Category: Yahoo!

UK Online Ad Lobby Group: “behavioural targeting is going to be the future of the internet.” [Annals of Behavioral Targeting]

The debate over behavioural targeting, profiling and interactive advertising is heating up in the European Union.  We just spoke at a EU event on the topic.  More later on that meeting (which featured Google, Microsoft, Nokia and others, all wearing their Brussels best).  Google and others pointed to a new code on behavioural targeting created by the UK’s Interactive Ad Bureau, which they suggest is a model (and is designed to foreclose on real privacy safeguards).  I will be writing about this code in the next post.  But here’s what the chairman of the IAB UK, Richard Eyre, said about protecting privacy online and the Internet’s future [via Brand Republic.  March 31, 2009]. Excerpts:

Richard Eyre, chairman of the Internet Advertising Bureau, has said he accepts the European Union’s decision to investigate behavioural targeting as “logical” but hopes that the current self-regulatory process “will satisfy everyone”.

Eyre was responding to the EU’s decision to investigate behavioural targeting by online advertisers, in a move that could result in legislation that overrides the code recently introduced by the IAB with the support of Ofcom and search giants Google and Microsoft…Eyre said that he understood that the EU had to have a point of view on the issue because behavioural targeting is a new tool about which the general public is still forming its opinion. However he hopes the self-regulatory code on behavioural targeting recently introduced by the IAB will satisfy everyone. Eyre said: “It is very easy to dismiss the issues as an invasion of privacy but the fact is that behavioural targeting is going to be the future of the internet.”Eyre told ISBA’s annual conference recently that behavioural targeting would be a “game-changer” for advertisers.
PS:  As for Microsoft’s position on privacy, here’s an excerpt from a March 5, 2009 New Media Age story:  “Zuzanna Gierlinska, head of Microsoft Media Network, said, “It’s better that regulation comes from within the market rather than from government, which might not be fully aware of how behavioural targeting works.”  source:  “Industry unites to defend trust in online advertising.”   Suzanne Bearne.  nma.co.uk

Center for Democracy & Technology Goes for the “Gold” as it Raises $ for its “Gala” from AT&T, eBay, Microsoft, Google (and many other corporations)

CDT is having a “Gala Celebration” next month, supported by “Gold, Silver, and Bronze” sponsors.  AT&T, eBay, Microsoft and Google are listed at the $15,000 “Gold” level [“Two tables in Premium Location-Two tickets to the VIP Reception”]; Among the “Silver” sponsors [“One table-One ticket to the VIP Reception”] at the $7,500 tab include Time Warner (AOL), Dow Lohnes, Qorvis Communications (repping Sun, Cisco, etc), American Express, Verizon, Intel, US Chamber of Commerce, ID Analytics, Yahoo!, Arnold & Porter, IAC/Interactive Corp, Thompson LexisNexis, Hogan & Hartson (reps News Corp’s MySpace, among others), Comcast, and Sonnenschein Nath  & Rosenthal, LLP.   There are also a number of “Bronze” sponsor at the $1000 level [“One seat at a table”]. (CDT has a Facebook page on the event.)

CDT’s 2007 Gala, which honored Bill Gates, had “more than 900″ supporters” in attendance.

Porsche Teams with Yahoo for Mobile Behavioral Ad Targeting [Annals of Mobile Marketing]

Excerpt from Ad Age:

“…in just a 4-month-long pilot run, mobile outperformed Porsche’s wider campaign…The carmaker used Yahoo behavioral targeting tools to serve Porsche ads to smartphone users whose web-surfing behaviors had indicated they were in the market for coupes, SUVs, convertibles or luxury cars.”

source:  Mobile Effort Gets More to Say `I Can’ Purchase a Porsche.  Rita Chang.  Ad Age.  February 9, 2009 [sub. required]

more on Yahoo and behavioral targeting

Baby Steps for Online Privacy: Why the FTC Self-Regulatory Principles For Online Behavioral Advertising Fails to Protect the Public

Statement of Jeff Chester, Exec. Director, Center for Digital Democracy:

The Federal Trade Commission is supposed to serve as the nation’s leading consumer protection agency.  But for too long it has buried its mandate in the `digital’ sand, as far as ensuring U.S. consumer privacy is protected online.    The commission embraced a narrow intellectual framework as it examined online marketing and data collection for this proceeding.  Since 2001, the Bush FTC has made industry self-regulation for privacy and online marketing the only acceptable approach when considering any policy safeguards (although the Clinton FTC was also inadequate in this regard as well).  Consequently, FTC staff—placed in a sort of intellectual straitjacket—was hampered in their efforts to propose meaningful safeguards.

Advertisers and marketers have developed an array of sophisticated and ever-evolving data collection and profiling applications, honed from the latest developments in such fields as semantics, artificial intelligence, auction theory, social network analysis, data-mining, and statistical modeling.  Unknown to many members of the public, a vast commercial surveillance system is at the core of most search engines, online video channels, videogames, mobile services and social networks.  We are being digitally shadowed across the online medium, our actions monitored and analyzed.

Behavioral targeting (BT), the online marketing technique that analyzes how an individual user acts online so they can be sent more precise marketing messages, is just one tool in the interactive advertisers’ arsenal.  Today, we are witnessing a dramatic growth in the capabilities of marketers to track and assess our activities and communication habits on the Internet.  Social media monitoring, so-called “rich-media” immersive marketing, new forms of viral and virtual advertising and product placement, and a renewed interest (and growing investment in) neuromarketing, all contribute to the panoply of approaches that also includes BT.  Behavioral targeting itself has also grown more complex.  That modest little “cookie” data file on our browsers, which created the potential for behavioral ads, now permits a more diverse set of approaches for delivering targeted advertising.

