Category: privacy

AT&T Positions itself for its (hoped for) Digital Ad & Data Collection-driven Era [Attention: Future of Privacy Forum group]

AT&T, like other companies, understands that online advertising is an intrinsic part of the broadband era business model (along with subscriber charges, transaction fees, etc.). A number of reporters, charming cynics as they may be, are convinced that AT&T’s recent calls for some type of opt-in is merely a form of Google bashing (it’s really Google envy!). But, as this trade story describes below, AT&T wants to better cash in on online ad revenues). It underscores why Congress must enact opt-in rules and other safeguards to govern ISP data collection, profiling, and targeting–especially across platforms. It also suggests a flaw in how the new AT&T supported Future of Privacy Forum envisions safeguards. They are quoted in The New York Times saying they want “to move the debate beyond opt-in versus opt-out,”–meaning self-regulation would rule–or ruin–the data driven day. Here’s an excerpt from CED magazine on AT&T’s new restructuring plan so Internet ads can play a more prominent role:

“AT&T’s Advertising & Publishing business unit has been renamed AT&T Advertising Solutions and is responsible for all of AT&T’s advertising sales, according to the company, to take advantage of advertising opportunities that cut across print, Internet, TV and wireless. Meanwhile, AT&T’s Yellowpages.com business unit has been renamed AT&T Interactive. That operation gets expanded responsibility for the development, management and delivery of online and mobile advertising products across all of AT&T’s media platforms. AT&T Interactive is responsible for online and mobile advertising inventory and offerings.”

source: “AT&T realigns ad operations.” Brian Santo. CEDMagazine.com November 20, 2008.

Why Google Can’t Say a Word that Starts With “P”—Privacy

The senior execs and DC lobbying team at Google really have a major problem addressing one of the company’s gravest problems–its lack of leadership protecting consumer/citizen privacy. While Google claims to reporters and others it’s been proactively strengthening its privacy policies, most of the changes have come as a result of pressure from policymakers and privacy advocates.

This week, Google released a booklet which “spelled out…2009 policy priorities” for the new Administration and Congress, including several Internet related issues. The booklet’s release coincided with a speech Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. Missing from the booklet’s agenda was any discussion of privacy or the role and structure of online advertising (You would never know, for example, that Google was just forced by the Department of Justice’s antitrust division to drop its proposed deal with leading rival Yahoo!).

Google should be playing a leadership role supporting the enactment of serious privacy rights for the public–including “opt-in,” real transparency, user control, limits on retention, etc. If Google believes its golden digital goose will be baked once consumers better understand and control how they are being profiled and targeted, they should examine how it defines corporate social responsibility. But Google’s current approach—we can’t admit we are collecting your data for interactive marketing and cannot even say the word privacy in public-– will ultimately have consequences for Google’s future–including its share price.

New AT&T-funded “Future of Privacy” Group: Will it Support Real Privacy Protection or Serve as a Surrogate for Self-regulation and Data Collection?

A new group co-directed by former DoubleClick and AOL chief privacy officer Jules Polonetsky, called the “Future of Privacy Forum,” has been announced. It is connected to the law firm representing AT&T–Proskauer Rose–which has a considerable practice in the online marketing and data collection area. Other backers include Intel, General Electric, IBM and Wal-Mart.

We are concerned, however, that the role of the Forum is to help discourage Congress from enacting an opt-in regime for data collection. Both ISPs–such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner–as well as online advertising companies such as Google/DoubleClick, Yahoo, and Microsoft must be governed by privacy laws which empower and protect consumers. The role of ISPs in any data collection for targeted online marketing, in particular, requires serious analysis and stringent safeguards. AT&T, Google, Microsoft, Comcast, the online ad networks, and social media marketers (to name a few) must be required to provide meaningful disclosure, transparency, accountability and user control (with special rules governing health, financial and data involving children and youth). Self-regulation has failed. If the Future of Privacy group is to have any legitimacy, it will work to support serious federal rules. But if it trots out some sort of voluntary code of conduct as a way to undermine the growing call for real privacy safeguards, this new group may soon be viewed as beholden to its funders and backers.

