Category: interactive advertising

Online Ad and Data Collection Watch

My group has launched a new project to keep the public better informed about the latest threats to our privacy. Click here to visit Online AdWatch. It will regularly highlight new developments in the interactive ad marketplace across the PC, mobile, and digital TV platforms. Send me your favorite examples of technologies, applications and market strategies that should be included.

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Yahoo!’s Deal with the Newspaper Industry: Papers should come clean about the data they will now collect/share and our privacy

We are troubled, as are many, about the crisis occurring within the U.S. daily newspaper industry. The lay-offs, cut backs, and other problems besetting such distinguished papers as the Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury News, Philadelphia Inquirer, and too many others, requires the attention of policy makers and civic leaders. We believe a principal cause for the current problem are publishers and newspaper holding companies whose first interest is squeezing out maximum revenue returns—for themselves and shareholders. Newspapers can make a reasonable profit and support serious journalism. But when they are seen as just another vehicle designed to generate lots of cash, the defenders of the First Amendment have been replaced by white-collar criminals. It’s time for new federal laws that would enable newspapers to be operated without regard to maximizing shareholder return.


 We also know we are in a key transition period for all media. That’s why we should publicly examine all the major deals shaping our future information landscape—to determine how well they will serve the public interest [Yes. We think that’s more important than just making money from the deals]. So, when William Dean Stapleton, CEO of MediaNewsGroup, says in a joint statement that the new partnership with Yahoo! and 176 newspapers is “transformational”–it requires a closer look. Some of the biggest names in the news business—Belo, Cox, Hearst, Scripps and MediaNews—have now hitched their digital wagons to Yahoo! Papers such as the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, and Dallas Morning News are now a part of what is called the “most comprehensive advertising network in the online industry.” A major facet of the deal, notes the release, is for the papers to “[U]se Yahoo!’s search monetization functionality on newspapers Web sites, such as Web search, downloads of the Yahoo! toolbar and sponsored search.”

We recognize that newspapers must boldly work to secure new digital revenues. But in doing so, they must be responsible. That includes explaining carefully to every reader and user the kind of personal and other data Yahoo! is now able to collect and financially harvest. Readers/users need to know how Yahoo! and its newspaper partners will “target” them. When Yahoo! acquired rich media ad firm AdInterax last month, they noted that “Rich media technology enables marketers to create more compelling and interactive advertising units online using sight, sound and motion to deliver a message to target consumers. Yahoo! plans to further integrate rich media capabilities into its current leading offerings by developing a self-service model for marketers based on the AdInterax platform. This new rich media solution will enable advertisers and agencies to create and run rich media campaigns coupled with other Yahoo! capabilities including behavioral targeting, geo-targeting, demo-targeting, and dayparting.” The release also noted that “the AdInterax tracking and reporting module tracks traditional metrics including impressions, clicks, and reach and frequency, in addition to other key branding and direct marketing data.”

Newspapers should be protecting the privacy of the public—from both the excesses of government as well as commercial interests. Journalistic-related companies should make deals with online marketers such as Google and Yahoo! which place the privacy interests of readers/users first. We suggest that the editors from the papers now working with Yahoo! commission stories that will explain the deal in terms of what data is being collected and how it will be used. Then, the papers should run editorials calling on Congress to pass meaningful privacy safeguards on electronic data gathering. But—if they did that—wouldn’t it now threaten the very deal they just made? We will be tracking this story.

PS: We also want to see the same privacy-related disclosure from the 50 papers now involved with Google, via a deal announced earlier this month. They include the New York Times and Washington Post.

Political Games Advertisers Play: A GOP Protection Racket

The nation’s biggest advertisers and marketers have developed an effective political operation in Washington. Madison Avenue and its clients have been able to ward off calls for policies, for example, that would protect our privacy. How the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) conduct its lobbying efforts have largely been off the radar screen. After all, the press cannot examine itself (since the ad lobby is ultimately tied to the fate and fortunes of broadcasting, cable, newspaper, and much of online).

So we thought it was worth pointing out a telling comment in a recent Advertising Age story written by its indefatigable and enterprising D.C. bureau chief Ira Teinowitz. In his story titled “What Democratic Control May Mean for Marketers” (Oct. 16, 2006), he quotes AAAA VP Dick O’Brien. A change in control, said O’Brien, would mean that “[T]he sort of protection we have had on the House Commerce Committee will disappear.”

While not a bombshell, such admissions help tell the story of how all too often, Commerce chair Joe Barton and Telecom subcommittee chair Fred Upton have worked to help the big buck special interest agenda (think Bells, cable and no network neutrality for broadband). While we don’t believe the Democrats are Saints, at least once in a while they will yell and scream. The Ad industry, in our opinion, needs to lose its protection racket defense.

What Google-YouTube Means for the Public Interest

Here’s a new piece I wrote for The Nation magazine online that summarizes my concerns about what is happening with our digital media system–and what we should do about it.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061030/chester

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Inappropriate PBS Ad of the Week–about the Pope and the Devil!

PBS, abandon all sense of perspective when ye enter into commercial digital marketing contracts. Here’s a ad on the PBS.org site alongside its promotion of news and public affairs programming. “Next Pope is John Paul II Impersonated. Bible Prophecy Shows He Will be Last Pope. Learn More www.worldslastchance.com.” By clicking, you go to: [http://www.worldslastchance.com/index.php?p=next_and_last_pope.php]

There you can learn about the “world’s last chance” and that a “New World Order is About to Start.” Then a headline declares that: “The Bible Reveals next and last Pope will be a Devil impersonating John Paul II.”

