The following in an excerpt from an article by Rich Tehrani, president and editor-in-chief, TNC. We urge everyone to read the entire piece:
“Imagine a world where advertisers would be able to predict your detailed behavior online. They would know when you are about to buy a song, a car, a present for your spouse – they would know virtually everything you are thinking. If you believe this is impossible then you would be wrong as there are a few companies who have access to enough Internet data to make this privacy lover’s nightmare a reality and believe it or not a relatively new science called behavioral targeting is taking the online advertising world by storm… Last week however the game of behavioral targeting got even more competitive as Google announced they are purchasing DoubleClick. DoubleClick is the leading company in the business of displaying advertising online…With the acquisition of DoubleClick, Google now has access to the cookies and subsequently browsing history of vast numbers of web users. It would be fair to say that greater than 85% of Internet users frequently come into contact with ads served by DoubleClick. In addition there are a vast number of sites serving up Google’s ads and running Google Analytics. Google perhaps now has access to the behavioral information of over 90% of web users.
One can expect Google to start mining DoubleClick’s databases immediately and in the process, cross reference this data with its own vast databases of search history and perhaps even Gmail content.â€
Category: privacy
U.S. antitrust regulators:
Just a pointer to the U.S. officials who will be reviewing–and hopefully denying–GoogleClick.
Excerpt: “XM Satellite Radio and Google Deliver Targeted Advertising to Satellite Radio Listeners
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., and NEW YORK, NY, August 2, 2006 – Google, Inc., today announced that it has reached an agreement with XM Satellite Radio, the nation’s leading satellite radio service with more than seven million subscribers, (NASDAQ: XMSR) to introduce and make available commercial advertising inventory on XM’s non-music channels to Google’s extensive advertising base through its dMarc media network (www.dmarc.net). As part of the deal, Google advertisers will now have a simple, automated way to reach XM’s millions of subscribers nationwide and XM will have access to Google’s large and small advertisers to offer relevant, targeted messages to their subscribers. After months of trials, the new platform is now in full production giving Google advertisers distribution through XM Satellite Radio…Google AdWords’ customers will be able to place terrestrial and satellite radio spots when the dMarc platform is integrated into AdWords targeted for fourth quarter of this year.”
and from Reuters: Google, Clear Channel Ink US Ad Deal [4/16/2007]
Web search leader Google has broken into radio with a multiyear advertising sales agreement with the largest U.S. broadcaster, Clear Channel Radio, the companies said on Sunday.
The deal, long anticipated by the radio industry, marks the progress Google is making as it expands into off-line media, not just in radio, but also television and newspapers—even in the face of resistance from some traditional media players.
Last week it revealed a parallel deal to supply satellite TV broadcaster EchoStar and its 13 million viewers.
Clear Channel said it has agreed for Google to sell a guaranteed portion of the 30-second spots available on its 675 radio stations in top U.S. markets, in a bid to expand the universe of local radio advertisers to Google’s online buyers.”
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Doubleclick’s “Performics” division: The “largest search-marketing firm” says Ad Age [4/13/07]
“Performics, the performance-based marketing division of DoubleClick, provides online marketing services and technologies for leading multi-channel marketers. Together, Performics and DoubleClick offer clients an unparalleled range of marketing solutions and are uniquely positioned to compare effectiveness across marketing channels for valued clients. Advertisers benefit from Performics´ custom approach to Affiliate Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Data Feed Marketing and Online Lead Generation programs. Performics’ proprietary tracking and reporting technology platform, advanced market expertise, and active account management enable clients to acquire and reacquire online customers. Performics is the only recognized industry leader providing both Search Engine Marketing and Affiliate Marketing Services.” from About Us
Clients: “More than 300 clients, including America Online, Blair Corp., Bose, Cingular, CompUSA, Eddie Bauer, Fairmont Hotels, HP Shopping, J. Jill, Jos. A. Banks, Kohl’s, L.L. Bean, Motorola, OfficeMax, PC Connection, RedEnvelope, My Sony, Quickbook, Staples, Verizon Wireless, and Wyndham Hotels.”
FeedLab: “Performics developed FeedLab to automate cross functional processes and scale data feed marketing programs… FeedLab not only scales the delivery and optimization of data feeds, but the technology integrates input from “paid search” results, search queries and third-party information to improve the relevancy of the data feed and enhance an advertiser´s results…FeedLab also manages an advertiser´s data feed with comparison shopping engines, Web publishers and participants in the Performics affiliate network. There are currently more than 100 online publishers utilizing client data feeds through Performics.”