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.

Google’s new funding program for Academics: $ for studies on “Brand Development,” Click Generation” and “for moving traditional video spots from broadcast to broadband”

The advertising industry is engaged in a growing research effort to push the boundaries of marketing. It wishes, for example, to reach deeply into our unconscious mind in order to generate a range of behavioral responses. Marketers are exploring how the new tools of digital advertising can influence consumer emotions.

For example, Google is now engaged in consumer neuroscience research to make its YouTube ads more effective. But Google wants more academic help so it can improve its digital marketing prowess. So Google and global ad giant WPP have joined forces to create “a new research program to improve understanding and practices in online marketing, and to better understand the relationship between online and offline media.” The program will be run by a trio of scholars, including Google’s own Hal Varian, Professor John Quelch, senior associate dean of Harvard Business School (who is a a non-executive director of WPP), and Professor Glen Urban, former dean of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Varian told DM News that “We want to encourage more research about how online and offline media work together to influence consumer choices. We think that such research will contribute to more effective and more measurable advertising performance.” DM News also reported that Mark Read, CEO of WPP Digital and WPP’s director of strategy explained that “[T]he industry, our clients and our companies will benefit from the application of some of the world’s finest academic research minds into how online media influences consumers.”

Don’t expect, by the way, any grants to be awarded that examine the ethical dimensions of interactive marketing; or new threats to personal privacy and autonomy; the implications of Google’s growing global control over online ad revenues on publishing; or the negative environmental and social consequences of promoting a digital marketing system which could lead to over-consumption.

Here are some of the research questions Google hopes will draw academics into its program:

    • How does a brand establish a framework for assessing how much should be spent online? How much advertising should be directed at brand development versus specific click generation?…
    • How do you set digital advertising budgets and tactics when in intensively competitive product categories?…
    • What are good guidelines for moving traditional video spots from broadcast to broadband?
    • What is the causal relationship between brand health and search success? And what is the link between search and sales? How does search contribute to word of mouth recommendation?
    • How can banner ads be more effective?
    • How do you model the consumer response to digital advertising in social networks or mobile media?
    • What do we know and what more do we need to know about on-line audiences?
    • How can advertisers be welcome in social networks?
    • Recipients will be invited to attend a conference in Fall 2009 (Sept/Oct) where they can share their preliminary findings.

Google Study on the Online Shopping Habits of Millionaires

Researching Google’s research projects are always illuminating about the priorities of the online ad giant. Here’s an excerpt on its new study, as reported by Advertising Age [sub. required]: The internet is a shopping destination of choice for the rich — and the one most preferred by the very rich, according to a study from Google.

The study…finds…millionaires vastly prefer online shopping to in-store and are much more likely to use the internet than their not-quite-as-wealthy brethren. In all, 95% of the 263 millionaires surveyed made their last luxury purchase online.

Ultra-affluents, as defined by Google, have net worths of $1 million or more and household incomes of at least $250,000 a year for married couples and at least $175,000 for singles. Millionaires are defined as those with an income of more than $1 million…Google said it looked at the 25-to-64 age bracket because that is the group most luxury marketers are interested in reaching…John McAteer, industry director-retail at Google, added that many chief marketers have misconceptions of their customers as “ladies who lunch.” In fact, he said, they are strapped for time and looking to the internet not only to shop but to find product reviews and information.

source: “Time Is Money: Wealthy Drop Dollars Online…
Google Study Finds Millionaires Prefer Efficiency of Web Shopping to Bricks-and-Mortar Stores for Luxury Purchases.” Natalie Zmuda and Abbey Klaassen. Ad Age. Oct. 20, 2008.

