Category: interactive marketing

Microsoft pitches interactive ad and branding “integrated campaigns… that don’t necessarily feel like campaigns”

Microsoft is holding its annual meeting with advertisers, to show off what it can do. We will have more to say about it, but for now ponder this from Robbie Bach, Microsoft’s President, Entertainment and Devices Division:

“We think there are screens and areas beyond the browser for people to reach. We think you can reach them, whether it’s on a PC, on a TV, or on mobile devices. We think there are integrated campaigns that can be built, that don’t necessarily feel like campaigns, and that don’t necessarily feel like advertising, in a world in which people want to be entertained.”

The Shopping Cart Tells You What To Buy–and knows if you did!

Just when consumers tighten their wallets and purses, a new system emerges that will use data collected from us to target us while we shop in grocery stores. Here’s an excerpt from MediaCart’s pitch to advertisers:
“With MediaCart, consumer product brand marketers can deliver full-motion video advertising to shoppers as they approach various product locations in the store – whether walking down an aisle, approaching an end cap or standing at the checkout.

Direct One-to-One Ad Targeting. By collecting shoppers’ preferences through loyalty card information, prior shopping history, geographic locations and shopping times, advertisers are able to channel valuable communications to individual shoppers and deliver a powerful visual message right at the point of purchase.

Tracking Your Advertising Investment. The MediaCart® system tracks each cart’s location, dwell time, and shoppers’ purchases. This information will give valuable feedback on shoppers’ responses to alternative ads, offers, displays or message frequency. Advertisers are able to measure the true impact, quickly determine what is most effective, and adjust advertising messages and promotional offers as quickly as sending an email.”

Microsoft, by the way, is working with them. Be sure to see the picture of the cart on the press release.

Google Health and other Medical Information Portability Products: Beware of Data Tracking, Interactive Marketing & Privacy Concerns

Consumers should have immediate access to their health records, a mouseclick and password away. But should the price we pay be tied to allowing health data storage providers collect information about our medical concerns and interests, so they can sell ads to pharmaceutical and health-related companies? We think there are some areas, such as health, where online advertising should not tread. Storage and access should not be linked to targeted personalized digital marketing. Google is in the process of building its health advertising business. In the U.K. and the U.S., for example, they are hiring executives to operate what it calls its “Consumer Products and Health Care marketplace.” Here’s an excerpt from the employment announcement:

“The role: Industry Manager, Consumer Products and Health Care – London

As a Google Consumer Products and Health Care Industry Manager, you’ll be working with those who provide advertising solutions for companies that produce and sell consumables and health care products/services. This job is a mix of finding and managing new and existing business customer relationships. Working closely with the Industry Head to develop Google’s Consumer Products and Health Care marketplace, you’ll combine a passion for the industry with strong presentation and communication skills. You’ll own the relationships with clients and agencies, targeting, educating and developing new clients to grow the business in unpenetrated territory. This means you have excellent client-servicing and relationship skills along with the entrepreneurial drive to approach and persuade new and existing customers with large, multi-faceted propositions.

Responsibilities:

  • Target new customers and develop strong relationships with clients and marketing services agencies.
  • Analyse data, trends and client performance, develop solid strategic sales plans, and prepare and conduct strategic pitches and sales presentations.
  • Collaborate and consult with major customers with the goal of extending relationships, increasing your client and agency base and optimising their advertising expenditures.
  • Develop case studies of successful campaigns in order to share insights with customers and to serve as an evangelist at targeted events and conferences.
  • Champion new product releases, internally and externally…”

There are serious questions which must be addressed about the implications not only to our health privacy, but the impact on our behaviors from medical-related interactive marketing. It’s an area we will return to soon.

Bravo to Reps. Markey & Barton for Raising Alarm on Charter Communication’s ISP eavesdropping plans

Today, Rep. Ed Markey and Rep. Joe Barton sent a letter to the CEO of Charter Cable. They have acted quickly to help protect the privacy of Internet users and, in this case, Charter’s customers.  Preventing ISPs from monitoring our online behaviors is important to fight for.  More will be coming.

