Category: interactive advertising

Neuromarketing Research–Sponsors include Miller Coors, American Express, Hershey’s

excerpt on the Advertising Research Foundation’s “Inaugural NeuroStandards Retreat”–

On January 12-14, 2011 at Campbell Soup Headquarters in Camden, New Jersey, 40 senior review panel members, research vendors, gold brand sponsors, gold media sponsors, silver sponsors and ARF personnel gathered to discuss significant insights and key findings from the unprecedented Engagement 3: NeuroStandards Collaboration. This groundbreaking ARF research project,… will provide much-needed transparency about biometric and neurological research methods.
In advance of the retreat, each of the research vendors involved (Gallup & Robinson, Innerscope, MSW Research/LAB, Mindlab International, NeuroCompass, Neuro-Insight, Sands Research, and Sensory Logic) were asked to analyze eight commercials—one from each gold brand sponsor (American Express, Campbell Soup, Clorox, Colgate-Palmolive, General Motors, Hershey’s, Miller Coors and JP Morgan Chase).

The research vendors presented their reports to each sponsor prior to the retreat. The reports were also reviewed by a number of subject matter experts (for example, Electroencephalography (EEG) experts looked at EEG reports, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) experts looked at fMRI reports). Subject matter expert reports were then distributed to a panel of expert reviewers who provided their assessment at the retreat…

The expert reviews, discussions and key findings from the ARF NeuroStandards Retreat will be presented in March at Re:think 2011 – The ARF 75th Anniversary Annual Convention. Some of the major topics that will be explored include:

How neuromarketing research can produce new insights for advertising, branding, and other marketing research projects;
Which biometric and neurological methods are best suited for specific research objectives and what are the advantages and disadvantages of these methods compared to traditional research methodologies…

Online Data Targeting Companies Say: “The usage of data will penetrate the online ad ecosystem and the next few years should see data impacting the entire media buying process”

 excerpt from a post by a BlueKai exec:   “The usage of data will penetrate the online ad ecosystem and the next few years should see data impacting the entire media buying process – end to end.  Marketers already need to understand their audiences through customer interactions across multiple channels.  The most progressive marketers are maximizing both audience and campaign performance data as a way to drive marketing spend…as more and more agencies  adopt media strategies that deploy audience profiling and data analysis, there will be an increase in demand for the data scientist…Data driven audience targeting moves operation out of the back room black box systems and into the hands of marketers who are planning so they can really do a much better job of identifying your ideal customer, reach them by very specific targeting attributes and get a much better picture of what’s working and what’s not.  It seems like a no-brainer, but much of the online media spend today is not driven by data.  A data-centric approach to marketing is opening up a new world to online marketing which promises to be a world that provides transparency, target specificity, scale, accountability and results…The ability to combine audience and media performance data gives marketers a full picture of how they can get more of their marketing dollars. 2011 promises to be the year marketers take control of their data and look for solutions that can provide a full-service, full-loop solution will become vendors of choice.”

As Google Expands Digital Food Marketing Clout, How Will it Protect Children and Adolescents from Online Junk Food Ads?

Google just announced plans to “to build its advertising and marketing business in the food and beverage industries,” including “establishing a food-and-beverage team in Chicago to link with advertisers and marketers.”   The online ad market leader hired a former Frito Lay and beer marketing executive who explained that the company intended to harness the “untapped potential in the digital world for food and beverage advertisers, and Google’s ability to work with them, based on proprietary analytics that map out consumer behavior.”   The exec–Karen Sauder–said that Google intended to use its clout with online media to generate a deep connection to users, including taking advantage of “some of the new location-based services and mobile technology that’s really untapped at this point.”

As our companion site digitalads.org documents, food and beverage companies, along with online ad companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, are targeting young people with digital ads for products linked to the youth obesity crisis (they are doing this in the U.S. and globally).  Google should play a leadership role and adopt new safeguards to ensure that no one under 18 is targeted by digital junk food ads–and that it undertakes a thoughtful analysis to address problems raised when targeting vulnerable groups.  We hope Microsoft, Yahoo and others will also do so.  We call on Google to embrace a “healthy” digital diet for its food and beverage marketing. This is an issue that will be on the policy radar in 2011.

Did the Commerce Dep’t Give a Special Deal to the Online Data Collection Lobby?

