Category: Brandwashing

IAB: Worried that the Feds Will Do the Right Thing

Here’s a brief update on IAB. They are, notes ClickZ’s Kate Kaye, “…in the process of creating a Public Policy Council, to be comprised of Chief Public Policy Officers, General Counsels and IAB members. Tacoda Chairman Dave Morgan is heading up that operation, according to the IAB. Legislation and regulatory issues will have an enormous impact” on the interactive ad industry, said Rothenberg, noting, “We should be concerned, but we shouldn’t be crazy scared.”

Given that IAB’s new president Randall Rotherberg used to be a journalist (covering advertising for the New York Times and Ad Age), one would hope that he would be in the forefront of having his industry face up to facts. The basic business model is a threat to privacy and more. It’s gone beyond the time for “public policy councils” run by the industry’s spinmeisters. What’s needed is an honest admission of the problem, and support for a federal policy where consumers opt-in to all the techniques (after they are fully informed). That’s right. You need to get permission from individuals before you engage in behavioral targeting, retargeting, immersive rich media, etc. We imagine most people will consent. But it should be up to each person-not Ad Networks, IAB members, etc.

PS: Mr. Rothenberg: Don’t hide behind the press! We see that the IAB president quoted saying “The Interactive media industry is committed to striking the right balance between consumer protection and a consumer’s free online access to information and entertainment.” That’s not the real issue. No one is saying there shouldn’t be interactive advertising–or even the kind of personalized interactive practices the industry has embraced (with some notable exceptions). We understand the role which advertising plays to support the media. What we are saying is there have to be safeguards. In fact, ironically, I believe interactive ad practices done in the current stealth manner will help to undermine public confidence in the news media. The growing debate over online advertising is primarily about giving the public real information and control.

New Threats to Privacy: Interactive Ad Bureau (IAB) Hires D.C. Lobbyist

The interactive ad lobby–that includes most publishers of major newspapers, magazines and online outlets–is worried that consumer advocates might persuade Congress or the FTC to actually do something to protect digital privacy. Groups such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) are alarmed that if consumers can actually control their data, the ability of digital marketers to collect, profile, track and target us will be threatened. So the IAB–which has a old and new media who’s who on its board–has brought in some political help. According to Online Media Daily:

“AIMING TO INCREASE ITS SWAY over government, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has opened a Washington, D.C. office and hired its first in-house lobbyist, Mike Zaneis…he and lobbyists from the Venable law firm have been talking with Congressional staffers on the IAB’s behalf. “We’ve been educating them on how the Internet works, and what the interactive advertising industry actually is and how it operates,” said Zaneis, who previously served as executive director of technology and e-commerce at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”

Presumably, the IAB will be working alongside DC lobbyists for Google, Yahoo!, Time Warner and the like to ensure that our digital media platforms provide a direct connection to Madison Avenue’s data warehouses. But they should be ashamed for creating a business model where direct access to our data across countless online media properties needs to be defended by special interest lobbying tactics.

PS: We just saw the ClickZ story. It’s very telling what the new IAB DC lobbyist said:
“…Zaneis says his initial plan of is, “Putting together a public policy council, developing positions on key issues, and leveraging the contacts that I have on the Hill, and in the FTC and other places. And then it’s a take no prisoners attitude to advocate for our members.”

Newsflash: Yahoo! Now Partnering with AT&T

No sooner than we had written the previous post, we saw this in today’s Advertising Age. At yesterday’s presentation before advertisers, CEO Terry Semel announced that Yahoo! “is working with AT&T domestically on its IPTV program.” Perhaps that helps explain our previous post on a Yahoo! VP dismissing network neutrality concerns.

Semel appeared at what Yahoo! called its “infront,” a online advertising version of the well-known bazaar where television time for the next season is first sold. We think such “infronts” are just another indication of how much of the business model for the new media is based on the dynamics girding television. It will be all about brandwashing on behalf of the largest global advertisers, but propelled by sales of each of us on a “one to one” basis.
Sources: paidcontent.org

“Yahoo Woos TV Media Buyers at its `Infront.” Claire Atkinson and Abbey Klaassen. Advertising Age. Feb. 14, 2007. subscription required.

Cut the Fat and Corporate Tie-ins PBS! Program on Obesity Funded by GlaxoSmithKline, Maker of Drug for “Overweight Adults”

“Fat: What No One is Telling You” appears on PBS stations April 11th. We note that funding comes in part from GlaxoSmithKline. The drug giant just happens to have a recently approved for over-the-counter drug on the market–under the brand name Alli â„¢ –that is for “use by overweight adults along with a reduced calorie, low-fat diet.” A PBS health-related campaign was launched Feb. 14. PBS program executives need to `cut the fat’ out of their sloppy review of what’s appropriate for underwriting. Programs on PBS should be free of connections to sponsors who have a vested interest in an issue. PBS should “take one step” [that’s the name of a related health public education campaign they’re running] and clean up its underwriting practices.

