Lobbyists like to hire academics in order to give their agenda the patina of scholarly respectability. Many academics are ideologically aligned with the interests of major media and telecom companies–supporting an unregulated environment (and like to reap the bucks as well). Some academics want to schmooze with deep-pocketed special interests. So it’s not a surprise to learn that Time Warner Cable has a “Research Program on Digital Communications.” They have already released a volume of papers on the “Future of Digital Communications: Policy Perspectives.” Time Warner’s so-called research agenda is so self-serving that it would be laughable if the goal wasn’t ultimately to undermine the public interest and consumer protection. Luckily, there are scholars and other policy experts who care more about their integrity and the academic issues and wouldn’t consider taking such funding. Here’s what the first “research question” is for those seeking funding to ultimately help undermine consumer privacy by enabling Time Warner and other digital marketers to expand their behavioral targeting approaches:
Topic One: Advertising, Two-Sided Markets, and the Role of Network Operators (ISPs, MSOs)
The emergence of more precisely targeted (interest-based or so-called “behavioralâ€) advertising offers potential benefits to consumers while at the same time raising possible concerns about privacy. Application providers, network owners, advertisers, content providers, and other interested parties may play a role in allowing these potential benefits to be realized. By facilitating two-sided markets, or platforms that enable two distinct but related groups of customers (such as advertisers and consumers) to obtain value, service providers can expand the scale and scope of their offerings to consumers. Industry groups and the Federal Trade Commission have developed principles for self-regulation online, while some advocacy organizations and members of Congress have pointed to potential harm from more targeted advertising and are calling for new government mandates.
Key questions concern the types of disclosures and the level of consumer consent that should be required.
Questions
• What are the benefits of more precisely targeted advertising, and how prevalent is the practice?
• What technological innovations support the development of more targeted advertising over digital media?
• How are consumers affected by increasingly prevalent forms of targeted advertising, and what is the appro-
priate public policy response?
• What is the role for self-regulation, government intervention, and industry standard-setting?
• What role should network operators play in regulation (voluntary or prescriptive)?
• Describe the future of the advertising marketplace and the role of new and potential entrants, such as
Internet service providers (ISPs), cable operators, and other multichannel video programming distributors
(MVPDs) offering interactive television services.
• How can two-sided markets help encourage the development of new broadband and video services?
• How can regulation of advertising or privacy affect, promote, or retard the development of these new
services?
Category: Time Warner
Google, Time Warner, Washington Post, Verizon, Canoe Ventures [Comcast] Funding Online Ad Lobby’s Campaign Against Consumer Privacy Safeguards
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is a lobbying group that is working to oppose federal (or state) legislation and regulation that would protect consumer privacy online. It recently led the lobbying campaign that removed from the new financial reform bill a key provision that would have enabled the FTC to better protect consumers. What companies are helping fund the IAB’s Orwellian named “Consumer Protection and Education Campaign” battling consumer and privacy groups? Here’s a list of the financial donors, who have ponied up about $500k so far. Other companies are contributing free online ad space for the IAB’s campaign–1 billion impressions worth. The donors are:
AdMob
AudienceScience
Canoe Ventures
Cars.com
CPX Interactive
eBureau
Eyeblaster
Feeva Technology
Google
IDG.net
IM Services Group
Mediamath
Meredith Interactive
Microsoft
Quantcast
Sharethis
ShortTail
Simulmedia
Time Warner
Traffic Marketplace
Tumri
Verizon
Washington Post
WildTangent
Teens and Online Privacy: Empowering Adolescents to Control How Online Marketers Can Stealithily Target Them and Collect Data
Some commentators–and groups funded by online marketers that target teens–are worried that proposals to the FTC and Congress that adolescent privacy be protected will somehow create a system that requires forms of age verification online. The coalition of leading consumer, child advocacy, health and privacy organizations filing comments at the FTC last week aren’t calling for the parental permission paradigm used by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act [COPPA] be extended to teens. But there are many online commercial services specifically targeting adolescents–that’s their target market. It’s those sites and services specifically focused on adolescents that we want to have better privacy safeguards.  We want those sites to be governed by an opt-in regime that gives teen users meaningful control of how their information is collected and utilized. Those sites should be required to engage in the Fair Information Principles known as “data use minimization.” Commercial sites targeting adolescents should make its data collection practices fully transparent and under the control by the teen (including a truly accessible privacy policy). In another words, a privacy safeguard regime that really should be available for everyone. Teens are ‘ground zero’ for much of digital marketing–for examples see our site: www.digitalads.org [especially the update section]. If you look at the reports on that site, you will see that the most recent scholarly thinking is that brain development in adolescents occurs much later than what was once thought. They don’t have the ability to effectively understand the intent of highly sophisticated interactive marketing and the corresponding data collection which underlies contemporary digital advertising. That’s why empowering them so they can protect their privacy strengthens their rights.
