Category: broadband

A Google-Cable Industry Alliance?

A quote from a Reuters story about a Google exec. complaining that the Internet has a lack of bandwidth for delivering video and multi-media. It suggests that Google’s plan to further transform the Internet into a better interactive video ad system will eventually bring it into an alliance with the phone and cable giants.

Reuters: “The Web infrastructure, and even Google’s (infrastructure) doesn’t scale. It’s not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect,” Vincent Dureau, Google’s head of TV technology, said at the Cable Europe Congress. Google instead offered to work together with cable operators to combine its technology for searching for video and TV footage and its tailored advertising with the cable networks’ high-quality delivery of shows.”

Source: “Internet not Designed for TV, Google Warns.” Lucas van Grinsven, European Telecoms Correspondent. February 7, 2007.

Conflict of Interest: Why NY Times, Wash Post, USAToday, CNN, NBC & More Should Acknowledge Role Promoting Threats to Privacy and other Interactive Marketing Problems

Interactive advertising and marketing are helping shape the transformation of the media, here in the U.S. and everywhere else. A infrastructure is being put in place, without the public’s consent, designed to better sell to us 24/7. It’s using some of the most powerful communications technologies ever created to do so. Among the key issues society should be debating right now include the need for privacy safeguards to protect our personal information online, and what kind of limits should be put in place to check the excesses of interactive marketing (think personalized ads flooding your PC, mobile and TV screens, propelled by a data profile of you created via artificial intelligence technologies, and designed to get you to feel or think in a way positive to the brand).

But critical commentary about interactive advertising is largely missing from the ever-present coverage of the digital marketplace. Each day, major papers run stories in their business section about the latest triumph of technology or company. But too rarely do they examine the negative consequences, let alone the role of their own publisher or media firm. One glaring omission by such major news outlets as the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, etc. is the relationship they have with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The IAB is a trade group whose mission is “helping online, Interactive broadcasting, email, wireless and Interactive television media companies increase their revenues.” Among its goals include: “[T]o prove and promote the effectiveness of Interactive advertising to advertisers, agencies, marketers & press;” and “[T]o be the primary advocate for the Interactive marketing and advertising industry.”

On the board of the IAB include officials from the New York Times Company (Martin Nisenholtz, its leading digital exec); Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, Cox Newspapers, USA Today, NBC, CNN, and Disney. They work alongside board members representing Google, AOL, Conde Nast (attention New Yorker magazine!), Verizon, Comcast, Yahoo!, Forbes and others.

There is a clear conflict of interest here when newspapers, television, and online news report on interactive marketing and have a representative helping direct the key group promoting the industry. These news outlets should be disclosing their membership in the IAB and any other industry trade group (which have a political or marketplace mission). Editors at the Times, Post and other papers should commission stories which more effectively analyze the digital marketing industry, including raising the critical issues which the public should debate. They must also prominently disclose their conflict of interest with the IAB as they report on the industry they are working to serve.

Congressional Dems: Why Help out MPAA When its Members Oppose Network Neutrality?

Today’s New York Times has a story about leading Hill Democrats prostrating themselves before the star-power lobbyists of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) [“Hollywood Takes it Concerns about Piracy and Taxes to Washington” Reg. required] Among the Democratic leaders receiving visits included Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, Sen. Pat Leahy and Sen. Chuck Schumer. As the article reported, the MPAA “put on a daylong show for lawmakers, lobbyists and Capitol Hill aides, armed with some A-list talent…” Among the stars helping the industry fly its political flag were Will Smith and Clint Eastwood. Amazingly, part of the Hollywood pol spin was that it was pro-“working class.”

But MPAA’s members include companies opposed to network neutrality for U.S. broadband. Other members have allied themselves with the anti-open broadband cause. MPAA member Warner Bros. Entertainment, controlled by cable giant Time Warner, is one of the leading opponents of network neutrality. Sony Pictures is a partner with anti-open Net ringleader Comcast. The Walt Disney Company no longer supports a national open broadband policy (given its own dealings with Comcast and others, it has reversed its once open Net stance). NBC Universal and Murdoch’s Fox, the other two MPAA members, also support the anti-net neutrality status quo (of course, most MPAA companies have used their political clout to secure additional access to digital and broadband distribution, via retransmission consent).

There should be no tax breaks for Hollywood or help with “piracy” until the organization comes out for restoring network neutrality. Star-struck Democratic lawmakers who support network neutrality should tell the MPAA its Hill agenda is in “turnaround” until they agree to a national non-discriminatory policy for U.S. broadband.

How long will the Federal Trade Commission wait before it decides to act to safeguard consumer privacy and protection online? Advocates will likely have to ask Congress to organize an oversight “Tech-ache” to prod the agency into some sort of action. Note this excerpt below as just one example of how the FTC is asleep at the interactive advertising/data collection `digital’ switch.

“Imagine the value to a national automaker of isolating a swath of people so ready to splurge on a fuel-friendly hybrid they’ve price shopped and maybe even placed an eBay bid to buy a Prius. Now, imagine if that auto advertiser could follow those folks around the web — from news sites to social-networking pages — serving up ads that remind them of the benefits of owning a hybrid car. It’s a pretty appealing prospect to marketers, and exactly what they will be able to do if Yahoo gets its way… “We’re actually in a fairly unique position to be able to take advantage … of the enormous data and insight we have on the largest online audience in the world,” Ms. Decker said in Yahoo’s year-end earnings call Jan. 23. “We can see what people are putting in their search strings. We can see what kinds of ads they click on. We can see what kinds of sites they were on prior to the site that they are currently on…”

from: The Right Ads at the Right Time — via Yahoo: Web Giant Looks to Offer Behavioral-targeting Tools Outside Its Own Properties
Abbey Klaassen. Advertising Age. Feb. 5, 2007 [subscription required]

Susan Decker, CFO, bio link.