It sure sounds that way, given what the Interactive Ad Bureau wrote on the new privacy proposal (our emphasis):

“The green paper is another important step in what has been an inclusive, productive process to develop the Administration’s strategy for increasing consumer online privacy, while balancing the realities of our national economy. It provides vital support for industry self regulation. The Department of Commerce’s recognition that these efforts can be an effective means for increasing transparency around data practices and empowering consumers with a comprehensive, easy-to-use opt-out mechanism is key, given other recent reports. Increasing consumer confidence in the Internet is a common goal. We agree that supporting these industry codes in a timely fashion is critical, and our cross-industry coalition looks forward to working with the Administration to ensure our program is both robust and enforceable.”

The Commerce Department met with our coalition of consumer and privacy groups only once–after we had written to the White House asking for a meeting with officials there.  There was no formal briefing for the country’s leading consumer and privacy groups prior to the report’s release. Yet we understand Commerce did one for industry. As the Obama White House proceeds with its plans for the forthcoming “multi-stakeholder” deliberations, they must be structured in a manner that ensures significant consumer and privacy participation (which means that groups funded by the online ad industry have to be dealt with in different fashion).

Statement of Jeff Chester on the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force Privacy and E-Commerce: a Bill of Behavioral Targeting “Rights” for Online Marketers?

The Obama Administration asks some important questions about protecting the privacy of U.S. consumers.  But given the growth of online data collection that threatens our privacy, including when consumers are engaged in financial, health, and other personal transactions (including involving their families), this new report offers us a digital déjà vu.   The time for questions has long passed.

Instead of real laws protecting consumers, we are offered a vague “multi-stakeholder” process to help develop “enforceable codes of conduct.”  If the Commerce Department really placed the interests of consumers first, it would have been able to better articulate in the report how the current system threatens privacy.    They should have been able to clearly say what practices are right and wrong—such as the extensive system of online behavioral tracking that stealthily shadows consumers—whether on their personal computer or a mobile phone.   The paper should have firmly articulated what the safeguards should be for financial, health and other sensitive data.  The report should have rejected outright any role for self-regulation, given its failures in the online data collection marketplace.  While the report supports a FIPPS framework, these principles can be written in a way that ultimately endorses existing business practices for online data collection and targeting.

This illustrates one of the basic problems with the Administration’s approach to protecting consumer privacy online.  The Commerce Department is focused on promoting the interests of industry and business—not consumers.  It cannot play the role of an independent, honest broker; consequently it should not be empowered to create a new Privacy Policy Office.   Having the Commerce Department play a role in protecting privacy will enable the data collection foxes to run the consumer privacy henhouse.  We call on the Administration and Congress to address this issue.  A new Privacy Policy Office should be independent and operate under the Administrative Procedures Act—ensuring there are safeguards for meaningful public participation and transparency.

The Commerce paper’s real goal is to help U.S. Internet data collection companies operate in the EU, Asia/Pacific and other markets as “privacy-free” zones.  Under the cover of promoting “innovation” and trade, I fear the U.S. will craft a crazy-quilt code of conduct regimes that they will claim should pass muster in the EU (which has a more comprehensive framework to protect privacy).  The Obama Administration appears to be promoting a kind of “separate, but equal” framework, where it will argue that no matter how weak U.S. privacy rules are, other countries should accept them as the equivalent of a stronger approach.  The new paper should have acknowledged the U.S. has to play catch-up with the EU when it comes to protecting consumer privacy.

We have been promised meetings with the new White House subcommittee on privacy, where consumer and privacy groups will raise these and other concerns.

Behavioral Targeting Cancer Drugs: Digital Pharma watch

Online marketing of prescription drugs, including behavioral targeting, tracking, profiling and retargeting, require federal safeguards–asap.  Here’s one online marketer admitting his client actually engaged in pharma behavioral retargeting.  They write [excerpt]:  “One of our clients is a manufacturer of cancer related drugs.  They were using retargeting aggressively…”

The column goes on to say that consumer complaints led the drug company to stop using behavioral targeting, but we should not permit a digital data collection “wild west” for the medical marketing business online.  Marketers of such drugs, especially for life-threatening illnesses–should not be using behavioral marketing at all (unless the consumer/patient affirmatively consents).

IAB Gets a new Chance to Play Constructive Role as Randall Rothenberg Goes to Time Inc.

