media criticism – Page 6 – Digital Destiny

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.

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

Google+Yahoo!=Further Newspaper Industry Consolidation (Att: FTC et al.)

The growing and ever-evolving corporate consolidation of the online advertising industry is a critical issue that should be addressed. Are there any responsible regulators and policymakers out there? We wonder, since so many are asleep at the digital switch. The intense, libidinal rivalry between Google and Microsoft almost knows no bounds. While an alliance with Google may save Yahoo from Microsoft, leasing out its search business all but ends Yahoo’s role as an independent competitor, as far as we are concerned.

One issue that requires analysis is what happens to newspapers if a Google and Yahoo merge or mingle its search business. Between the two companies, they have the majority of newspapers locked up. Yahoo’s newspaper consortium represents hundreds of dailies. Google also has its own newspaper network. Indeed, Google just ran a full-page ad in the March 31, 2008 issue of Advertising Age touting its “Google Print Ads” network. Google says it now “covers all but two of the top 50 media markets and reaches an aggregate audience of more than 40 million readers a day via more than 750 million newspapers, from major dailies like the New York Times to smaller community and college papers, Hispanic newspapers, alternative weeklies and business journals.”
With our nation’s newspaper industry in tatters–and journalism in dire straits–the role that a competitive online ad system plays to provide much needed revenues to newspapers is an important issue. Anti-trust regulators, and other policy makers, should examine the implications to newspaper diversity of any new deal further reducing the competitiveness of the online ad system. By the way, since newspapers are using these systems for behavioral and other targeting, both privacy and data collection issues should be part of the analysis.

Will Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection and its $300m ad budget address the role of advertising and the climate crisis?

We think there’s something ironic about the $300 million ad “We” campaign just launched by Al Gore and several environmental groups to address climate change. We agree that threats to the environment are grave, and require immediate action. But unless Gore’s ads also critique the growing challenge to the environment coming from the advertising industry itself, we doubt whether there will be meaningful change. Marketers are unleashing the most powerful techniques to encourage greater and greater personal consumption. Madison Avenue is expanding the boundaries of what marketing can do by creating what it calls its “Marketing and Media Ecosystem.” From behavioral targeting based on the collection and tracking of our online activities, to “immersive” branded virtual content, to “viral” campaigns using broadband videos, the ad industry has embarked on a full-court press to get the public to eat more junk food, buy more cars, charge more on credit cards and take out new loans, etc.

The campaign, according to press reports, is hoping to encourage “influentials” to press for laws and policies. It’s a noble effort, although is using the same techniques marketers have embraced to target teens and other opinion makers to get friends to buy or like brands and products (called “brand ambassadors” by some). The Gore campaign should include a serious call for the public to be concerned about the consequences from the global and digitally-driven interactive marketing machine. Among the policies it should ask its influentials to support, are safeguards protecting consumer privacy and ensuring that marketing in the digital “ecosystem” is done in a way that truly supports an earth in balance.

PS: Before any of the $300 million is given to buy time via broadcasters, cable companies, ad agencies, and online marketers, the Alliance for Climate Protection should first be required to conduct an environmental impact analysis of how these media each contribute to the climate change threat–and what they should do about it.

IAB’s new “Privacy Principles”=A Failure to Protect Consumer Privacy

The IAB has embraced a `circle the data collection and micro-targeting digital wagon’s’ with its new privacy principles. Instead of embracing a policy that truly protects consumer privacy, IAB members are trying to hide behind the same failed approach they have led to governmental inquiries in the US and the EU. The IAB should have adopted rules so that no data can be collected without full disclosure and prior consent of the consumer, as well as other fair information collection principles. The IAB’s proposed new PR campaign to promote the role of interactive marketing will undoubtedly by slick–but won’t be honest. That’s why my CDD will keep telling the FTC, the EU and the public about what really goes on with data collection and digital marketing. These slightly refurbished fox-watching-the-data-hen-house-privacy principles won’t provide any substantive protections for consumers. The failure of the IAB to acknowledge key issues related to sensitive data–including children, teens, financial (think subprime mortgage-related) and health–is a glaring failure of the group’s ability to do what is required to protect consumer privacy.

The IAB is trying to help its members dodge the digital privacy data bullet. But privacy advocates and officials concerned about consumer welfare in the digital age will eventually force the needed changes. What’s sad is that instead of playing a leadership role in the privacy debate, the IAB is attempting to stick with the past. Don’t they realize that change is coming?

Is John Malone behind Discovery Channel censorship of Alex

We heard via Democracy Now that the Discovery Channel is refusing to air the Academy-nominated documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side. It’s likely that this censorious decision involves conservative cable TV titan John Malone and his Liberty Media. Malone, once called the Darth Vader of the cable TV biz because of his anti-public interest slash and burn policies, is in the process of taking over Rupert Murdoch’s DirecTV (with an FCC decision soon about the transfer). He is the chair of the Discovery Holding Co.Â Malone has long had a financial relationship with both News Corp. and Barry Dillers IAC.

Discovery Channel’s advertisers should be targeted for this decision, which is politically motivated. Pension funds and other investors who hold Liberty shares should protest. The Discovery Channel, never an ally of serious documentary, should be held in scorn by filmmakers and other media groups. Meanwhile, it should also serve as a wake-up call to create several new independent broadband video channels for news, public affairs, and POV programming. Btw, Malone helped block NBC from creating a news channel competitor to CNN years ago; his TCI was also opposed to meaningful support for public access programming, and also undermined plans by the BBC in the early 1990’s to have a news channel in the U.S.