Consumer and Privacy Groups at FTC Roundtable to Call for Decisive Agency Action
Washington, DC, December 6, 2009 – On Monday December 7, 2009, consumer representatives and privacy experts speaking at the first of three Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Exploring Privacy Roundtable Series will call on the agency to adopt new policies to protect consumer privacy in today’s digitized world. Consumer and privacy groups, as well as academics and policymakers, have increasingly looked to the FTC to ensure that Americans have control over how their information is collected and used.
The groups have asked the Commission to issue a comprehensive set of Fair Information Principles for the digital era, and to abandon its previous notice and choice model, which is not effective for consumer privacy protection.
Specifically, at the Roundtable on Monday, consumer panelists and privacy experts will call on the FTC to stop relying on industry privacy self-regulation because of its long history of failure. Last September, a number of consumer groups provided Congressional leaders and the FTC a detailed blueprint of pro-active measures designed to protect privacy, available at: http://www.democraticmedia.org/release/privacy-release-20090901.
These measures include giving individuals the right to see, have a copy of, and delete any information about them; ensuring that the use of consumer data for any credit, employment, insurance, or governmental purpose or for redlining is prohibited; and ensuring that websites should only initially collect and use data from consumers for a 24-hour period, with the exception of information categorized as sensitive, which should not be collected at all. The groups have also requested that the FTC establish a Do Not Track registry.
Quotes from Monday’s panelists:
Marc Rotenberg, EPIC: “There is an urgent need for the Federal Trade Commission to address the growing threat to consumer privacy. The Commission must hold accountable those companies that collect and use personal information. Self-regulation has clearly failed.â€
Jeff Chester, Center for Digital Democracy: “Consumers increasingly confront a sophisticated and pervasive data collection apparatus that can profile, track and target them online. The Obama FTC must quickly act to protect the privacy of Americans,including information related to their finances, health, and ethnicity.â€
Susan Grant, Consumer Federation of America: “It’s time to recognize privacy as a fundamental human right and create a public policy framework that requires that right to be respected,†said Susan Grant, Director of Consumer Protection at Consumer Federation of America. “Rather than stifling innovation, this will spur innovative ways to make the marketplace work better for consumers and businesses.â€
Pam Dixon, World Privacy Forum: “Self-regulation of commercial data brokers has been utterly ineffective to protect consumers. It’s not just bad actors who sell personal information ranging from mental health information, medical status, income, religious and ethnic status, and the like. The sale of personal information is a routine business model for many in corporate America, and neither consumers nor policymakers are aware of the amount of trafficking in personal information. It’s time to tame the wild west with laws that incorporate the principles of the Fair Credit Reporting Act to ensure transparency, accountability, and consumer control.â€
Written statements and other materials for the roundtable panelists are available at the following links:
CDD/USPIRG: http://www.democraticmedia.org/node/419
WPF: http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/pdf/WPF_Comments_FTC_110609fs.pdf
CFA: http://www.consumerfed.org/elements/www.consumerfed.org/File/5%20Myths%20about%20Online%20Behavioral%20Advertising%2011_12_09.pdf
EPIC: www.epic.org
Database Games AOL May Play: “Database Matching” Subscribers Behavior Online and Off
We think it’s ironic that the same week AOL joins with several other leading digital marketers to kill-off a new online privacy law in Maine designed to protect adolescents, an article in Advertising Age reveals how much it covets–and hopes to financially harvest–data from its 5.8 million customers. Here’s an excerpt on so-called database matching–in essence, a digital spy watching what you do offline and on AOL:
Valuable eyeballs
While many major ad-supported internet properties would kill to have as many paying users as AOL, it’s the users’ behavior that puts them in the company’s sweet spot. Subscribers are AOL’s uber-users — more valuable than average because they use more AOL properties and products than typical web visitors and, as a whole, are a large part of the traffic that sees ads and then converts, either by clicking through or making a purchase.
The company also sees subscribers as a valuable source of research and insights — a sort of panel it can use to understand online behavior and ad receptivity.
“There are other ways they can bring value, ways we can use the data and understand how they interact with content,” Mr. Levick said [AOL’s president for global advertising and strategy]. “If we can look at them in the aggregate and see how they interact with certain advertising, it could bring us closer to the last mile of online research.”
How it would do that isn’t exactly clear, but like other web properties, AOL has databases of users who have registered for services and can work with marketers to “database match.”
