Category: Google

Bravo to Google for Supporting M-Lab. But How About a Tool That Also Exposes All Data Collection?

I applaud Google for supporting an academic initiative announced today that provides tools and other services to users so they can measure and test their broadband connection. These tools and effort will permit users to have greater insight into how their ISPs are shaping network traffic–it’s part of the important campaign to ensure network neutrality.  Google has been a leader in this area, and we commend them.

But Google should now use its resources to create a public tool for privacy, so that everyone can be informed about what kind of data is being collected from them–and who is collecting it.  That would mean identifying, for example, what Google collects for itself, for DoubleClick, YouTube, Feedburner and other services.  Of course, the tool would help consumers/citizens know about all data collection, not just via Google.  Beyond a new tool, Google should also support the passage of national privacy protection laws.  Google needs to also be a serious policy leader on privacy.   An open and unfettered connection is just one of the conditions global users require to ensure a democratic online medium.  So is meaningful privacy.

Is the White House Collecting Data on the Public via YouTube?

According to CNET, the White House has again changed its privacy policy regarding persistent cookies and online videos.  Now all video providers, it appears–not just YouTube–has received a formal exemption of the federal prohibition on persistent cookies.

But beyond the cookie issue–which shouldn’t be placed at all when the public watches a government video–are questions regarding statistical and tracking data.  Is Google/YouTube providing the White House with any analytics and user information [such as through YouTube Insight]?  For example, YouTube allows “brand channels” to know “the gender and age” of viewers; “identify the ways…users find your videos;” “Hot spots viewing information, which identifies viewing trends  for each moment in a video.” YouTube also permits brand channel video providers to track users via a “one 1px by 1px third-party tracking tag, which lets the channel owners use view-through tracking to better understand a user’s behavior after the user leaves the channel page.”

We assume the White House will answer such questions (such as whether they receive brand channel-like services), respond favorably to the FOIA request from Chris Soghoian, and ensure that the site reflects the highest possible consumer privacy standards.

Google’s “Biometric” Research: Ads on YouTube Give “Halo Effect” to Brands

Google suited up people with special biometric monitoring equipment to test how well YouTube ads affect them.  According to New Media Age [excerpt]: “YouTube users are 1.5 times more attentive and engaged in advertising than TV viewers, according to research conducted in partnership with General Motors Europe, Motorola, media agency MindShare and the Online Testing Exchange (OTX).  The research used eye tracking and biometric data to reveal the brand impact of advertising on YouTube. It found recall and attribution for an ad viewed was up to 14% higher than watching the same ad on TV. Viewing a silent ad on YouTube in addition to a normal TV ad also improved ad recall and attribution.

Ads on YouTube can impact the perceptions of elusive audiences like young men and infrequent TV viewers. They also have a halo effect and increase brand perceptions such as innovative, cool, dynamic and unconventional.”

Google measured such metrics as heart rate, physical movement, respiration rate, and skin conductance.

NMA: Ads on YouTube have higher impact than on TV.  Danielle Long.  NMA. December 18, 2008 [sub. required]

Commercial Domestic Surveillance: The new White House Website, YouTube & Privacy

In a post for CNET yesterday, privacy expert Chris Soghoian revealed that President Obama’s White House “has quietly exempted YouTube from strict rules relating to the use of cookies on federal agency Web sites.”   Federal rules prohibit the use of what are called “persistent cookies,” that can track an online users activities and behavior.  Soghoian cites the new White House privacy policy that states, “A waiver has been issued by the White House Counsel’s office to allow for the use of this persistent cookie.”  Google’s YouTube received this exemption, notes the White House site, “to help maintain the integrity of video statistics.”

Now the White House has made a quick change, according to a post written today by Soghoian.  “Obama’s web team rolled out a technical fix that severely limits YouTube’s ability to track most visitors to the White House website,” he writes. “By late Thursday evening, each embedded YouTube video had been replaced with an image of a video player, which a user must click on before the real YouTube player will be loaded. The result of this change is that YouTube is now only able to use cookies to track users who click on the “play” button on an embedded YouTube video — the majority of people who scroll through a page without clicking play will not be tracked.”  But he also describes the new approach as a “band-aid. Those users who do click the play button will be secretly tracked as they navigate the White House website — and if those users have visited YouTube or any other Google run website in the past, the fact that they watched an Obama video will be added to the existing massive pile of data the company has compiled on each web surfer.”

But for those White House web site visitors who do click on the YouTube videos, they will likely become part of the data analysis which could be generated via Google’s YouTube Insight.  That’s a video analytics tool providing “detailed statistics” on video use.  One Google executive offered a commercial example of the tools’ features: “YouTube’s geographical insights could help marketers determine ad effectiveness and campaign optimization. For instance, he said, different versions of a movie trailer might perform better in different regions.”  Other YouTube analytical data available  includes a “demographics tab that displays view count information broken down by age group (such as ages 18-24), gender, or a combination of the two, to help you get a better understanding of the makeup of your YouTube audience. We show you general information about your viewers in anonymous and aggregate form, based on the birth date and gender information that users share with us when they create YouTube accounts.”  (Google says “individual users can’t be personally identified.”  But the company has embraced a narrow definition of what privacy protections users should expect, the so-called APEC standard).

