Category: media criticism

Youth Health Crisis: New Report on Digital Marketing of Food & Beverage Products

I co-authored a report released yesterday. For those concerned about the obesity crisis, it’s a useful resource. It also offers a good overview about the forces shaping the global media system. It’s available here.

Regulators Must Stop Microsoft/aQuantive as well as GoogleClick

Today’s announcement that Microsoft is swallowing the immense aQuantive digital marketing apparatus is no surprise. Having lost the leading third-party online display giant Doubleclick to its archrival Google, Microsoft is desperate to remain relevant in online marketing. The $6b acquisition of aQuantive provides Microsoft and its adCenter platform with the digital marketing clout of Atlas. Atlas products include services designed to super-charge brand-marketing friendly ads utilizing rich media, broadband video, search, etc.

The deal is more proof that the FTC better wake-up and do something about the consolidation of the online advertising market. That agency can’t address the hypocrisy though of Microsoft lobbyists. They have beseeched advocates, including this blogger, to stop the Google-Doubleclick merger. All along we knew that Microsoft was desperately seeking a deal, including with Yahoo!
We will discuss the deal later in this column. But it underscores what we’ve been saying, including in our November 2006 complaint to the FTC. There’s major and troubling consolidation occurring in the online ad market. If we want to see competition and content diversity thrive online, regulators need to act. Perhaps our friends in Europe at least will. They certainly need to examine the landscape over the last few weeks. Yahoo! acquires the remaining interest of Right Media for $680m; Time Warner’s AOL buys German-based adTech and Third Screen Media; and ad giant WPP snatches up 24/7 Real Media online ad firm for $649m. Something, we suggest, is going on. Is the FTC listening?

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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 think poor Paddy Chayefsky is continually rolling in his grave, as his prophetic vision of television—Network—increasingly appears as a tame apparition. Sybil the Soothsayer must have a serious headache after she learns that TV producer Mark Burnett (Survivor) has created a new “reality” program pegged to the upcoming Presidential election.

With Murdoch’s MySpace.com as a partner, the show called Independent will feature $1 million in prize money (which can go to “legitimate” candidates or other causes). According to USA Today, “Potential candidates will audition for the show by submitting a video. Once the contestants are chosen, they will set up MySpace profiles to serve as their campaign headquarters.” Burnett and Murdoch hope that the show “will engage younger voters in the political process.”

But what will MySpace and Fox do with all the user data it receives from viewers and users of its Independent site. Isn’t the show just another attempt at getting young people to stick their interests, bookmarks, and other personal information into the MySpace data mining operation? We think so. Besides, the campaign for president should be serious business. Murdoch, Burnett, and Fox should be spending their considerable wealth encouraging people to understand the myriad of issues besetting the nation. But, since our politics is fashioned so much like show business, the new Independent show (which doesn’t have a TV partner yet) is likely to be the first of many spin-offs. Hey, Bud.TV. Perhaps our current President can be on your Replaced by a Chimp show?

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Revolving Door Watch on Michael K. Powell: Consolidating the Media for a Living

Is it ironic, tragic, or absurd that Mr. “Deregulator” (meaning end all rules because the market knows best) Michael K. Powell is working for the firm which just scooped up 56 Clear Channel TV stations for $1.2 billion? The former FCC chairman aggressively pushed to end rules that placed limits on the ownership of multiple broadcast television outlets by a single company. Guess what Powell’s Providence Equity Partners got in the Clear Channel deal, according to Media Daily News: “The portfolio houses a series of duopolies and triopolies, including two stations in top-50 markets, such as Cincinnati, Salt Lake City and Jacksonville. Twenty-seven stations are affiliated with the Big 4 networks.”

No FCC official should be permitted to work in any media industry related commercial venture for at least ten years after their term. That air blown-in by the FCC’s golden revolving door stinks.

PS: We should have acknowledged that Mr. Powell—who eliminated broadband network neutrality rules while at the FCC—has also just joined the board of directors for Cisco. Cisco has also been opposed to network neutrality, since it makes the equipment designed to give phone and cable companies control over broadband content flow.

Industry Insider Describes

“DoubleClick serves more display ads for more advertisers and more agencies and more publishers than any other company in the world. With this deal, Google now controls more display advertising than any other company, which nicely complements their other businesses where they control more search and contextual advertising than any other company in the world… DoubleClick currently processes more online ad campaigns and more ad transactions than any other company in the world, by far, particularly at the high end of the market. This data is a treasure trove. If Google wanted to, it could know exactly how much money its AdSense distribution partners make from other ad distributors, be they Yahoo! or Advertising.com or MSN. This is very powerful data.

Even if they don’t ever access the data itself, the metadata (the data about the data) is incredibly valuable. It is as if the world’s biggest stock broker just bought the world largest stock exchange. Plus, DoubleClick probably sets more cookies on more consumer browsers than any other company in the world as well.

Just the analysis of this data could yield for Google the keys to dramatically improving the targeting of all of their ads.”

From: “Google/DoubleClick: It’s About Display, Data And Defense.” Curt Viebranz, Online Media Daily. April 16, 2007.

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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.

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.”