Example today of NY Times Failure to Disclose IAB Connection

Just a few days after we blogged a piece on the conflicts of interests raised when media outlets uncritically report on interactive marketing–while failing to acknowledge their own official corporate role promoting the field–we have a good example. Today, in a New York Times story about online video marketing, the reporter quotes the head of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The story failed to acknowledge that the New York Times Co. is on the IAB board as well as its executive committee. Here is a link to the IAB board. See here for the IAB mission. I believe that media outlets serving on the IAB board have to not only acknowledge their membership when they report on the industry, but also commission a steady series of stories that will look at interactive marketing and their own corporate role with a critical perspective. The Times Co., btw, is also a member of the Advertising Research Foundation.
See: “Forgive Me Viewer, for I Have Confessed in a Banner Ad.” New York Times. Feb. 10, 2007.

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Conflict of Interest: Why NY Times, Wash Post, USAToday, CNN, NBC & More Should Acknowledge Role Promoting Threats to Privacy and other Interactive Marketing Problems

Interactive advertising and marketing are helping shape the transformation of the media, here in the U.S. and everywhere else. A infrastructure is being put in place, without the public’s consent, designed to better sell to us 24/7. It’s using some of the most powerful communications technologies ever created to do so. Among the key issues society should be debating right now include the need for privacy safeguards to protect our personal information online, and what kind of limits should be put in place to check the excesses of interactive marketing (think personalized ads flooding your PC, mobile and TV screens, propelled by a data profile of you created via artificial intelligence technologies, and designed to get you to feel or think in a way positive to the brand).

But critical commentary about interactive advertising is largely missing from the ever-present coverage of the digital marketplace. Each day, major papers run stories in their business section about the latest triumph of technology or company. But too rarely do they examine the negative consequences, let alone the role of their own publisher or media firm. One glaring omission by such major news outlets as the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, etc. is the relationship they have with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The IAB is a trade group whose mission is “helping online, Interactive broadcasting, email, wireless and Interactive television media companies increase their revenues.” Among its goals include: “[T]o prove and promote the effectiveness of Interactive advertising to advertisers, agencies, marketers & press;” and “[T]o be the primary advocate for the Interactive marketing and advertising industry.”

On the board of the IAB include officials from the New York Times Company (Martin Nisenholtz, its leading digital exec); Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, Cox Newspapers, USA Today, NBC, CNN, and Disney. They work alongside board members representing Google, AOL, Conde Nast (attention New Yorker magazine!), Verizon, Comcast, Yahoo!, Forbes and others.

There is a clear conflict of interest here when newspapers, television, and online news report on interactive marketing and have a representative helping direct the key group promoting the industry. These news outlets should be disclosing their membership in the IAB and any other industry trade group (which have a political or marketplace mission). Editors at the Times, Post and other papers should commission stories which more effectively analyze the digital marketing industry, including raising the critical issues which the public should debate. They must also prominently disclose their conflict of interest with the IAB as they report on the industry they are working to serve.

How long will the Federal Trade Commission wait before it decides to act to safeguard consumer privacy and protection online? Advocates will likely have to ask Congress to organize an oversight “Tech-ache” to prod the agency into some sort of action. Note this excerpt below as just one example of how the FTC is asleep at the interactive advertising/data collection `digital’ switch.

“Imagine the value to a national automaker of isolating a swath of people so ready to splurge on a fuel-friendly hybrid they’ve price shopped and maybe even placed an eBay bid to buy a Prius. Now, imagine if that auto advertiser could follow those folks around the web — from news sites to social-networking pages — serving up ads that remind them of the benefits of owning a hybrid car. It’s a pretty appealing prospect to marketers, and exactly what they will be able to do if Yahoo gets its way… “We’re actually in a fairly unique position to be able to take advantage … of the enormous data and insight we have on the largest online audience in the world,” Ms. Decker said in Yahoo’s year-end earnings call Jan. 23. “We can see what people are putting in their search strings. We can see what kinds of ads they click on. We can see what kinds of sites they were on prior to the site that they are currently on…”

from: The Right Ads at the Right Time — via Yahoo: Web Giant Looks to Offer Behavioral-targeting Tools Outside Its Own Properties
Abbey Klaassen. Advertising Age. Feb. 5, 2007 [subscription required]

Susan Decker, CFO, bio link.