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Microsoft’s quest for Yahoo!—Follow (Your!) Data…or Hi, Ho, Hi, Ho, it’s off to harvest your data we go

We will be covering the proposed takeover, from both the online advertising business and privacy side. Here’s a revealing tidbit from BusinessWeek on what Microsoft hopes to achieve from a deal: “What’s more, the company is hoping to bring together Yahoo’s research and development staff, who’ve done innovative work in online advertising auction theory and data-mining, with its own online lab.”

Yes, a key to analyzing this deal–if it happens–is what are the consequences when Microsoft’s adCenter merges with Yahoo!’s Panama and other data mining assets. That’s why it’s important to keep a spotlight on what Google and Microsoft, among others, plan to do. Here’s an example of where we are headed, courtesy of Microsoft’s adLab demonstration this week [via Clickz]: “Online advertising has been centered around keywords for too long,” said Tarek Najm, an engineer for Microsoft’s advertising and business intelligence systems, adding the “next wave of advertising is going to use new algorithms and technologies” that display ads based on consumer intent.”

Behavioral Advertising: Targeting “Users Further Down the Purchasing Funnel”

When you can get the online ad industry to write your copy, it makes the work at the FTC and the European Commission so much easier! Here’s an excerpt from a revealing imediaconnection article entitled “Targeting Tips for a Converged Media World.” [Jan. 30, 2008]
“In days past, audience segmentation was based solely on demographic and contextual targeting information, which allowed advertisers to promote their products or services to a group of potential consumers based on their gender, age and other fairly unsophisticated, generic characteristics. In the online world, consumers now essentially determine their own segmentation based on individualized habits, determined through behavioral targeting…. Behavioral targeting…is also an additional way for marketers to target users further down the purchasing funnel and helps marketers better predict how users will act… Marketers will be able to track individuals or user clusters across their favorite TV shows, travel habits through their car’s GPS or obtain their video game proficiency through in-game advertising… As users age and change their personal preferences, behavioral targeting can change with users’ habits and compensate accordingly…With marketers able to include interactive components into traditional media outlets while infusing behavioral knowledge and targeting, advertisers must create messages that can be delivered across all platforms. For example, we could see mobile ads that use interactive elements if marketers know the behavioral cluster exhibits a preference for interactive media.”

As a brief companion piece to Ken Auletta’s article on Google in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine (The Search Party), this may be of interest. Google’s goal is ultimately to be of service to advertisers and marketers; that’s how it makes 99% of its revenue. There’s a disturbing lack of candor from Google about the conflicts they have. One the one hand, they are (getting PR for) promoting responsible practices such as energy sustainability. But on the other hand, they are using all the company’s incredible resources to push the interactive marketing and selling envelope, including the sales of automobiles. Here’s excerpts from Google advertising sales job openings related to the car and truck industry:

1. The role: Industry Head, Automotive â€“ London

As a Google Automotive Industry Head, you’ll be working with those who produce, market or sell products or services related to cars, trucks, boats or other transportation vehicles. This includes original equipment manufactures, third-party websites, dealers and after-market parts and accessories companies. This is a highly consultative position that reports directly to the Automotive Industry Leader. You’ll be responsible for presenting the team’s strategy and managing a team of experts to increase sales on a national level. Focusing on building strong relationships at the highest possible level, your goal is to help your automotive clients get as many of their marketable assets online in an affordable and measurable way. You’ll combine exceptional Automotive knowledge, deep industry and marketing agency relationships, compelling communication/presentation skills and inspired prospecting/analytical abilities to develop and close new business as well as grow existing business.

Responsibilities:

Develop the vision and manage the sales/account strategies that will fully unlock the potential in the Automotive sector.

Build and maintain relationships with senior-level clients, industry-specific direct advertisers and relevant agency contacts.

Educate the Automotive industry and evangelise Google, particularly at targeted events, conferences and media opportunities.

Understand the roles of and manage a team consisting of Industry Managers, Account Managers, Account Strategists and Sales Planners â€“ providing team development, guidance, feedback and motivation.

Develop a deep understanding of the business needs of Automotive advertisers and insights into consumer behaviour.

Requirements:

High-calibre BA/BSc degree (MBA preferred).

Proven record of strategic development of major Automotive manufacturers.

Substantial experience in advertising sales/marketing and sales management.

Established relationships and presence within the Automotive industry.

Broad knowledge of sales and management, and proven team management experience.

Ability to influence product development through interaction with relevant colleagues, peers and direct reports.

A deep understanding of the industry’s issues, a vision for its growth, and a commitment to advance Google’s forward-looking strategies within the marketplace..

2. The role: Account Strategist, Automotive Vertical (Detroit)

As a Google Automotive Account Strategist, you’ll work primarily with large automotive clients and agencies. Most of these companies operate multiple sales channels, work with several manufacturing partners and always look to increase sales volume and efficiency. This is a creative position that calls for a strong affinity for the craft of language and a fondness for consulting closely with the auto clients. Youâ€™ll distill the essence of our clients’ products and services into targeted keyword lists and text advertisements that connect our advertisers with customers. You will also collaborate with our Sales and Operations team to work closely with clients to maximize the performance of these highly targeted ads.

3. [based in Santa Monica, CA]Â The role: Account Strategist, Automotive Vertical. Â As a Google Automotive Account Strategist, you’ll work primarily with large automotive clients and agencies. Most of these companies operate multiple sales channels, work with several manufacturing partners and always look to increase sales volume and efficiency. This is a creative position that calls for a strong affinity for the craft of language and a fondness for consulting closely with the auto clients. Youâ€™ll distill the essence of our clients’ products and services into targeted keyword lists and text advertisements that connect our advertisers with customers. You will also collaborate with our Sales and Operations team to work closely with clients to maximize the performance of these highly targeted ads…

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