The departure of Randall Rothenberg, the head of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, provides a critical opportunity for the IAB to revisit its position on protecting consumer online privacy (including Do Not Track).  Under Mr. Rothenberg, the IAB lobbied Congress to restrict the FTC’s ability to protect consumers, including on privacy.  With new leadership, the IAB could begin playing a more constructive role by working with consumer groups to build a consensus on federal privacy rules.  Instead of confrontation and denial, we hope the online ad lobby pursues serious engagement with privacy advocates.   The IAB has become just another inside the Beltway lobbying group–and has lost credibility among many policymakers.  A new IAB leader should be someone who can really help the mission of the industry by engaging in the kind of diplomacy and debate that supports the higher purposes of online advertising, digital publishing, and the public interest.
At Time, Mr. Rothenberg will now be in charge of its online ad network, which uses behavioral targeting and other interactive data techniques.  How Time responds to the growing call for better consumer privacy will be one of Mr. Rothenberg’s new challenges.

The new “OpenRTB” online ad exchange platform–consumer protection and privacy concerns

Both Advertising Age and Adexchanger.com report on the new “real-time bidding” consortium.  Real-time bidding stands for a process where each of us are tracked and sold to the highest bidder, in real-time, so we can be targeted with ads (from financial products to pharmaceuticals to travel and more).  The OpenRTB effort provides “industry standards for communication between buyers of advertising and sellers of publisher inventory.”  Initial members include leading data targeting companies Data Xu, MediaMath, Turn, Ad Meld, Pubmatic and the Rubicon Project.

The further integration of data tracking and selling platforms raises consumer protection, privacy and competition issues.  Consumers need to be able to decide for themselves about whether they wish to be targeted through such exchanges.  The consortium offers its online ad partners tools to streamline the digital marketing process.  Where are the tools for a consumer–so they can determine how they are treated online through these anonymous and impersonal systems?  In its haste to advance online behavioral targeting, the new OpenRTB consortium appears to have left privacy and consumer choice and control aside. Regulators, privacy and consumer advocates and others will need to maintain a close watch on the new online targeting alliance.  Meanwhile, we hope that this new group will adopt new consumer protection safeguards–and not rely on the flimsy argument that groups such as the NAI and triangled icons somehow protect the public.

Do-Not-Track will Boost Journalism/Publishing Says Nieman Fdn. Expert

Online ad lobbyists disingenuously claim that privacy safeguards will doom the commercial Internet, choking off content and publishers.  They are fearful that consumers will have the power to actually decide who can collect and make money off their data–instead of their “Big Brother Can Steal Your Data Anytime, Anywhere” model.  In a new column written for the journalism think-tank and resource Nieman Foundation,  Ken Doctor (who covers the business of news for them) writes [excerpt, our emphasis]:  “Enter a new age of Do Not Track. Maybe, in that world, news media’s role — and its engagement with audiences — becomes much more valuable. Maybe, it’s a reintermediation of a kind, as news media’s role in the shopping/buying lives of its readers re-emerges, digitally.  How might this happen? If we look at the potential newsonomics of Do Not Track, we can see at least two ways that real revenue can be driven out of the reordering of the tracking world…If Do Not Track puts more power back into the hands of the publisher, then publishers may be help to re-sell the information — and that could help build toward the new business model news publishers’ need…The big opportunity, perhaps, is the ability of news publishers to transparently offer reader/consumers the opportunity to “opt in” to a wider world of reading and shopping targeting. Then, they could re-emerge, in the tablet era no less, as community and national centers of news — and commerce. Forget Foursquare; readers could check into their favorite news companies.“

Neuromarketing & Privacy: German Data Protection Authority Enacts Safeguards

We have long been sounding the alarm over the role of neuromarketing in advertising, especially for online marketing.  We are gratified that the Data Protection Authority in Hamburg Germany, according to this law firm post, just imposed safeguards on the role of neuromarketing.  It explains that [excerpt]: “[O]n November 23, the data protection authority (DPA) of the German Federal State of Hamburg imposed a €200,000 fine [link in German] against the Hamburg-based savings & loan Hamburger Sparkasse due to violations of the German Federal Data Protection Act (the BDSG) for, among other reasons, using neuromarketing techniques without customer consent…Indeed, according to the head of the Hamburg DPA, Prof. Johannes Caspar, the intent was to send a clear signal to the market against the use of modern neuromarketing and comparable methods in violation of data protection law.  The case also clearly illustrates that German regulators are willing to enforce the new data protection regime and are well prepared to impose significant fines upon companies rather than giving them merely a warning notice…The decision of the Hamburg DPA may also attract attention beyond Germany and influence the interpretation of data protection laws in other countries, in particular with respect to the compliance of neuromarketing and brain sciences techniques with data protection laws.  Due to the sensitivity of such activities, it is likely that regulators in the EU will follow the approach taken by the Hamburg DPA.”