“[Database matching] is interesting in terms of connecting online exposure to offline sales,” said Carrie Frolich, managing director-digital at Mediaedge:cia. “If I have a client that directly sells their product, be it a pizza-delivery or phone company, they know names and addresses, and AOL knows that. With the assistance of a third party, they can match up our database and their database and come up with a matched set that you can load into ad server and measure exposures and measure the lift.”
source: Why once-dispensable access biz is central to AOL’s strategy. Abbey Klaassen. Ad Age. August 24, 2009
The Battle to Protect Adolescent Privacy Online–Maine’s new law and beyond
Online marketers–including Time Warner’s AOL–are up in arms over a new state of Maine law that is designed to protect adolescent privacy online. We won’t get into the specifics of Maine’s new law at the moment (but heard some online advertisers are especially fearful of the “private right of action” in the law, which could bring citizen lawsuits). But we know its sponsors are among the growing number of advocates, health professionals, consumer groups and parents that want to see teenage privacy respected. Digital marketing techniques are being used to target teens, including the gathering of data for behavioral profiling.  Groups have already asked the FTC and Congress to address this problem.
Responsible marketers should support new safeguards that respect teen privacy. There are also a variety of consumer protection issues connected to online advertising that need to be addressed. We expect this issue will be fought out at the state, federal and international level. My CDD will be continuing its work bringing unfair marketing practices targeting adolescents before the FTC and other regulators.
Technology Policy Institute Spins the Privacy Debate in D.C.–Group funded by Some of the Biggest Data Collection Companies
Today, the Technology Policy Institute (TPI) is holding a Hill forum on privacy and the Internet. The group’s announcement for the event states that “More privacy, however, would mean less information, less valuable advertising, and thus fewer resources available for producing new low-priced services. It is this tradeoff that Congress needs to take into account as it considers new privacy legislation.”
What an absurd, reductionistic, and intellectually-dishonest claim. First, this group is funded by some of the largest companies engaged in behavioral data collection and also fighting meaningful privacy policies.  That includes Google and Time Warner. TPI’s other funders involved in some form of data collection and targeted interactive marketing include AT&T, Cisco, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and Verizon. Rep. Cliff Stearns, the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on the Communications, Technology, and the Internet is speaking at the event: that committee is currently drafting privacy legislation to protect consumers. Panel speakers include TPI supporters Google and Comcast. The lone privacy group on the panel, CDT, is funded by Google and others. One academic on the panel also works for a high-tech consulting company. The other panel academic has done fine work on social networks and privacy.
What makes TPI’s posturing absurd, beyond its funding conflicts, is the current economic crisis. Consumer privacy laws are required to ensure that our financial, health and other personal transactions online are conducted in a responsible manner. Anyone–or group–who believes that we can’t have both privacy and a robust online marketplace is out of touch.
IAB Works to Undermine Obama Consumer Protection Plan [On its Exec. Board includes Google, Time Warner, Disney, NYT, CBS, WPP]
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) signed a July 20, 2009 letter sent to Rep. Barney Frank of the House Committee on Financial Services raising questions–and really attempting to undermine–the Obama Administration’s proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Others signing the letter included the Business Roundtable, Consumers Bankers Association, Consumer Data Industry Association, Financial Services Roundtable, the Real Estate Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The IAB wasn’t the only ad lobby group signing the letter; so did the 4A’s and the DMA. My colleagues in the consumer community view the letter as an attempt to derail the bill [the letter, which asks for a delay on the bill, says that “there will be significant dangerous, unintended consequences if the legislation is enacted in its current form.”]
Why would the IAB be concerned about the creation of a new powerful consumer financial watchdog? It’s because their members work with companies engaged in digitally-related financial products–including mortgages, loans, credit cards, and so-called lead generation services. The IAB benefits from the hundreds of millions spent year year on interactive ads for financially-related services (Among the top 15 digital advertisers in 2008 were Scottrade, Tree.com, TD Ameritrade Holding Co, Bank of America, FMR Corp, Experian, etc.). The IAB is clearly afraid of having an agency that would be empowered to investigate how online marketers sell and promote a wide range of financial products online.
We do wonder whether IAB board members that support the Obama Administration’s proposal (which is widely backed by consumer groups) understand the implications of the position it has taken. Personally, I believe the creation of the new agency is critically important. We must ensure that American consumers are never again victims when buying financial products. Given that most of us will be learning about and purchasing financial services online, the proposed new agency will have to address how a number of IAB’s members engage in digitally-delivered financial services.
Progress & Freedom Foundation Comes to Aid of its Data-Collecting Backers (Using a `save the newspapers’ as a ploy to permit violations of consumer privacy protection!)