Persistent cookies, explains U.S. Military Academy computer science professor Greg Conti, “can exist for many years…repeatedly identifying the user to the issuing web site…persistent cookies are specifically designed to uniquely identify users on return visits to web sites…In terms of anonymity, this is bad.  Advertisers have found innovative ways to exploit cookies to track users as they visit web sites that contain ads or other content.”  [source is Professor Conti’s terrific book, Googling Security:  How Much Does Google Know About You?  Addison-Wesley.  2009.  Page 73]

Of course, Google/YouTube’s cookie placed via a White House visit sets the stage for the company to further track and analyze citizens/ users.  Given YouTube’s ever-growing expansion as a commercial video advertising service, its ability to harness the White House data cookie will undoubtedly prove useful for the company.

The revised White House privacy policy does offer users a way to view the videos “without the use of persistent cookies” through the extra step of clicking the “link to download the video file… provided just below the video.” But we think opt-out is the incorrect approach.

The Obama White House should set the standard for protecting privacy in the digital era.  They should maintain the prohibition on persistent tracking cookies.  Nor should they permit any commercial operator, including Google’s YouTube, to engage in federally-sanctioned data collection.  We know the new Obama Administration has many important issues to address.  But they also need to develop a sophisticated critique of the online advertising industry, ensuring privacy and consumer protection.  The Obama Administration should be able to articulate a balanced perspective– that can take advantage and foster the democratic potential of digital media, while also meaningfully addressing the harms.

Google’s Mobile Targeting: Encourage More Searches, Location Targeting

Not enough is known about Google’s mobile plans.  Here’s an excerpt from New Media Age [UK] magazine from May 2008:

“Google is tweaking its mobile offering to encourage people to perform more searches. It has also increased the options available to advertisers by launching mobile image ads. These are keyword-targeted, priced on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, and must link to a mobile web page. Google will only show one image ad per page, and lets publishers choose to show text ads, image ads or a mix.

Christian Hernandez Gallardo, head of distribution partnerships for Google, says there’s increased demand from publishers…He expects that advertising will be a key component to raising awareness and says many big content providers are already reaping the benefits of this approach. “They’re buying a lot of keywords and ads on Google to drive traffic.”

Another key ingredient for Google is location, which could lead to a further inventory opportunity on which advertisers could bid for prime position. “If you search for ‘pizza London’, we’ll capture that as your location and use it as a weight to your searches,” Gallardo says.”

source:  Search Pattern.  Peggy Anne Salz.  NMA Magazine.  May 8, 2008

Google’s Android: Expanding Mobile Marketing and Data Collection

Just for the record, via New Media Age [excerpt]:

“Google’s ambitions in the mobile space go beyond most other internet companies…Google recognises the value of its ad-funded proposition may outweigh maintaining full ownership of the platform, so it’s handing over the keys to developers in order to maximise creativity and scope of applications while maintaining control over the earning potential of mobile advertising….

Google says it will give 70% of Android revenues to the developer and the remainder, less billing settlement fees, to the service provider — a fantastic prospect for many. But others question the need for all of Google’s own web applications to come preloaded on Android, raising concerns about an attempt to lock in the user rather than directing them to the Android Market store. Google denies this, saying it has created a platform to encourage consumers and developers to embrace the wider internet.”

source:  nma mobile: Google Android. Andrew Darling.  NMA magazine. 04.12.08 [sub required]

Google Supports Greater “Micro-targeting” of Ads on its Content Network

Google is working with online ad company Tumri to facilitate greater ad targeting.  According to Behavioral Insider [excerpt]:
“What we’re doing with Google is that for the first time they’re opening up the interface on their contextual network. So as an ad is being served they pass us keyword information and we adjust the ad subcomponents in real time, based on the context of the page the reader is looking at on a keyword level. Examining the contextual information and marrying that with past search and behavioral patterns, elevates the level of targeting.

… With Tumri, Google is opening their interface and architecture to allow Tumri to access keywords for pages. When an ad is served, the Google content network will pass through Tumri with recommendation of content, and Tumri will refine that further.”

In Tumri’s January 6, 2009 release announcing the Google deal, it noted that:  “Tumri’s participation in context-aware ads on the Google content network benefits advertisers by allowing Google to feed its contextual page information about web page content into Tumri’s dynamic ad generation engine. Tumri’s AdPod seamlessly generates highly-targeted marketing messages in real time through its dynamic, intelligent ad optimization and presentation layer based upon the advanced contextual information from Google…

The Tumri solution – the AdPod – enables advertisers to craft highly targeted marketing messages to consumers on-the-fly. The Tumri platform seamlessly deconstructs ad creatives into core sub-components, then enables advertisers to adjust each sub-component by targeting parameters or optimize by performance metrics… Tumri’s patent-pending platform optimizes performance at a sub-ad component level and delivers unparalleled consumer insights through its proprietary reporting.”