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Billion Dollars Bribery: As presidential candidates prepare to raise and spend $1 B on TV Ads for ‘08, it’s time for digital era reform

Advertising Age reports that U.S. presidential candidates are expected to spend $1 billion buying TV spots for the 2008 race. What this means, of course, is that our political leaders will be selling bits of themselves to well-heeled donors and special interests. How can we have a democracy that addresses our most serious problems when the very forces likely contributing to them are helping foot the TV ad costs? We can’t, even in this age of direct contributions via the Net. The big bucks raised are ultimately bribes from folks representing Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the Chamber of Commerce, and Hollywood.

The emerging new media platforms of broadband, mobile, and digital TV will be the methods of choice for delivering political marketing messages. Personalized style communications sent to digital video recorders, iPods, cell phones, along with “Second Life” style virtual press conferences, will soon replace traditional broadcast TV advertising. We need a law requiring free access on such platforms for all candidates (which would be accompanied by refinements in campaign finance limits). In a media world without communications scarcity ( such as with old media style broadcast TV) there is no reason to continue the “pay us for access to voter eyeball” type of media industry shenanigans.

Failure to address the problem of political communication access to the digital media will only result in the old system shaping how new media addresses our elections. It will be a pay-per-voter system where both the gatekeepers of old (Fox, Disney, Comcast) and new (AT&T, Verizon, Google) charge what the traffic will be forced to pay. A $1B tab for 2008 will be seen as a quaintly modest affair, as new media outlets reap many more future political profits (and power).

Here’s an excerpt from Ad Age: “Amid mouthwatering visions of more than $1 billion in spending on the most wide-open race since the TV era began, stations will have to devise some way to handle the rush when close to two dozen candidates come knocking at the same time… Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of TNSMI/Campaign Media, said advertising could well start in force this summer, with candidates trying to introduce or establish themselves early. Despite the early start, time is still an issue. “This kind of wide-open race is unprecedented, and there is only so much [ad] time,” said Jim Boyer, president and general manager of Des Moines station WHO-TV, a CBS affiliate.”

Source:
“TV Stations Prepare for $1 Billion Presidential Ad Onslaught
Dozens of Candidates Create Most Wide-Open Race Since TV Era Began.” Ira Teinowitz. Ad Age. January 29, 2007

The AEI-Brookings Joint

As we note in our book, there is an endless supply of academics and private scholars who engage in the communications policymaking field. Usually, most academics work for industry hire and supply–surprise–what is deemed intellectual support for corporate political agendas. Missing always is a clear statement of who is funding them. A November paper by two well-known researchers at the “AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies,” now being hailed by anti network neutrality supporters, attempts to undermine the effort to restore non-discrimination safeguards to U.S. broadband networks. Messrs Hahn and Litan acknowledge in a cover footnote that they “have consulted for telecommunications and information technology companies on issues discussed in this paper.” They do not actually list such consultancies. But a glaring omission is the failure to identify who helps fund the Joint Center they co-direct. They include AT&T (and its predecessor SBC), Verizon and the super media monopoly lobbying shop Wiley, Rein and Fielding (which has represented BellSouth, Verizon and others). Such conflicts of interest should have been prominently displayed by the authors, as well as full disclosure of their consulting contracts. We note that pro-net neutrality firm Interactive Corp. is also a Joint Center supporter. But how much each gives and the terms of the grant must be disclosed in any related research. Research from the Joint Center, and all other scholarly and advocacy groups, should clearly and prominently identify their funders and their related political positions on the issues raised within the main body of the paper.
The public deserves better from the folks at the Joint Center.

For an example of the paper’s reception, go to Forbes.com and see the 1/24 online piece entitled “Is Network Neutrality a Myth?”

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Washington

We wish the editors and reporters covering telecommunications would follow the money–and ask all the interested parties who foots their bill. They would find–with academics especially–so many financial links as to wonder whether these so-called experts aren’t violating some scholarly code of ethics. Take today’s psuedo scholarly attack on network neutrality by David Farber, Michael Katz and Christopher S. Woo. No where in the piece does it state that both Professors Katz and Yoo have taken money from the cable industry. Such funding led–natch–to industry supportive research pieces. Disclosure of such financial ties is required to be prominently displayed in such a piece, so readers can better place in context what is being said. Super cable monopoly Comcast hired UC Berkeley’s Katz in 2003 to produce research which placed the industry in favorable light. Comcast, of course, opposes network neutrality [I cover the role of Katz and other communications -academics-for -industry hire in my new book, btw]. Professor Yoo worked for the cable lobby NCTA last year to write a net neutrality study as well. Even Davd Farber should have disclosed he has spoken under the banner of the Verizon Foundation at Carnegie Mellon.

The Post’s editors must have asked if contributors have any conflicts? If so, what exactly did Professors Farber, Katz, and Yoo reply? We urge the Post to publish any such submissions. Moreover, the Post op-ed page must now seek response from parties who don’t have a money trail littering their “scholarship.”

Sources: “Study Slams Cooper’s Cable Research.” Multichannel News. 8/26/03

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