Privacy Threats from Google/Yahoo Deal: “True Behavioral Targeting”

Via a interview in B to B magazine [excerpt, my bold]: “It seems that Yahoo is out to get two main things from a deal with Google: a proven alternative to its failing search-monetization effort and access to more data that enable better behavioral targeting, complementing its technological and differentiating assets… A Yahoo-Google joint venture would produce the only entity on the Internet with access to a critical mass to enable true behavioral targeting. That’s a lot of private information in one place and a significant limitation for others to compete in behavioral targeting and personalization of the Web.”

source: “What a Google-Yahoo advertising deal means. Christopher Hosford. B to B. October 22, 2008

Google’s Net Vision: “take the TV experience and provide it on the Web”

As online advertising companies such as Google import the TV ad model into the online experience, what will be the consequences: to content diversity, public interest programming, sustainable lifestyles, etc.? We have our own opinion, and it should be part of a growing debate on the future of the digital media system. Here’s a glimpse of Google’s vision and its new “Branded Entertainment” division, via an article in Fast Company [November 2008]. Our bold.

excerpt: [Seth] MacFarlane’s management team went out and signed him up with Google. The resulting “Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy”…shorts are also distributed in an innovative way: targeting young males where they lurk by popping up in ad windows on sites such as Maxim.com and Fandango.com (while simultaneously appearing on YouTube). “The idea is not to drive someone to a Web site but to make content available wherever the audience will be,” explains Dan Goodman, president of digital at MRC [Media Rights Capital]… MacFarlane’s status as an equity partner in the deal entitles him to split the ad revenue with Google and MRC…MRC provides the funding and sells the ad partnerships, MacFarlane provides the content, and Google serves as distribution outlet, providing the “broadcast” via its AdSense network. Then all three split the proceeds…Each Cavalcade short carries a single advertiser. The first 10 were bought by Burger King…

For Burger King, the appeal was obvious. “Seth’s fan base intersects squarely with our audience of young men and women,” says Brian Gies, vice president of marketing impact for Burger King. In other words, MacFarlane’s comedy provides a very powerful and friendly connection to a very targeted audience, one that tends to get the munchies. Says Google’s Levy: “We know where to find them, and we’re putting the advertising in an environment they’re comfortable in.”

“The idea is to take the TV experience and provide it on the Web,” says Alex Levy, Google’s director of branded entertainment. “But brought to the people you want to reach, when, where, and how you want to reach them.” For a company that likes to say it’s not in the content business, that’s a remarkable statement. Google, in essence, is trying to use its ad-distribution network to turn content distribution upside down.”

Seth MacFarlane’s $2 Billion Family Guy Empire. Josh Dean. Fast Company. Oct. 13, 2008

The New York Times Offers Behavioral Targeting to its Advertisers [file under “failure to really disclose” department]

Excerpt from the New York Times “Audience Targeting” page for advertisers:

“Target your Ideal Audience

As the #1 reaching newspaper site on the Web, NYTimes.com has an extensive database of reader-supplied information. Through reader surveys and registration data analysis, we can offer you access to your ideal audience.

Main Types of Targeting on NYTimes.com:

  • Contextual
  • Behavioral
  • Registration Based/Demographic
  • IP-Based Company Information
  • Geographic…

  • Behavioral Targeting

    This offers you the ability to reach niche audiences based on readers’ demonstrated interest wherever they are on NYTimes.com. By utilizing this premium-targeting tool, you can exponentially increase the number of opportunities to reach your niche audience. Experience more efficient use of marketing budgets, expanded ad placement opportunities and increased media impact and effectiveness.

    How it works:
    NYTimes.com collects anonymous data on user behavior on the site. We can track broad behaviors – like visits to particular sections – and narrow ones – like reading about a particular topic or demonstrated interest in luxury real estate. With this data, interest segments are built…

    IP-Based Company Information

    Through information gleaned from visit IPs we can target against Industry and Fortune 500 or FTSE ranking. This allows for very narrow targeting of any visitor to the NYTimes.com site, whether that user is registered with us or not.”

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