tales of Behavioral Targeting

Fresh proof that Congress has to prohibit behavioral targeting unless consumers opt-in appears in the new issue of Brandweek. Facebook is “experimenting” with the targeting by “keywords in people’s status messages,” according to “Tim Kendall, director of monetization at Facebook.” Here are some other choice excerpts from the article:

“Advertisers are extremely interested in all new developments in the behavioral targeting space,” said Emily Riley, senior analyst at Forrester Research, Cambridge, Mass. “We’re seeing a big uptick in the use of [these] tactics.” According to Forrester data, 24% of advertisers used behavioral targeting in 2008. Last year it was only 16%…Almost half of advertisers say, ‘Even if I didn’t use behavioral last year, I definitely want to this coming year…”…

“…said Jeff Berman, president of sales and marketing at MySpace. “… the more data you have, the smarter you can be with your media… but if you want to focus on . . . 25-40-year-old mom Nascar fans who love romantic comedies and live in 12 specific zip codes, we can do that.”

…”as BT becomes more invasive at social networking sites, the technology should improve and thus serve up more relevant ads based on our true site behavior…Revenue Science, one of the biggest independent BT networks, is using forward-to-friend behavior to allow advertisers to target virally oriented people. Bebo, the social networking site AOL bought earlier this year, works with Elkridge, Md.-based Lotame, an agency that helps brand advertisers target unique users, such as new moms, who spend a lot of time on social sites.”

source: Behavioral Targeting: A Tricky Issue for Marketers. Becky Ebenkamp. Brandweek. Oct. 21, 2008

Two years after CDD & USPIRG warn about online advertising & media consolidation, a call to “monitor the state of competition”

Yesterday, Sen. Herb Kohl, the chair of the Senate Antitrust Committee, sent a letter to the Department of Justice about the proposed Google/Yahoo alliance. Two years ago next month, in its initial complaint filed at the Federal Trade Commission calling for an investigation into behavioral online ad targeting, CDD and USPIRG also petitioned the agency to open up an antitrust investigation. It was clear two years ago–as one surveyed the dizzying global shopping spree by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Time Warner/AOL–that a tiny handful would soon dominate the online ad market. Given that online ad revenues are the key to the funding of almost all interactive and online content, we were disturbed by the trend then towards consolidation. Of course, fewer companies controlling all that consumer data also raised fundamental privacy concerns.

Two years later, of course, we have even fewer independent companies left standing. Google swallowed DoubleClick (and is poised to partially operate Yahoo); Yahoo acquired Blue Lithium and Right Media; Microsoft acquired giant aQuantive; Time Warner bought Tacoda and Third Screen Media. Etc.

Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have been asleep at the digital switch. They have failed to both protect competition and privacy. However, there is a growing awareness that there are serious problems looming. As we know, the same deregulatory philosophy which helped wreck our economy is also the foundation for communications and media policy. It is accompanied, of course, by a `golden’ revolving door between government and private industry that has left consumers and citizens vulnerable to a wholesale set of unfair practices. Addressing these issues will be the focus of much work over the next several years.

Time Warner’s Platform A Wants a “Behavioral Advertising Sales Specialist”

I don’t see a concern with consumer privacy part of this job announcement. Take a look at this excerpt:

“Platform-A is seeking an experienced Account Executive who will be the specialist in Behavioral Advertising Sales. The AE will be responsible for managing the relationships with current Platform-A clients and building strong partnerships with future clients. Candidates will manage behavioral business solutions to maximize revenue potential and identify new ventures. The Behavioral Specialist is expected to proactively prospect, qualify, grow and maintain client accounts to meet or exceed sales goals.
We are looking for someone to help educate clients and agencies on behavioral targeting solutions and acclimate regional sales managers on behavioral selling. Candidates should have entrepreneurial spirit and enjoy working in an exciting and fast-paced environment. Knowledge and experience with Behavioral Advertising strongly preferred.”

Interactive Ad Bureau to Congress and Public: If Your Privacy is Protected, The Internet Will Fail Like Wall Street!

It’s too disquieting a time in the U.S. to dismiss what a lobbyist for the Interactive Advertising Bureau said as merely silly. The IAB lobbyist is quoted in today’s Washington Post saying: “If Congress required ‘opt in’ today, Congress would be back in tomorrow writing an Internet bailout bill. Every advertising platform and business model would be put at risk.” [reg. required]

Why is the IAB afraid of honest consumer disclosure and consumer control? If online ad leaders can’t imagine a world where the industry still makes lots of money–while simultaneously respecting consumer privacy–perhaps they should choose another profession (say investment banking!).