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Elmo Pushes Pizza! Hey, Sesame Workshop and Co. Stop Counting Kids Dollars

CNN Money reports that Elmo will soon by promoting pizza. A new toy via Mattel will be “an Elmo doll holding a pizza, and the pizza talks and sings along with Elmo. The toy is expected to retail for $19.99.”

We think the folks at Sesame Workshop need to rethink what “Elmo’s World” should be like. Is it one that further commercializes childhood and pushes junk food, all to help bolster the Workshop’s bottom line? Shouldn’t companies that benefit from federal funding and public television distribution adhere to some higher level of conduct? Licensing of Elmo and other public broadcasting related products for children require a serious set of federal and PBS safeguards. We hope Gary Knell and company listen. Congress surely should, as it considers public broadcasting (PBS) funding.

Billion Dollars Bribery: As presidential candidates prepare to raise and spend $1 B on TV Ads for ‘08, it’s time for digital era reform

Advertising Age reports that U.S. presidential candidates are expected to spend $1 billion buying TV spots for the 2008 race. What this means, of course, is that our political leaders will be selling bits of themselves to well-heeled donors and special interests. How can we have a democracy that addresses our most serious problems when the very forces likely contributing to them are helping foot the TV ad costs? We can’t, even in this age of direct contributions via the Net. The big bucks raised are ultimately bribes from folks representing Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the Chamber of Commerce, and Hollywood.

The emerging new media platforms of broadband, mobile, and digital TV will be the methods of choice for delivering political marketing messages. Personalized style communications sent to digital video recorders, iPods, cell phones, along with “Second Life” style virtual press conferences, will soon replace traditional broadcast TV advertising. We need a law requiring free access on such platforms for all candidates (which would be accompanied by refinements in campaign finance limits). In a media world without communications scarcity ( such as with old media style broadcast TV) there is no reason to continue the “pay us for access to voter eyeball” type of media industry shenanigans.

Failure to address the problem of political communication access to the digital media will only result in the old system shaping how new media addresses our elections. It will be a pay-per-voter system where both the gatekeepers of old (Fox, Disney, Comcast) and new (AT&T, Verizon, Google) charge what the traffic will be forced to pay. A $1B tab for 2008 will be seen as a quaintly modest affair, as new media outlets reap many more future political profits (and power).

Here’s an excerpt from Ad Age: “Amid mouthwatering visions of more than $1 billion in spending on the most wide-open race since the TV era began, stations will have to devise some way to handle the rush when close to two dozen candidates come knocking at the same time… Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of TNSMI/Campaign Media, said advertising could well start in force this summer, with candidates trying to introduce or establish themselves early. Despite the early start, time is still an issue. “This kind of wide-open race is unprecedented, and there is only so much [ad] time,” said Jim Boyer, president and general manager of Des Moines station WHO-TV, a CBS affiliate.”

Source:
“TV Stations Prepare for $1 Billion Presidential Ad Onslaught
Dozens of Candidates Create Most Wide-Open Race Since TV Era Began.” Ira Teinowitz. Ad Age. January 29, 2007

Ad Age editorial attacks my "Digital Destiny" book

Trade publications are designed to be part of an industry’s political self-defense system. So it isn’t surprising that Advertising Age has an editorial in its new issue attacking my “Brandwashing” critique. Interestingly, it avoids addressing the many facts I cite in the book, including how advertisers are using brain research, virtual reality, and a marketing is everywhere/all time “360 degree” approach [the 360 term is what the ad industry calls its new strategy]. It’s interesting that the magazine’s editorial writers–probably on behalf of the industry–don’t want the public to ask the serious questions which are raised in the book. Here’s how they rationalize data collection propelled interactive, virtual reality-driven, personalized ads targeting us via PC, mobile, and TV:

“Making marketing more effective is what marketers are paid to do. And as long as they operate within legal and ethical bounds, they should be allowed to. While privacy is a legitimate concern, there’s something to be said for targeted ad messages. What would the average person rather be subjected to, an annoying random pop-up or an ad message tailored specifically for her? (Numerous studies have answered that seemingly obvious question.)

Finally, what consumers and activists seem to forget is that the only reason media content is free or affordable for so many is that major corporations foot the majority of the infrastructure and production bills. Then again, we could turn everything over to the government, which would no doubt create wholesome content at minimal cost to the taxpayer, all the while respecting consumer privacy.”

Have no fear—as we promote the book we will raise all these issues: privacy, manipulation, stealth marketing, immersive applications, brain research, vulnerable consumers. That’s why we are going to the Hill as well!
Source: “Brandwashing? Not Even Close.” Advertising Age. January 15, 2007

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