Category: media industry lobbying

Online Advertising–and then there were only two

From Online Media Daily (excerpt & our bold):

“The deal was not about the $40 billion in interactive advertising Microsoft projects marketers will spend this year, said Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s platforms and services division, in a conference call Friday morning. Instead, it’s a bet on the future of the total $600 billion advertising market as spending continues to shift to interactive channels, he said, adding that Microsoft now has a soup-to-nuts offering.

“As we look at how the market is evolving, we think there will only be two large-scale advertising platforms … and we will be one of them,” Joe Doran, general manager of Microsoft’s digital advertising solutions unit, told OnlineMediaDaily. (The other being Google/DoubleClick.)

“Microsoft’s $6B Deals Caps Watershed Month for Digital.” Laurie Peterson. Online Media Daily, May 21, 2007.

This excerpt from another article is about data related to marketing, but has broad privacy implications as well:

“If Microsoft gains access to all the data, across all the engines, for aQuantive’s entire client roster of search clients, it will be sitting on a treasure trove of information that it’s never seen before — and which should have Google feeling very nervous. The same is true, of course, for the information that DoubleClick’s Performics can provide to Google. To a network, an agency is a wealth of competitive data — a fact about which all of the networks are undoubtedly aware.”

“Why Conglomeration Could Be Bad For Advertisers.” Mark Simon. Search Insider. May 21, 2007.

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Microsoft’s Vision for the Internet’s Future: Not a Pretty Picture

“We can tell you who saw…we let you target that…we will let you serve that on dayparting…” Yusuf Mendi, Microsoft’s Senior VP and “Chief Advertising Strategist” delivered such words—and more— yesterday. We urge you to watch and listen to his presentation. One learns that Microsoft is willing to help its wealthiest customers to better “pop” their brands. This includes helping them `know’ “who the user is and target to the user.” Mendi told the group that he knows they don’t want to target only “raw tonnage.” So, for Microsoft, the “quality of the user” can be better defined by the “25 behavioral segments” that can be targeted to the “280 million people who use Hotmail” at least once a month. The 280 million Messenger users can be targeted with rich media marketing technologies that sense their mouse hovering and interacting with an ad. For Microsoft, the “end to end IP experience” is all about transforming the global digital platform into one powerful brandwashing system.

Mr. Mendi told the audience that Microsoft is “open for business” to help “redefine” the Internet’s future. Such a future—given to us by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, major ad agencies and marketers—raises a series of disturbing questions and should be a cause for alarm and debate. The foremost role for digital media should be to promote civil society (that’s not the “cause” marketing cases Microsoft and others have embraced as the “Trojan Horse” to convince everyone to endorse the idea about data collection and targeted interactive marketing). Shaping the most powerful platforms so it can better collect our data and then drive our behaviors—without our full awareness and informed consent—is not a responsible act. That’s why it’s time for a much more robust debate about where this is headed—before it’s too late.

We will be come back to Mr. Gates and the Summit.

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We Need FTC to Protect Privacy. Privacy Groups Should Be Calling for Real Action–not Industry Friendly “Workshops”

My organization and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group have asked the Federal Trade Commission to swiftly act and protect our privacy online. Last November, we filed a lengthy complaint asking for an intervention to stop behavioral targeting [pdf from Doubleclick] and associated spyware. But it seems that some groups aren’t that interested in action. They want the industry bigshots (who may be their funders) to come into the FTC and agree on “best practices.” That will likely mean no real privacy protection. Here’s the excerpt from a CNET story:

“The CDT has urged the FTC to hold a workshop on behavioral targeting to set best practices in the industry and get players like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo to agree on them. The organization wants to ensure that people have control in the event that these companies begin to merge consumer information from search and Web-surfing records to personalize ads.”

Privacy groups need to demand that the FTC finish its investigation (it launched one last November as a result of our complaint). We have provided the FTC with so much additional information, they should be able to act by now. Workshops are a delaying tactic designed to help out the special interests. If you want to see just a small fraction of what we’ve sent the FTC investigative team, go to adwatch.

PS: Here’s the blog post from the Center for Democracy and Technology on its request for a FTC workshop. Read its letter to the FTC. Then ask yourself. Shouldn’t public interest groups identify in such a letter the companies which fund them and engage in behavioral targeting? Shouldn’t they acknowledge that one of their key supporters, Microsoft, is the subject of a related complaint now before the FTC? Follow the money and the data mining it helps bring.

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.”

Research report press release

available as pdf via Google UK homepage

Don’t Think NBC/CBS Agenda for Hill/FCC Didn’t Play a Role in Imus Cancellation

In addition to pressure from sponsors, civil rights leaders, their own employees, and personal sense of justice, we think that part of the equation for CBS and GE/NBC was the impact on public policy. The Congress is going to take up legislation regulating TV violence (and Senate Commerce Chair Daniel Inouye just signaled his support for such a bill). The FCC is considering a new give-away to television broadcasters for their additional digital channels, requiring cable television carriage. There don’t want any serious scrutiny on their deals and mergers. There’s generally a policy angle lurking whenever the media industry does the right thing.

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!