Attention European Commission: Doubleclick’s Own Warning About Google’s Growing EU Clout
In Doubleclick’s “The European search advertising landscape, 2006†report, they note that (excerpts):
“Google dominates the continent
Google dominates the search market in Europe, and this is especially true so outside the U.K. In Germany, Google’s market share approaches 90%. “The game in Europe is Google,†declared Andy Atkins, CEO of WebCertain…Google sites are also visited by a greater proportion of visitors in Europe (75%) than in the US (60%)…in July 2006, Google sites were the most visited online destinations in Europe with over 150 million unique visitors in that month. The dominant search engines in Europe are also the largest media owners—Google, Yahoo and MSN…The European online ad market is concentrated in the hands of a few major players.â€
Research report press release
available as pdf via Google UK homepage
What Doubleclick also knew about you: Abacus Catalog Alliance
“With more than 3.5 billion transactions from more than 90 million U.S. households, the Abacus Alliance Database is the largest proprietary database of consumer transactions used for target marketing purposes. Abacus combines the power of this shared data with advanced statistical modeling to help Alliance participants improve profitability and increase market share.
With the Abacus Catalog Alliance, marketers can leverage transactional data to identify new customers and optimize the profitability of their existing customer base. Abacus data allows them to understand what customers actually buy, not what they say they buy. No one else can offer them the same advantages.
Alliance membership is for sophisticated marketers who are looking for a large universe of quality names and proven modeling techniques to increase their revenue and profitability.”
From: Doubleclick UK (accessed April 15, 2007)
“The Abacus Alliance database contains transactional data with detailed information on consumer and business-to-business purchasing and spending behavior. Over the past ten years, transactional data has proven to be the most effective predictor of future buying behavior. By combining transactional data with advanced statistical modeling, direct marketing can help marketers target the potential consumers that are most likely to buy their products or services.”
From: Direct Marketing (Doubleclick UK) Accessed April 15, 2007
PS: Aliance Data acquired Abacus in December 2006. But the Doubleclick UK site contains the above information as of today.
The Post-Imus Debate on Diversity of Media Ownership Should Be Focused on the New Digital Realities
We agree that there must be a serious debate and action to address the abysmal lack of media ownership by women and persons of color. But we urge advocates and others to develop a strategy based on the broadband world that is emerging. Soon, many people will receive their [interactive] video and radio programming over PC’s, mobile devices, and digital televisions. If we are to ensure that the new media landscape in the U.S. doesn’t repeat the same market models and homogeneous control we have with broadcasting, cable, and satellite, action is required—now. Powerful media behaviors are being developed that connect young people to the “always-on, always connected†online world. We must make sure that the public interest—especially diversity of ownership—is a fundamental part of this system. For it is the new media landscape—and its awesome power—that will soon help influence our consciousness. The outcome of elections and whether we are fooled into entering another war, for example, will be determined by how the digital media environment is structured. We shouldn’t assume that on its own, the new media will automatically promote a Just and civil society.
That’s why we hope that civil rights groups, media reform organizations and policymakers embrace a multi-faceted approach to bring meaningful change. What’s needed now is serious investment by funders/backers to develop a array of digital media services owned and controlled by women and persons of color. A variety of business models, including community and cooperative ownership, must be explored. These services must be given access for distribution over mobile devices and digital television, in addition to broadband-to-PC service. There should be a myriad of such services—including a new generation of public interest digital media outlets—in every community. Obviously, we require national networks as well.
It’s too late to fundamentally change how commercial broadcast radio, television and even cable are structured—both in terms of ownership and business models. But the “new†world emerging is still somewhat flexible to shape it early on and make a real difference. Certainly, the media industry must be challenged to hire many more diverse executives and journalists—as well as invest in truly representative programming ventures. The FCC and Congress should be a focus for such pressure. But it is only by looking ahead and understanding what the media world is going to look like—as Rupert Murdoch did with MySpace, Google did with YouTube, Viacom is doing with some of its MTV properties, CBS, NBC et al. etc.–that one can hope to make a significant change.
A Pre-censored Broadband Wireless Net?
As the debate grows about the future of spectrum, we want to highlight a disturbing aspect from one proposal. A well-connected investor group (Kleiner Perkins, Charles River, etc) is pushing the FCC to give it spectrum; one of the quid pro quo’s they offer is, in effect, a censored Internet.
