Category: media ownership

A Yahoo! & Google Deal is anti-competitive, raises privacy concerns

Based on news coverage [reg. required], it appears that Google and Yahoo! will attempt to team up in some way. We will await to see the details. But we want to point readers to Yahoo! 2008 annual 10K report. It discusses Google’s role as a competitor–something which would basically vanish in any outsourcing of its search ad business. As Yahoo! explained, “[W]e face significant competition from companies, principally Google, Microsoft, and AOL, that have aggregated a variety of Internet products, services and content in a manner similar to Yahoo! Google’s Internet search service directly competes with us for Affiliate and advertiser arrangements, both of which are key to our business and operating results…Additionally, Google and Microsoft both offer many other services that directly compete with our services, including consumer e-mail services, desktop search, local search, instant messaging, photos, maps, video sharing, content channels, mobile applications, and shopping services.” Yahoo! also made clear that search was an integral part of its business plan: “We believe that we can expand our communities of users by offering compelling Internet services and effectively integrating search, community, personalization, and content to create a powerful user experience. We leverage our user relationships and the social community the users create to enhance our online advertising potential, as well as our fee-based services.” Once Yahoo!, in our view, cedes part of its search ad business to its leading competitor, it will not have the viability to pursue growth relying primarily on building out its display business. Search and display, cross-platform and application, are increasingly inseparable necessities in order to survive in the online ad business.

Why too, would Yahoo!, in essence, neglect its investment to improve its search ad technology–known as Panama. In its annual 10 K, Yahoo! explained that it “launched its new search marketing system, known as Project Panama, in the fourth quarter of 2006. This system provides advertisers with additional tools for budgeting, testing, and optimizing their marketing campaigns. This new system also provides a new ranking model launched in early February 2007 as the second phase of Project Panama that ranks ads by relevance in addition to keyword bid price. We believe the new search marketing system provides a more relevant search experience to users, more valuable customer leads to advertisers, and additional opportunities to our distribution partners. We have completed the global roll-out of the technology across all relevant geographies.”

As Yahoo! told shareholders and the SEC in 2007, “[O]ur Search offerings are often the starting point for users navigating the Internet and searching for information, whether from their computer or mobile device. In Search, our goal is to provide the world’s most valued and trusted search experience for users, advertisers and developers…” Undermining its own business by outsourcing search ads to its leading competitor will weaken Yahoo!s ability to be a “starting point” for both users and advertisers. Permitting Google to operate a portion of its leading competitor’s business would be harmful to online diversity as well. Having Microsoft acquire Yahoo! also raise serious competitive concerns, although they require thoughtful examination in a post `Google now owns DoubleClick’ environment.

Simpson, Thatcher &

Here’s an excerpt from an article in GCP, the “Online Magazine for Global Competition Policy” by Peter C. Thomas, entitled “Lifting the Fog: Google/DoubleClick Demystified.”
“In the end, both the FTC and the Commission cut through the fog of the complaints surrounding the proposed merger to get to the right answer, namely that Google and DoubleClick operate in different, already competitive markets, and that their complementary services, when combined, will not harm competition in any relevant market.”

But readers should follow the asterisk next to Mr. Thomas’s byline, which reads [our emphasis]: “∗ The author is the Managing Partner of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP’s Washington, D.C. office…Simpson Thacher represented Hellman & Friedman and DoubleClick in the acquisition by Google.”

We love objectivity!

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Microsoft is set to acquire behavioral microtargeting and “marketing automation” specialist YaData. YaData’s software helps identify “behavioral micro-segments” [thats our behaviors, btw]. As YaData explains, “[M]icro-segments may overlap, reflecting the true multi-dimensional nature of customers and their changing habits. The continuous dynamic discovery and management of focused micro-segments allows marketers to understand and act upon changing market trends and gain rapid results for a real competitive differentiator. In order to act upon these changes, it is vital that marketers be able to routinely and autonomously launch the discovery process and manage the entire segment lifecycle…” [the managing, we presume, is of people’s behaviors and attitudes].

“YaData fully believes in the potential of behavioral targeting to enhance the value of online advertising for publishers, advertisers and users,” said Amir Peleg” in the press release announcing the sale. Microsoft officials claimed that as YaData’s technology became part of the company’s “advertising platform” they would “continue to adhere to its high standards for the protection of consumer privacy.” As Microsoft moves closer to acquiring Yahoo!, privacy advocates will need to analyze how the company’s recent acquisitions and developments related to online advertising require real safeguards–not just a reflexive we-care-about-privacy approach.

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Time Warner’s `Platform A’ Data Collection System: 3 billion online ads a day bolstered by $1 B in online ad company acquisitions

Time Warner has been buying up online ad properties to bolster its AOL and Advertising.com subsidiaries. AOL exec Randy Falco, as reported in Advertising Age [Feb. 26, 2008, sub. required likely] told interactive marketers that “[W]e have Platform A, the largest ad network in the world.” Falco said that 3 billion ad impressions were being delivered daily by the AOL networks. He also said that “[W]e spent with the help of Time Warner about a billion dollars to acquire [Quigo, Tacoda, Third Screen Media and AdTech] over the past year.”

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.  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/Yahoo! combination would create a "dominant player in display ads"

From the UK’s New Media Age online ad trade (excerpt). It underscorses for us the failure of regulators to address both the competition and privacy issues (let alone consequences for digital media content diversity): “A merger in the wake of Microsoft’s proposed $44.6bn (£22.7bn) takeover, could create a dominant display provider to match Google’s dominance of the search market…A combined Microsoft-Yahoo! could reach as much as 81.5% of the total worldwide audience…

“I think it would consolidate a position as the dominant leader in display advertising, in the same way that Google is the head-and-shoulders leader in search’ [said Caroline McGuckian, global head of media at LBi.]…Media agencies have largely welcomed the takeover as a boost to the display ad market, particularly behavioural targeting. It’s also seen as bringing welcome competition to Google’s dominance of online.”

source: “Microsoft-Yahoo! Would Be Display Ad Leader.” Danielle Long. NMA. 07.02.08 [sub. required]/

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Google & Microsoft’s Antitrust Teams: the Digitally Well-Connected

Who will represent the interests of the public as Google and Microsoft (and others) scoop up large chunks of the digital eco-system? Here’s an excerpt from Legal Times [“Microsoft Lawyers Map out the Bid for Yahoo.” Feb. 11, 2008. reg. required] on the former federal antitrust officials working for Google and Microsoft:


“Google does have a team of veterans representing its interests in the Yahoo bid. David Gelfand, a Washington antitrust partner at Cleary Gottlieb, and Susan Creighton, Washington antitrust co-chair at Wilson Sonsini, both helped Google get its merger with DoubleClick past federal regulators at the Federal Trade Commission last year. And Creighton was director of the Bureau of Competition at the FTC before joining Wilson Sonsini in 2006.

Microsoft, too, has a connected advocate in [Charles] Rule. When he goes to the Justice Department, he won’t need introductions. Rule worked with Thomas Barnett, the head of the Antitrust Division, while the two were partners at Covington & Burling. Rule has also worked with Barnett’s deputies. David Meyer, now deputy assistant attorney general for civil enforcement, served as Rule’s special assistant in the Antitrust Division in the late ’80s and then worked with him at Covington. (Skadden partners Michael Weiner in New York and James Venit in Brussels, are representing Yahoo on antitrust matters.)”

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.”