Seriously, online ad leaders need to acknowledge that reasonable federal rules are required that safeguard consumers (with meaningful policies especially protecting children and adolescents, as well as adult financial, health, and political data). The industry doesn’t need a bail-out. But its leaders should `opt-in’ to a responsible position for online consumer privacy protection.

Behavioral Targeters Use Our Online Data to Track Our Actions and, They Say, to “Automate Serendipity.” Attention: FTC, Congress, EU, State AG’s, and Everyone Else Who Cares About Consumer Welfare (let alone issues related to public health and ethics!)

NPR’s On the Media co-host and Ad Age columnist Bob Garfield provides policymakers and advocates with an arsenal of new material that support the passage of digital age consumer protection laws. In his Ad Age essay [“Your Data With Destiny.” sub required], Garfield has this incredibly revealing–and disturbing–quote from behavioral targeting industry leader Dave Morgan (Tacoda) [our emphasis]:

“Now we have the ability to automate serendipity,” says Dave Morgan, founder of Tacoda, the behavioral-marketing firm sold to AOL in 2007 for a reported $275 million. “Consumers may know things they think they want, but they don’t know for sure what they might want.”

Garfield writes that “In 2006 Tacoda did a project for Panasonic in which it scrutinized the online behavior of millions of internet users — not a sample of 1,200 subjects to project a result against the whole population within a statistical margin of error; this was actual millions. Then it broke down that population’s surfing behavior according to 400-some criteria: media choices, last site visited, search terms, etc. It then ranked all of those behaviors according to correlation with flat-screen-TV purchase…“We no longer have to rely on old cultural prophecies as to who is the right consumer for the right message,” Morgan says. “It no longer has to be microsample-based [à la Nielsen or Simmons]. We now have [total-population] data, and that changes everything. With [those] data, you can know essentially everything. You can find out all the things that are nonintuitive or counterintuitive that are excellent predictors. … There’s a lot of power in that.”

There’s more in the piece, including what eBay is doing. As the annual Advertising Week fest begins in New York, we hope the leaders of the ad industry will take time to reflect on what they are creating. You cannot have a largely invisible system which tracks and analyzes our online and interactive behaviors and relationships, and then engages in all manner of stealth efforts to get individuals (including adolescents and kids) to act, think or feel in some desired way. Such a system requires rules which make the transaction entirely transparent and controlled by the individual. The ad industry must show some responsibility here.

Time for National Policy Providing Basic & Free Broadband for All: Metering and Ad-Supported Access Not the Answer

As Time Warner and the other broadband monopolists craft schemes to begin imposing pricing plans for broadband which limit and meter our online use, it’s time to push for a meaningful public interest “universal service” digital age policy. A 21st Century democracy should provide a reasonable amount of free access to every citizen in their home (along with more plentiful free access in schools, libraries, and community sites). Today’s New York Times has an non-analytical article on the Time Warner broadband metering trial [“Putting a Meter on the Computer for Internet Use.” Reg may be required].

Under Michael Powell’s FCC, the Bush Administration gave a broadband monopoly to the phone and cable giants–ending the hope for any serious competition. By rewarding the old monopolists (cable TV & phone) with a new digital domain to lord over, the Powell FCC ensured that consumers and citizens would eventually have to confront threats to both affordable service and content diversity online [that’s the network neutrality part of the story]. The plan by Google and others to free up extra spectrum isn’t a complete answer either. More bandwidth governed by an advertising-centric business model will foreground some kinds of content over others–leaving, we believe, digital content that illuminates democratic expression a hostage to commercial forces.

That’s why everyone must be guaranteed some form of free basic bandwidth so they can access news, information, and even entertainment without fear of running afoul of a cut-off (or huge bill) by their local cable or phone ISP. What that free access amount should be needs to be debated; but it should be generous enough so individuals can consume mighty multi-media amounts of educational, civic, and political content.

It will be a true test for the groups working on communications policies–as well as the leaders of our major political parties–to see if they have the vision and courage to call for what is right. If they merely confine themselves to be a part of the safe and narrow dimensions of what are the usual U.S. media policy debates, they will fail to address one of the critical public interest issues of our time.