No fooling! I think the fundraising drive has depleted the oxygen at PBS HQ. They better meditate now on the foolish digital ad path they trod.

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PBS is Running Stupid and Manipulative Online Ads—First in a Series

PBS is running sponsored ad “links” via its Google deal. The further commercialization of public broadcasting is a real problem. Relying on bottom-feeder interactive advertising isn’t going to address any of the sustainability issues at public TV.

So, in the spirit of public service, this column will regularly review ads on the PBS site. Our nominee today is the data collection scam targeted at moms. “Are You a Slacker Mom? 15 Fun Questions that will show you what type of mom you really are” reads the copy for the www.AreYouASlackerMom.com. Once there, you are asked a series of questions and urged to give your email address, become a “member” and “receive notices for new quizzes, games and special offers from Chatterbean.” [which operates the site]

PBS should never be part of a data grab; nor should they promote commercial ventures. But from the recent push to make PBS more ad friendly, it appears we have some slacker executives running the network.

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The Military Does MySpace

We want to point to a new article in Brandweek that illustrates how the U.S. military is relying on “sell-em” techniques to boost enlistments. Boy, with the Iraq war such a disaster (to put it charitably), what a bad “advertising environment” the marketing folks in the Pentagon have to work with. Brandweek’s Jim Edwards was able to obtain Air and Army National Guard marketing records via a Freedom of Information request. Edwards reports that “[T]he documents—which describe internal market research memos, e-mails and PowerPoint presentations—offer an inside look at how Pentagon marketers saw consumer sentiment change, and they confirm that as the war progressed, particularly around 2004, their job got harder and harder.” The Brandweek story describes how the Reserve tested “alternative positionings for its brand,” including on the themes of “Hero, Everyman, Caregiver and Explorer…”

It appears that recruiting is now up, as a result of the intensive and well-funded marketing spin. Some tidbits:

“The total Pentagon ad spend went up 10.5% in 2005, to $276 million, after news that the Army and the Marines were not meeting their goals in some months in 2005. In the first six months of 2006, that spend ballooned to $177 million, putting the Pentagon on course for $345 million spent for the full year, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.”

“Like other marketers trying to reach a young demo, the National Guard is considering opening a MySpace page…(The Marines, by the way, have a MySpace page—which showed 22,000 “friends” last week—and have released a viral video made by JWT, New York.)”

Congrats to Edwards and his editors for entrepreneurial reporting.

Source: “How National Guard Is Fighting Attrition.” Jim Edwards. Brandweek. October 02, 2006. Subscription may be required.

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YouTube Pitches itself to Advertisers: Everything Can Go!

According to today’s paidcontent.org, YouTube’ founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are “[N]ow exploring “complementary” advertising, Hurley said the site can help redefine the $74 billion TV ad industry by combining context, like Google’s text ads, with the sensory power of TV to present “a compelling brand image”. Hurley and Chen are open to anything apparently – ideas include user-generated ads, behind-the-scenes ad footage, sponsored vlogs and “event marketing” shoots at film festivals. The home page video ad, which NBC and ESPN use to plug new shows, generates around $175,000 and 400,000 viewers. (Update: that’s per day, according to this piece.)”

Where will the boundaries be? How will privacy be truly protected? What kind of special treatment will the big media and marketing companies receive when they fork out all that daily dough? Stay tuned for more coverage on Web 2.0.

Google’s Grandiose Ad Ambitions

Look, we all know that Google is in the business of delivering eyeballs and clicks. That’s where it makes 99% or so of its revenue. But have they no sense of bounds for the evolving role of interactive marketing? According to Mediapost, Tim Armstrong, Google’s vice president for ad sales, said today that “[A]t the end of the day, we’d like to see Madison Avenue get bigger.” The online publication reported that “Google wants to combine Madison Avenue with Silicon Valley to forge what [Armstrong] hopes will be the largest marketing platform around.” Armstrong made these comments at Google’s new offices located in New York City’s Chelsea district.

There need to be meaningful safeguards to govern the new media marketing world. The folks at Google shouldn’t be so glib about creating a system of digital platforms where over-consumption permeates our identity—online and off.

Source: “Google Sets Sights On Madison Avenue.” Wendy Davis, Just an Online Minute via Mediapost. Oct. 2, 2006

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PBS Runs Banner Ads

It’s October 1 and the new PBS online ad deal kicks in. Throughout PBS.org one will experience more interactive ads (they call it “sponsorship banners”). There aren’t many yet–one a pitch for the Christian Children’s Fund on the “Home & Hobbies” page. There are also promos for its ad partner Google: a number of pages promote PBS programs available via video.google.com. The site still contains Google-operated “sponsored links,” including from the Pottery Barn, the College of Body Arts, and Culinary Art Schools. Our favorite for the moment is the “Lose 20 Lbs in 3 Weeks: Amazing Chinese fat-loss secret. As seen on Oprah & 60 Minutes.” As we noted before, PBS should not be engaged in interactive advertising–on its website or via other digital platforms. We recommend the recent analysis of the PBS ombudsman on the issue here. Eventually, the ad money–and relationships with powerful corporations such as Google–will affect programming decisions. Best to foresake it now. But a Google, Microsoft and others should donate considerable sums to a public telecommunications trust–a bank account to ensure that non-profit public service programming can be produced regardless of who controls the Hill or White House. Or whether we have to click on the ad for weight control.