Here’s the excerpt from the M2Z Networks filing [available there], which I find chilling: “Mandatory Filtering of Indecent and Obscene Material. M2Z commits to mandatory filtering of indecent and obscene material for the National Broadband Radio Service. This will be accomplished through a compulsory setting on the service that will utilize state of the art filters, taking every reasonable and available step to block access to sites purveying pornographic, obscene or indecent material. Like the free service itself, M2Z’s content filtering will be “always on.†Moreover, National Broadband Radio Service customers will be unable to alter the filters as they constitute an essential element of that service. To accomplish these critical filtering functions, M2Z plans to route National Broadband Radio Service traffic through a set of servers that can examine the traffic flows for improper activity and restrict access as required. Thus, the nation’s children — and their parents — will have free access to broadband that is not only very affordable but also family-friendly and free from pornographic and other indecent material. Adults who wish to access otherwise lawful material that is restricted by M2Z’s National Broadband Radio Service may do so by enrolling in one of M2Z’s Premium Service offerings. Adult consumers providing M2Z with appropriate proof that they are of the age of majority, for example through the use of a credit card, can subscribe to a premium product.61 A more detailed explanation of the filtering mechanism to be employed by the company is provided in Appendix 3.”
New MIT Book Covers Children/Youth and Digital Culture/Politics
My wife Kathryn C. Montgomery has a new book about to be published. It’s titled “Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet.” The following is from the MIT Press catalog:
“Children and teens today have integrated digital culture seamlessly into their lives. For most, using the Internet, playing videogames, downloading music onto an iPod, or multitasking with a cell phone is no more complicated than setting the toaster oven to “bake” or turning on the TV. In Generation Digital, media expert and activist Kathryn C. Montgomery examines the ways in which the new media landscape is changing the nature of childhood and adolescence and analyzes recent political debates that have shaped both policy and practice in digital culture.
The media have pictured the so-called “digital generation” in contradictory ways: as bold trailblazers and innocent victims, as active creators of digital culture and passive targets of digital marketing. This, says Montgomery, reflects our ambivalent attitude toward both youth and technology. She charts a confluence of historical trends that made children and teens a particularly valuable target market during the early commercialization of the Internet and describes the consumer-group advocacy campaign that led to a law to protect children’s privacy on the Internet. Montgomery recounts–as a participant and as a media scholar–the highly publicized battles over indecency and pornography on the Internet. She shows how digital marketing taps into teenagers’ developmental needs and how three public service campaigns–about sexuality, smoking, and political involvement–borrowed their techniques from commercial digital marketers. Not all of today’s techno-savvy youth are politically disaffected; Generation Digital chronicles the ways that many have used the Internet as a political tool, mobilizing young voters in 2004 and waging battles with the music and media industries over control of cultural expression online.”
Congressional Internet Caucus—–Break Your Special Interest Ties
Today’s column by Washington Post reporter Jeffrey Birnbaum focusing on the sale of products and services at Congressional Internet Caucus events [“Soliciting for Good Citizens” reg. required] underscores why it’s time for the bi-partisan group to restructure its relationship with the Internet Education Foundation’s Advisory Committee.
This Congress is supposed to be breaking the ties between the powerful lobbying infrastructure and its political deliberations. Permitting the most powerful corporate media and telecom special interests to, in essence, determine the Caucus agenda is inappropriate (to say the least!). No group funded by the telecom and media industry should play a role as well in shaping the Caucus agenda. We hope the Net Caucus will clean house. Will Caucus co-chairs Senator Pat Leahy, Rep. Rick Boucher, and Rep. Robert Goodlatte do the right thing?
Is there Still an Antitrust Division At FTC?: The Fox, NBC, Time Warner “NewCo” Deal
Shouldn’t Antitrust alarm bells be ringing about the new online video service being launched by NBC/Universal, News Corp./Fox, and Time Warner/AOL/Advertising.com? We think so. Time Warner’s interactive ad delivery subsidiary–Advertising.com–is handling “all the advertising for the new joint venture video service. It will provide display and video ad management and fulfillment for the new video site and for the dedicated video player embedded on that site as well as across its distribution partners,” noted paidcontent.org. The NewCo service will be, says Peter Chernin, News Corp pres. …”the largest advertising platform on Earth.” Adding to what should be serious scrutiny are the deals involving such content partners as Microsoft.
An alliance between NBC, Fox and Time Warner. Do the sleeping watchdogs at the FTC–or for that matter, the Democratically-controlled Congress–ever wake up? Or are they too busy dreaming about their next job in show biz? It’s time to get serious about both the structure and role of the online advertising business, especially as it fully embraces video distribution.
PS: Here’s a little something to help the FTC folks along: “Sales of the venture’s advertising inventory, adjacent to thousands of hours of video programming and spread across a network of distribution partners, will be shared between the new alliance and its media partners.” Oh, and since Google also owns 5% of Time Warner’s AOL unit and is a partner with Fox/News Corp. for MySpace/Fox Interactive for ad sales, we think such an investigation would be very interesting!