Category: privacy

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

Behavioral Targeting firm has assembled “140 million active online shopper profiles”

Behavioral Targeting watch

excerpt: “Behavioral targeting is set to reach $3.8 billion by 2011…one company is claiming to be the first online network that uses consumer purchase and browsing information to determine which ads they are presented with.

“Shopping behaviors associated with a cookie on a user’s machine provide information about their interests, and continuous modeling enables us to identify large populations with similar patterns of purchase behavior,” said aCerno CEO Tom Sperry.

aCerno, a wholly owned subsidiary of database marketing firm i-behavior, reports that it has accumulated 140 million active online shopper profiles. The data can in no way be linked to an individual but instead relies on unique cookie ID numbers placed on a user’s browser.” via BizReport.

“Behold aCerno — the only predictive targeting ad network that drives transactions, propels brand metrics, finds prospects who are in-market for your product or service, and predicts what they are interested in. Your best prospects are delivered flawlessly and efficiently to you.aCerno helps marketers motivate consumers by always putting the right message before their eyes when and where they’re receptive to your message.aCerno understands and capitalizes on the symbiosis among brands, retailers and consumers. Our predictive modeling gleans vital data from this ecosystem to target messages that pique interest and prompt the consumer reaction you seek. With aCerno, online advertising unearths greater market potential by delivering predisposed prospects…aCerno creates custom audiences from this data to suit your brand’s particular needs. Whether your objective requires targeting based on pure product- and shopping-based behaviors, or on more traditional demographics and psychographics – or any combination of them all, aCerno offers unmatched flexibility in built-to-suit audience development.” from: aCerno

More on aCerno, via today’s Clickz. article [excerpt]

aCerno, has been in stealth mode for nearly four years. It collects…information from an association of over 375 major multichannel retailers’ Web sites (that aren’t identified to one another), representing 140 million shoppers. The information is completely private and tagged only with an ID…ACerno clients’ best prospects are identified with modeling and profiling techniques, finding users who look most similar to their best customers. Once these high-value prospects are recognized, aCerno uses its massive advertising network to deliver targeted advertising messages directly to them…The company’s extensive network of high-quality Web sites, publishers, and portals is targeted exclusively at the cookie level with banner ads and rich media to achieve maximum reach within the target audience. The network reaches over 95 percent of the Internet population with more than 80 percent of the impressions served into sites on comScore’s Top 500.

This is predictive analysis; scoring million of cookies against hundreds of variables to create models.”

Newspaper industry tracking user “behavior” without real disclosure, consent

quadrantOne is a consortium of 26 newspaper companies that enable advertisers to, as its release notes, “for the first time, to buy hundreds of well-established and trusted online newspaper and broadcasting sites by placing a single order.” quadrantOne [attention antitrust types!] is jointly owned by Tribune, Gannett, Hearst, and the New York Times.

On Friday, the Newspaper Association of America filed comments at the FTC arguing that the agency’s proposed privacy principles to protect consumers could be a violation of the First Amendment. But perhaps the NAA–and certainly quadrantOne and its members–can explain what the consortium means what it tells potential advertisers that they can be given “[A]ccess to sophisticated audience targeting by context, behavior and demographics.” quadrantOne has, according to its website: “Total number of unique users: Close to 50 Million.”

The newspaper industry should be scrupulously candid about all its data collection and targeting. While we support newspaper efforts to build up online ad revenues, they should do so in the most ethical manner. Embracing meaningful privacy policies that fully disclose prior to collection, and ensuring affirmative user consent, must be incorporated into our concept of liberty and freedom in the digital democracy era.

Google, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner in coalition to fight state-based public interest and consumer protection issues

Scratch a media conglomerate–old or new–and you reveal a political agenda that is all about the aggrandizement of power–consumer and data privacy be damned. Here’s are excerpts from a Kate Kaye story on the roll-out of the state-based coalition designed to protect the interests of the online advertising industry.

“From California to Utah to New York, state legislators regularly propose laws with major implications for the online ad industry. A once-loose collective of companies including Google, Yahoo, AOL and eBay finally incorporated officially this year after four years of collaborating to influence state policy.