This report from Internetnews.com on the Progress and Freedom Foundation’s “Congressional” briefing illustrates how desperate some online marketers are that a growing number of bi-partisan congressional leaders want to protect consumer privacy. So it’s not surprising that some groups that are actually financially supported by the biggest online marketing data collectors in the world would hold a Hill event to help out the friends who pay their bills.
It should have been noted in Ken Corbin’s that Google, Microsoft, Time Warner (AOL), News Corp. (MySpace) financially back the Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF). Other behavioral data targeting `want to be’s’ who monopolize U.S. online and other platforms are also backers: AT&T, Comcast, NBC, Disney/ABC, Viacom/MTV/Nick, etc. For a list, see here.
PFF and some of its allies deliberately distort the critique of consumer and privacy groups. We are not opposed to online marketing and also understand and support its revenue role for online publishing. But many of us do oppose as unfair to consumers a stealth-like data collection, profiling and ubiquitous tracking system that targets people online. One would suppose that as a sort of quasi-libertarian organization, PFF would support individual rights. But given all the financial support PFF gets from the major online data collectors, how the group addresses the consumer privacy issue must be viewed under the `special interests pays the bills’ lens.
PFF and its allies are playing the ‘save the newspaper’ card in their desperate attempt to undermine the call for lawmakers to protect consumer privacy. Newspapers and online publishers should be in the forefront of supporting reader/user privacy; it enhances, not conflicts, with the First Amendment in the digital era. Finally, PFF’s positions on media issues over the years has actually contributed to the present crisis where journalism is on the endangered species list. This is a group that has worked to dismantle the FCC, eliminate rules designed to foster diverse media ownership, and undermine network neutrality.
PS: The article quotes from Prof. Howard Beales of George Washington University (and a fCV,ormer Bush FTC official with oversight on privacy). Prof. Beales was on the PFF panel. Prof. Beales, according to his CV has served as a consultant to AOL and others (including Primerica and the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America). Time Warner, which owns AOL, is a PFF financial backer. All this should have been noted in the press coverage.
Online Consumers Require Real Privacy Safeguards, Not the Digital Fox [AAAA, ANA, BBB, DMA & IAB] in Charge of the Data Hen House
The self-regulatory proposals released today [2 July 2009] by five marketing industry trade and lobby groups are way too little and far too late. This move by the online ad industry is an attempt, of course, to quell the growing bi-partisan calls in Congress to enact meaningful digital privacy and consumer protection laws. It’s also designed to assuage a reawakened Federal Trade Commission–whose new chair, Jon Leibowitz, recently appointed one the country’s most distinguished consumer advocates and legal scholars to direct its Bureau of Consumer Protection (David Vladeck). The principles are inadequate, even beyond their self-regulatory approach that condones, in effect, the “corporate fox guarding the digital data henhouse.†Effective government regulation is required to protect consumers. We should have learned a painful lesson by now with the failure of the financial industry to oversee itself. The reckless activities of the financial sector—made possible by a deregulatory, hands-off government policy–directly led to the current financial catastrophe. As more of our transactions and daily activities are conducted online, including those involving financial and health issues–through PCs, mobile phones, social networks, and the like–it is critical that the first principle be to ensure the basic protection of consumer privacy. Self-dealing “principles†concocted by online marketers simply won’t provide the level of protection consumers really require.
The industry appears to have embraced a definition of behavioral targeting and profiling that is at odds with how the practice actually works. Before any data is collected from consumers, they need to be candidly informed about the process–such as the creation and evolution of their profile; how tracking and data gathering occurs site to site; what data can be added to their profile from outside databases; the role that data targeting plays on so-called first-party websites, etc. In addition, the highest possible consumer safeguards are necessary when financial and health data are involved. Under the loosey-goosey trade industry principles, however, only “certain health and financial data†are to be treated as a “sensitive†category. This would permit widespread data collection involving personal information regarding our health and financial concerns. The new principles, moreover, fail to protect the privacy of teenagers; nor do they seriously address children’s privacy. (I was one of the two people that led the campaign to enact the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act).
The failure to develop adequate safeguards for sensitive consumer information illustrates, I believe, the inability of the ad marketing groups to seriously address online privacy. The so-called “notice and choice†approach embraced by the industry has failed. More links to better-written privacy statements don’t address the central problem: the collection of more and more user data for profiling and targeting purposes. There needs to be quick Congressional action placing limits on the collection, use and retention of consumer data; opt-in control over profile information; and the creation of a meaningful sensitive data category. Consumer and privacy groups intend to work with Congress to ensure that individuals don’t face additional losses due to unfair online marketing practices.
[press statement by the Center for Digital Democracy]