Yahoo/WPP Alliance=More Data Collection via Targeting and Privacy Concerns

Regulators will need to examine the privacy implications of the new Yahoo and WPP alliance. When the display ad leader–Yahoo--links up with the global ad agency holding company powerhouse–WPP--data collection issues must come to the fore. Under the deal, explains Reuters, “WPP advertising agencies would, through its 24/7 Real Media arm, develop a proprietary advertising media trading platform that takes advantage of Yahoo’s Right Media exchange.” WPP’s “brands” include Ogilvy, Cheskin, Dentsu Y&R and many, many others.

WPP’s 24/7 says the following about its “comprehensive” targeting:

“Whoever you want to reach, we have targeting down to a science.

  • Behavioural. We can serve ads based on your customer’s browsing behaviour.
  • Demographic. We can target campaigns based on a number of demographic criteria such as race, age, income, sex, employment, education, and home ownership.
  • Technographic. We can target based on browser, browser version, bandwith or operating system.
  • Retargeting. We can flag visitors to a site based on what they did on their last visit, and then “retarget them” when they return.
  • Geo-dem. We can overlay geographic data such as country, state or zip code with demographic information.
  • Daypart. You can tell us what hour of the day or day of the week that you’d like an ad to be viewed.
  • Content. You can choose specific sites, sections or positions on a page for ad placement.
  • Keyword/search. We can serve ads based on specific words that are entered into a search engine by your customer.
  • Custom. We can develop a comprehensive targeting strategy that is customised for whatever your marketing goal may be.”

Mind over our data: It was 24/7 that just announced it was also using “psychographic targeting through a partnership with Mindset Media…[that] will enable brand advertisers to target consumers with specific personality traits that drive buyer behavior and brand affinity across a broad range of consumer goods and services.”

From MediaPost’s coverage (excerpt):  “ The multi-year deal will pair Yahoo’s Right Media ad exchange with the targeting prowess of WPP’s 24/7 Real Media, giving WPP agencies a more effective system for buying mass quantities of display inventory worldwide… WPP’s GroupM…will be able to access the platform directly through 24/7 Real Media and plug in various targeting options-… Ryan Jamboretz, director of corporate development at GroupM…said “[T]his only improves the product by allowing us to do things like behavioral and retargeting on a larger scale.”

source:  Yahoo, WPP Partner to Buy, Sell Rich Media More Effectively.   Tameka Kee.  Online Media Daily. May 15,2008.

Charter Cable to Spy on its Broadband Users to Serve Targeted Ads via NebuAd

We have long pointed out that deep-packed inspection can be used by ISPs to both eavesdrop on users and undermine the neutrality of the Internet. Via Wired and other sources we learn that “Charter Communications, one of the nation’s largest ISPs, plans to begin eavesdropping on the web surfing of its customers, in order to help web advertisers deliver targeted ads. In letters being sent to some of its 2.7 million high-speed internet customers, Charter is billing its new web tracking program as an “enhancement” for customers’ web surfing experience. The letters were first reported by a BroadbandReports.com user on Sunday. The pilot program is set to begin next month.”Charter, using language straight out of Orwell’s 1984, claims it’s offering an “enhanced” service. Demonstrating its monopoly clout, Charter is imposing this service on an opt-out basis. Charter will be using, notes Wired, NebuAd. Here’s what NebuAd says it does (our emphasis): “NebuAd delivers the most actionable consumer intelligence by extending its reach dynamically to encompass the ever-growing network of sites that consumers visit. NebuAd combines this web-wide view of pages navigated, searches performed, ads clicked, etc., with the industry’s most accurate targeting capabilities, matching consumer interests across more than 1,000 categories…The result is behavioral advertising on a vast scale with a level of relevance that drives significantly improved response and engagement rates across all categories of advertisements.”