The most recent target of the State Privacy and Security Coalition’s efforts is New York Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, sponsor of a bill preventing third parties from using sensitive personally identifiable information for behavioral ad targeting.

The coalition doesn’t like it. A missive sent to the legislator April 7 by the coalition’s lead counsel calls the bill “unnecessary,” and “most likely unconstitutional.”…Jim Halpert, partner in the communications, e-commerce and privacy practice at law firm DLA Piper, penned that letter. As head counsel for the coalition, he also recently facilitated its incorporation.

“There’s much more state activity than federal activity,” said Halpert. Not only does that create more laws or proposed laws to deal with; the state process moves much faster.

According to Halpert, the coalition also includes Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and organizations such as the Internet Alliance and tech trade association AeA, formerly the American Electronics Association. With Halpert at the helm, coalition members conduct weekly phone calls, and sometimes meet in-person with other members or with state lawmakers to influence legislation involving online privacy and data security, Internet advertising, online child safety, content liability, spam, spyware, and taxation…

“We see the coalition’s role as helping state legislatures understand the technology policy area. I think we all recognize the technology environment can be complicated,” said Adam Kovacevich, Google’s senior manager, global communications and public affairs. Google Director of State Public Policy John Burchett is the firm’s primary liaison to the coalition.”

source: Google, AOL and others make state policy coalition official. Kate Kaye. clickz.com. April 14, 2008

ValueClick touts its "Preditive…Behavioral Targeting" Clout

excerpt: “VALUECLICK MEDIA SAID… it has built an applications platform to offer advertisers behavioral targeting based on predictive analytics… By focusing on targeting visitors rather than pages, ValueClick says it can serve more relevant ads that appeal to each Web site visitor based on past behavior to provide higher click-through and conversion rates.

ValueClick’s platform relies on three algorithms: behavioral targeting, recommendations and ad server real-time selections, according to Joshua Koran, VP of targeting and optimization at ValueClick, which supports media inventory on more than 13,000 sites. “Cookies stored on visitors’ computers collect data and build search profiles containing one or more facts,” he said.

The cookies collect data on Web site visits, ad interactions, searching, product comparisons, product purchases, and third-party data fed into algorithms that predict behavioral trends, storing the information in ValueClick servers. Koran says the predictive analytics platform will cluster the data collected from searches and clicks in thousands of categories, such as mobile, travel and finance.

The predictive algorithms in the behavioral targeting application will store the profile as long as the cookie comes back to the server with more data. It will process hundreds of millions of profiles tied to …cookies on billions of events daily. The algorithm built into the application will determine when the information is no longer useful.”

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CDD and USPIRG File Comments on

Although not yet on the FTC website, CDD/USPIRG filed comments in the proceeding. They are available here. Our submission makes clear the commission must immediately enact policies to protect consumers and the public, especially to protect their health/medical, financial and family information. It provides, I hope, a very good overview and rich detail on the latest digital marketing developments that threaten privacy and consumer autonomy.

With european privacy regulators also now looking into behavioral targeting and interactive marketing, there is growing awareness on both sides of the Atlantic about these powerful privacy threats. Hold on IAB, wherever you are, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

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Newspaper lobby [NAA] trying to hide behind First Amendment as its members threaten privacy via behavioral targeting

That’s the headline from what the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) is basically saying to the FTC, in comments filed for the agency’s online advertising and consumer privacy proceeding. We don’t have time this weekend to respond in full to such absurd claims. All we want to say is that the NAA is the same group which has campaigned for FCC media deregulation and consolidation policies. We believe the NAA’s short-sighted and self-serving efforts has contributed to the newspaper biz’s meltdown.

Any reasonable person should see that giving readers and users [hello newspapers losing audience] control over their data and information is not a First Amendment conflict. The news media that end up on the wrong side of the privacy debate will further lose readers and supporters. We will be back to this topic next week. By the way, the FTC has not yet put up the CDD and USPIRG comments. But they are available (along with the coalition of children’s health and advocacy group filing) at:www.democraticmedia.org

IP addresses +Cookies+Tracking/Targeting & Retargeting [esp. cross-platform]=You

Here’s a brief excerpt from a FTC filing my Center for Digital Democracy will submit today for the commission’s online advertising and privacy guideline proceeding.