Google, YouTube, and DoubleClick Cookies Placed on Users of YouTube’s new Congress Channels, Says Computer Scientist

Columbia U computer professor Steven M. Bellovin has an important post on the privacy issues raised by YouTube’s new House and Senate channels.  He writes [excerpt, our emphasis] that:

“I opened a fresh web browser, with no cookies stored, and went directly to the House site. Just from that page, I ended up with cookies from YouTube, Google, and DoubleClick, another Google subsidiary. Why should Google know which members of Congress I’m interested in? Do they plan to correlate political viewing preferences with, say, searches I do on guns, hybrid cars, religion, privacy, etc.?

The incoming executive branch has made the same mistake: President-Elect Obama’s videos on Change.gov are also hosted on (among others) YouTube. Nor does the privacy policy say anything at all about 3rd-party cookies.”

Video channels providing the public access to members of Congress and the new Administration should be in the forefront of privacy protection-and not serve as a data collection shill for any company.  Nor should one company be permitted to shape broadband video access to federal officials.

Google Lobbying: Why Congress Should Not Use the new YouTube Senate and House Video Hubs

Google is taking a lobbying tactic developed in part by CSPAN years ago–offer members of Congress a free service so they can be seen by the public.  That kind of electronic or digital campaign contribution helps insure that Congress will think twice about biting (or regulating) the video hand that feeds.  Google’s new YouTube Senate and House Hub channels raise a number of concerns and policy questions.

For example, what happens to the user data as people click on the Congressional YouTube channels?  Does Google get to collect, analyze and use such data for its growing political online advertising business?  Beyond privacy, should Congress be endorsing a private for-profit venture as the principal access point voters and constituents need to use?  Does the use of YouTube create a potential conflict of interest for members of Congress who will need to regulate Google–on such things as competition (the DoJ recently described Google as a monopoly); privacy, consumer protection, etc (remember, Google sells all kinds of ads for mortgages, credit cards, junk food, health remedies, etc.).

It’s not a coincidence perhaps that Google’s YouTube congressional channel announcement comes at the same time the company is expanding its online ad business for politics.  As Ad Age reports this week,“The end of an election season usually means dismantling the campaign apparatus until the next cycle. But not at Google; not this year…Rather than packing it all away until 2010, it’s hoping to build a year-round political-advertising business one House seat and hot-button issue at a time.  “There are 500,000 elected officials in the U.S. With the advances we’ve made in geo-targeting, we think this will be part of every political campaign in the country, as well as issue campaigns,” said Peter Greenberger, Google’s director of election and issue advocacy…Google doesn’t yet offer targeting based on congressional districts, but with ZIP code and city targeting, politicians and advocacy groups can cobble together a reasonable approximation of a congressional district.”

The in-coming Obama Administration has had the support of Google’s CEO, and company officials have played a role in the transition.  But the new administration should develop a digital outreach approach to the public which is public–and non-commercial–in nature.  It shouldn’t show any favoritism, even if Google is the leading search and video service.  It should be a change.org--not a government via dot com.

see: “Election  is Over, but Google Still Chasing Political Spending.”  Michael Learmonth.  Advertising Age.  January 12, 2009.

Google Helps Sell Pizza for Papa John’s, Pizza Hut, and Domino’s

Google does many important things.  But it’s an ad company, including helping these three companies build their direct selling online.  Here’s an excerpt from the trade publication QSR:

“We’ve been working with the big three pizza companies over the last three to four years to develop online ordering, and it has become a significant sales engine for them,” says Sam Sebastian, director of local and business-to-business markets at search engine giant Google. “It’s such a competitive space.”

Online ordering typically accounts for anywhere from five to 20 percent of a national pizza chain’s business, Sebastian says. To entice customers to use their service over that of the competition, chains are turning to online search advertising, banner and click-through ads placed on Web sites, and social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace.

So far, online search advertising, whereby a company buys ad space that will appear when a user types a keyword or phrase (“New York City pizza”, for example) into a search engine, has made up the largest portion of media spending online.

…”It’s a direct connection, direct response,” Sebastian says….

Web sites across Google’s content network partner with the company to syndicate advertisements, and Google works with individual web sites and companies to broker advertising.

“If I know my customers are on … any web site where in the content there is a discussion about pizza, I can place my advertising there so it’s available contextually,” Sebastian says.

Papa John’s recently launched its first foray into advertising on the Google Content Network with a one-day blitz of display ads on various sites including MySpace, and restaurant and menu guide site MenuPages.com.

The flash display ads promoted an offer of one free medium cheese pizza with any online pizza purchase for customers who signed up to receive e-mail offers…