Here’s what NebuAd told Behavioral Insider magazine last November (excerpt, our emphasis): “The kind of data we do aggregate includes Web search terms, page views, page and ad clicks, time spent on specific sites, zip code, browser info and connection speed…within this vast universe of information we create a map of interest categories, beginning with the widest definitions, auto, finance, education, what have you. But within those we can provide far greater granularity. So if you’re talking about auto, we can drill down into particular interest segments, say SUVs, luxury cars, minivans, and then even to particular brands or models. Within the interest category of travel, we can identify consumers interested in learning about Martinique, the south of France or Las Vegas.”…“ISPs have been a neglected aspect of online’s evolution over the past several years. But the fact is the depth of aggregated data they have to offer, anonymous data, is an untapped source of incredible power… The conventional approach to behavioral targeting has been to place cookies on specific Web sites or pages. We’ve gone about it in a very different way. We place an appliance in the ISP itself. Therefore we’re able to get a 360-degree, multidimensional view over a long period of time of all the pages users visit. So what we’re really talking about for the first time is a truly user-focused, though still anonymous, targeting, taking the totality of anonymous behaviors rather than just a subset of sites on a network.” Here’s what NebuAd said in a November 2007 release: “NebuAd’s rich insight into consumer interests surpasses any other behavioral targeting solution and enables NebuAd to deliver precisely targeted ads that drive substantially increased value per impression…NebuAd’s deep insight into anonymous consumer commercial interests across the Internet, combined with its ability to micro-target the most relevant ad placements, brings a new level of value for advertisers, publishers and ISPs:..ISPs, who have up to now facilitated but barely participated in online advertising opportunities, can open new revenue streams that complement advertiser and publisher objectives to maximize revenue and generate higher revenue-per-subscriber.”

Both the FTC and FCC must investigate Charter’s plan (and other ISP’s permit snopping schemes. Congress needs to hold oversight hearings as well). ISPs should not be in the business of letting online marketers have access to the rich informational personal data streams of their customers. Broadband providers such as Charter get paid handsomely already by their subscribers for connectivity (and also benefit from their monopoly status to secure lucrative `bundle’ packages from consumers). Charter, which has a checkered financial history, should not be allowed to weaken the privacy rights of U.S. consumers. Paul Allen, Charter’s chairman and the co-founder of Microsoft, should do better than this.

Google’s YouTube now offers advertisers ability to do “Buzz Targeting”

excerpt from YouTube May 13, 2008 press release: “As part of our continued efforts to experiment with new ways to provide value to YouTube advertisers, today we’re announcing one such new product: buzz targeting…YouTube’s …algorithm…determines which YouTube partner videos are quickly becoming popular on the site and about to go viral. The algorithm looks at several factors, such as acceleration of views, favorites, and ratings activity, and then allows advertisers to target their ads specifically to these videos on YouTube.

“Every advertiser hopes that their campaign will to be the next big viral hit online, and they come to YouTube to reach the millions of video viewers who are on the site everyday,” said Rajaraman [Shiva Rajaraman, YouTube Product Manager]. “Buzz targeting lets them do both at the same time. They associate their brand with the hottest content of the day, while reaching the most engaged users in our community.”

and from Online Media Daily: “YouTube buzz targeting works on an algorithm that looks at a number of viewer activities, including how many times a video is chosen as a favorite, how favorably it’s rated, and how quickly it picks up views, to determine which clips are about to “go viral.” Advertisers can capitalize on the momentum by choosing to run overlay ads on these videos, with the possibility of combining buzz targeting with other options like time of day, gender and category targeting.”

source: Advertisers Get Buzzed On YouTube With New Targeting Capability. Tameka Kee. Mediapost. May 14 2008

BT Watch: Tell me, is it the cookie or You that online marketers are “packaging” for targeting

How long can they get away with the “it’s anonymous” cover story as they identify, analyze, track and target our online interests and behaviors? Excerpt from Media magazine: “behavioral segmentation refers to a media seller’s packaging of groups of cookies who have visited sites (other than the client’s own) that suggest a need or receptivity for the client’s category of product. For example, all cookies that have visited automotive-related sites over the last 60 days may be packaged as a segment of people likely to be in the market for a new car…Predictive targeting uses more than behavior data…It uses mathematical algorithms to predict what a user will most likely interact with, and then learns and is adjusted based on the actual results...It is based on cataloging what a user has done in the past.”

source: Taking Measure: Savor the Flavor. John Nardone. May 2008

Google’s Mobile Plans include Cookies for Ad Targeting

At last week’s FTC hearing on mobile marketing, we pressed several industry representatives to confirm that the data tracking, profiling and targeting system we now have online is being migrated to mobile. That’s what eventually we were able to get at least one mobile marketing panelist to confirm.