“Google and most other online advertisers would prefer to hide behind the erroneous claim that IP addresses and cookies don’t reveal an individual’s physical identity (place of residence, phone number) or specific economic identifyer (social security number). But they know that in today’s digital marketing era, the very tiny bits of personal behavior they have identified are parts of individual human identity. Our “virtual” identities may be composed of discrete and disassembled bits of information about ourselves: —what we like to read, watch, buy; our problems and concerns (such as health or our children’s education) or our political interests—, but they are very much living aspects of ourselves. The goal of interactive marketing is to collect, analyze, and use such information to serve the interests of those paying for the targeting. The technique uses one, two or multiple individual data points in a variety of ways (search ads, broadband videos, virtual worlds) to get individual consumers to behave or act in ways that favor or reflect the marketer’s goals. The record makes clear that IP addresses and cookies provide the technical means for the one-to-one targeting of consumers.”

Google, AOL, Yahoo, Facebook and Comcast Fear NY State bill protecting online privacy

Oh, what a tangled web when you build a business mode based on the collection and unfettered use of microtargeting data. New York state Assemblyman Richard Brodsky has proposed some modest safeguards–but has scared the supposedly privacy-respectful companies such as Google with it. Google, AOL, Yahoo and others sent the letter below to Brodsky. Yesterday, we are told, AOL and News Corp lobbyists met with Brodsky’s office and claimed that the online ad industry would have to flee New York if consumers are protected in that state. Perhaps they plan to relocate Madison Avenue to a digital green zone outside the U.S.! Btw, note the addition of Comcast, which also wants to protect its TV version of behavioral targeting via its Spotlight service.

The letter:

State Privacy and Security Coalition, Inc.

April 7, 2008

The Honorable Richard Brodsky
New York General Assembly
Legislative Office Building
Room 422
Albany, NY 12248

Re: Opposition to A. 9275

Dear Assemblyman Brodsky:

We are writing to express our strong opposition to A. 9275, which is
unnecessary, most likely unconstitutional, and would have profound
implications for the future of Internet advertising and the availability of free
content on the Internet.

A. 9275 would subject advertising networks to an extremely
detailed, unprecedented array of notice, consent, and access obligations
relating to “personally identifiable information” and “non-personally
identifiable information ” that is used for “online preference marketing.”
Every website that an advertising network contracts with would be subject
to detailed notice requirements.

This bill is unnecessary because advertising networks have already
agreed to self-regulation commitments relating to most of the components
of this bill. If they fail to live up to these commitments, then the Federal
Trade Commission and the New York Attorney General’s office would
have enforcement authority. Moreover, the bill appears to be based on
Network Advertising Initiative principles that will soon be outdated, as new
principles are expected to be released in the near future.

This self-regulatory system is continuing to advance. The Federal
Trade Commission has issued further self-regulatory principles relating to
behavioral advertising on which it will receive extensive comments later
this week, and several major network advertisers have announced new self-
regulatory initiatives. New York does not need to, and should not, jump
into this process.

This is particularly true because the Dormant Commerce Clause of
the U.S. Constitution prevents any State from dictating activity across the
Internet. Yet network advertisers and websites across the country and
operating in other countries would have to attempt to change their practices
to conform to the very specific notice, consent and access requirements in A. 9275. It is simply not feasible to comply with Internet advertising regulations that vary from state-to-state. Time after time, state laws that have attempted to impose this sort of broad Internet regulation have been struck down by the courts, doing nothing more than making taxpayers bear the expense both of defending the lawsuit and paying the successful plaintiffs’ attorneys fees.

For all these reasons, we urge you to oppose A. 9275 and allow self-regulation and federal initiatives to address online behavioral advertising.

Sincerely,

Jim Halpert
Counsel

[Members]

AOL, LLC
Comcast
eBay Inc.
EDS
Facebook
Google
Internet Alliance
Monster Worldwide
NAi
NetChoice
Reed Elsevier, Inc.
Yahoo!
500 8th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20004
202.799.4000 Tel
202.799.5000 Fax