Privacy Issues for Interactive TV and Personalized Targeting Should Be on Congress Agenda

Deep packet inspection and other online marketing techniques are not the only privacy concerns with digital media. So are, in my opinion, the evolving world of more precisely targeted and viewer tracking television ads. Here’s an excerpt from today’s MediaDailyNews on advances in interactive television:

“… a leading developer has created an open standard that will enable advertisers and agencies to easily and seamlessly integrate any method they use to target TV viewers, and then have those ads served to specific dayparts, programming genres, geographic zones, or even individual households. The breakthrough…allows advertisers to utilize any source of data they use to define their consumer targets, and then have those ads served to any platform capable of delivering targeted TV advertising, including…broadband, as well as household-specific addressable television outlets…

…Visible World is disclosing deals with both Acxiom and Experian, two of the leading sources of data used by agencies to target consumers across media, but… the system will easily port data from virtually any source…and… is capable of serving TV ads to as “granular” a target as an advertiser can define…”

source: Addressable TV Ad Developer Hits Target, Creates Open Standard For Advertisers. Joe Mandese. MediaDailyNews. Aug 21, 2008.

Letters to Hill on Online Advertising and Privacy: A Failure to Communicate

The two headlines coming from the responses sent to the House Energy and Commerce Committee so far are that trials of deep packet inspection ad tracking/targeting were launched without meaningfully informing subscribers, and that the companies really failed to fully disclose all the data collection and targeting they routinely do.

On the second point, a strategy by several companies was to gloss over what they collect from behavioral targeting. You would never know reading AOL’s letter, for example, that it acquired behavioral targeting leader Tacoda last year [which is now integrated into AOL’s “Platform A” system]. AOL’s letter to the Hill is a fairy tale version of the targeting it can do. To see a video produced for AOL’s Advertising.com that is more honest about its ability to collect and target, see its “Holy Grail of Online Advertising” animated promo.

Charter Cable, which was working with NebuAd until advocates and Congress raised the alarm, suggests for whatever online ad services it does on its website, it relies “on third-parties, such as Yahoo and Google to perform these functions.” But it promotes its vehix.com site saying that: “More leads. Better leads. Precise geographic and demographic targeting. Unparralled branding power. Vehix.com isn’t just another dot.com vehicle site. Vehix.com is a powerful new way to combine the targeting precision of Cable TV and the internet to create a powerful sales building program.” Comcast answers the Congress by repeatedly claiming that it doesn’t target individuals online. It could have included in its letter what it says to potential advertisers, that: “On a monthly basis, Comcast.net receives over 3 billion page views, 15 million unique users, average visit length of over 14.9 minutes and over 60 million video streams. Comcast.net Mail Center has over 20 million registered accounts, 7 million logins per day and over 2 billion page views a month.” None of the cable companies, of course, said a word about their coordinated moves into personalized interactive television ad targeting (Project Canoe). Insight cable could have included in its letter a section from its privacy policy, which says that:“Our Website may post banner ads or other forms of advertisements and/or links from third party advertisers that are not owned or operated by Insight or Insight Entities. These third party advertisers may independently solicit and collect personal information, or send their own tracking devices to our visitors. Other third party Internet programs or applications may also cause additional advertisements or banner ads to appear on top of our web pages. Insight does not have control over the placement of such advertisements or the tracking devices utilized through these applications. When you visit a third party advertiser’s Website, you will be subject to the privacy policy and terms of usage agreement of that Website operator.”

Of course, the tests by CableOne, CenturyTel, and Knology reveal the failure of the current disclosure process. Customers shouldn’t be required to read complex and confusing legal updates about privacy policy. The lack of candor from Google, Yahoo, Verizon, Comcast, etc. should be addressed by the companies quickly supplying new information to Congress about their complete data collection and targeting practices and plans.

The IAB (US) “mobilizes” to Fight Against Consumer Protections for Online Media

Watch this online video of Randall Rothenberg speaking before a June Federated Media Publishing event. In Mr. Rothenberg’s worldview, demon critics of advertising (such as myself) are deliberately trying to undermine democratic digital media. This would be absurd, if it wasn’t so sad. Mr. Rothenberg is using scare tactics to whip up his members into a frenzy-all so they can fight off laws and regulations designed to provide consumers real control over their data and information. Luckily, Mr. Rothenberg will be on the losing side of this battle to protect consumers in the digital era. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic understand how the digital marketing ecosystem raises serious concerns about privacy and consumer welfare. We have to say we are disappointed in John Battelle, the CEO of Federated (who wrote a very good book entitled The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture). Mr. Battelle should know that the online marketing system requires a series of safeguards which protects citizens and consumers. There is a balance to be struck here. Online advertisers have unleashed some of the most powerful tools designed to track, analyze, and target individuals–whether on social networks, or watching broadband video, or using mobile devices. We have never said there shouldn’t be advertising. We understand the important role it must play, including for the underwriting of online content. But the online ad system should not be designed and controlled solely by ad networks, online publishers, trade groups and online ad lobbying groups. It must be structured in a way which promotes as much freedom for individuals.