Meanwhile, we have learned that Google has made presentations to advertisers about its mobile marketing capabilities. It appears that mobile cookies are part of their targeting marketing plan. Google told advertisers that “Google provides mobile conversion tracking on phones that support cookies. Google can measure clicks, impressions and conversions for all campaigns.”

Google needs to explain to the public how its cookies and mobile ad tracking and targeting will work, including what safeguards it plans. By the way, we also think it’s interesting to place Google mobile in the context of its DoubleClick subsidiary. DoubleClick mobile “is an ad delivery system for mobile websites that delivers dynamic, interactive ads to mobile web pages based on specific criteria as determined by you. It supports a wide range of devices and boasts a full management and reporting suite. Now publishers can deploy mobile advertising with the same confidence and control as online display ads…Report on impressions, clicks, jump pages and third-party metrics…Full reporting for all dynamically displayed ads.”

Google’s Android does, it turns out, dream of electric ads via cookies.

Eyebaster Tells the SEC about its business “to track Internet users and their online behavior” for profiling

Eyeblaster is a rich media online advertising technology company which filed a S-1 with the SEC last March (for an initial public offering). Here’s the section on privacy:

“Privacy concerns could lead to legislative and other limitations on our ability to collect usage data from Internet users, including limitations on our use of cookie or conversion tag technology and user profiling, which is crucial to our ability to provide our solutions and services to our customers.

Our ability to conduct targeted advertising campaigns and compile data that we use to formulate campaign strategies for our customers depends on the use of “cookies” and “conversion tags” to track Internet users and their online behavior, which allows us to build anonymous user profiles and measure an advertising campaign’s effectiveness. A cookie is a small file of information stored on a user’s computer that allows us to recognize that user’s browser when we serve advertisements. A conversion tag functions similarly to a banner advertisement, except that the conversion tag is not visible. Our conversion tags may be placed on specific pages of clients of our customers’ or prospective customers’ websites. Government authorities inside the United States concerned with the privacy of Internet users have suggested limiting or eliminating the use of cookies, conversion tags or user profiling. Bills aimed at regulating the collection and use of personal data from Internet users are currently pending in U.S. Congress and many state legislatures. Attempts to regulate spyware may be drafted in such a way as to include technology like cookies and conversion tags in the definition of spyware, thereby creating restrictions that could reduce our ability to use them. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce have conducted hearings regarding user profiling, the collection of non-personally identifiable information and online privacy.

Our foreign operations may also be adversely affected by regulatory action outside the United States. For example, the European Union has adopted a directive addressing data privacy that limits the collection, disclosure and use of information regarding European Internet users. In addition, the European Union has enacted an electronic communications directive that imposes certain restrictions on the use of cookies and conversion tags and also places restrictions on the sending of unsolicited communications. Each European Union member country was required to enact legislation to comply with the provisions of the electronic communications directive by October 31, 2003 (though not all have done so). Germany has also enacted additional laws limiting the use of user profiling, and other countries, both in and out of the European Union, may impose similar limitations…

If our ability to use cookies or conversion tags or to build user profiles were substantially restricted due to the foregoing, or for any other reason, we would have to generate and use other technology or methods that allow the gathering of user profile data in order to provide our services to our customers. This change in technology or methods could require significant reengineering time and resources, and may not be complete in time to avoid negative consequences to our business. In addition, alternative technology or methods might not be available on commercially reasonable terms, if at all. If the use of cookies and conversion tags are prohibited and we are not able to efficiently and cost effectively create new technology, our business, financial condition and results of operations would be materially adversely affected.”