We don’t believe that the FTC has sufficiently analyzed the current state of interactive marketing and data collection.  Otherwise, it would have been able to articulate a better definition of behavioral targeting that would illustrate why legislative safeguards are now required.  It should have not exempted “First Party” sites from the Principles; users need to know and approve what kinds of data collection for targeting are being done at that specific online location.

The commission should have created specific policies for so-called sensitive data, especially in the financial, health, and children/adolescent area.  By urging a conversation between industry and consumer groups to “develop more specific standards,” the commission has effectively and needlessly delayed the enactment of meaningful safeguards.

On the positive side, the FTC has finally recognized that given today’s contemporary marketing practices, the distinction between so-called personally identifiable information (PII) and non-PII is no longer relevant.  The commission is finally catching up with the work of the Article 29 Working Party in the EU (the organization of privacy commissioners from member states), which has made significant advances in this area.

We acknowledge that many on the FTC staff worked diligently to develop these principles.  We personally thank them for their commitment to the public interest.  Both Commissioners Leibowitz and Harbour played especially critical roles by supporting a serious examination of these issues.  We urge everyone to review their separate statements issued today.  Today’s release of the privacy principles continues the conversation.  But meaningful action is required.  We cannot leave the American public—now pressed by all manner of financial and other pressures—to remain vulnerable to the data collection and targeting lures of interactive marketing.

FTC’s Behavioral Ad Principles–the last act of the Bush Administration? Why is the Obama White House Allowing the FTC To Remain Under the Leadership Appointed by Pres. Bush?

In a few hours, approximately between 10-11 am eastern, the FTC is expected to release its final “Online Behavioral Advertising Principles.” Originally released for comment in December 2007, the principles are a sort of Valentine’s Day present to the online ad industry from the (supposedly departed) Bush Administration.  From what we know, the FTC principles support self-regulation.  Online marketers will be told they should behave better–and here are suggestions.  It’s like a teacher telling a misbehaving student–‘behave better, dear,’ or else we will have to tell your parent (in this case, the guardian being potential congressional action).

My CDD urged Commissioners Harbour and Leibowitz to issue separate statements on the principles, and call for tougher requirements—especially in the area of so-called sensitive information.  This would include data connected to our financial and health related online activities (think mortgage and loan applications or queries for prescription drugs).  CDD and a coalition of groups also formally asked the commission to impose serious privacy safeguards for both children and adolescents.

But these principles were crafted within the narrow confines of the Bush Administration philosophy prevailing at the FTC.  Only self-regulation is permitted.  Consequently, such an approach likely means these rules leave the online data collection, profiling and targeted marketing system which comprise behavioral marketing off the privacy protection hook.

But one question looms at the moment.  Why has the new Obama administration allowed the FTC to remain under the leadership of Bush-appointee William E. Kovacic? The principles being issued today, in fact, reflect the “old” FTC, not one run under the philosophy of President Obama.  Why is the Obama White House failing to ensure a change of leadership at the FTC?  The agency is responsible for overseeing a huge portion of the economy, including critical financial issues.  It’s also supposed to be the leading agency on consumer protection issues.   The Obama White House should have–by now-found someone who would led the FTC, so it can better protect the public.

The principles being released today were only made possible because of the Bush FTC give-away to Google, when it approved its takeover of online ad giant DoubleClick.  CDD, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and USPIRG fought the merger, including on privacy grounds.  FTC Commissioner Pamela Harbour played a key role forcing the agency (then run by Chairwoman Majoris, whose husband’s law firm represented DoubleClick) to address the privacy concerns. As a consequence of the political pressure from its failure to seriously examine the consumer privacy issues of the Google deal, the FTC staff were told to develop these principles.

The next chair of the FTC needs to take privacy and online consumer protection issues seriously.  The agency does need more resources, but also a new spirit.  If the FTC had been on the job, and was examining how lending institutions were recklessly promoting loans and mortgages, maybe today’s mess wouldn’t be as tragic as it is.  More to come after the commission releases the principles.

Annals of Behavioral Targeting: Yahoo! targeting capabilities

From Yahoo Advertising [an excerpt:]

“Demographic Targeting
Our more than 150 million registered users have told us a lot about themselves, including date-of-birth, zipcode, gender, and occupation, plus a wide range of self-identified interest areas. When added to standard 3rd party data, it adds up to an incredible array of demographic options.

Geographic Targeting
Based on zipcodes, we can target to states, DMA’s, election districts or virtually any other way of looking at the world by location.

Behavioral Targeting
Target visitors by what they are currently doing and have been doing. Looking for car shoppers, soccer moms or recent shoppers in any category? We have them…

Database Targeting
Match your customers with ours, and find lots more look-alikes, too.”

Ad agency has “profiled more than one-third of the world’s online population”

Developments in advertising, data collection, consumer analysis and targeting must be transparent and accountable to the public.  In a profile of Havas Digital, OMMA Magazine notes that [our emphasis]:

“Havas has created a dynamic online ad trading system that separates audiences from publishing content, and it makes user profile and unique cookie data king, rather than the inventory a publisher serves.  The core of Havas Digital’s virtual brand network is its Artemis database management and reporting system, which has already profiled more than one-third of the world’s online population. That and the agency’s Adnetik system help deliver customized roi analytics for media buying.”  “Artemis is the central piece of our media buying offering,” Kasper [Adam Kaspar, a senior VP] says. “Its importance has only grown as the technology has improved.”Coupled with proprietary algorithms, that database has allowed the agency to develop systems that draw on data from third parties, including clients, publishers and networks, that helps it understand which audiences command the most value at a particular time for specific brands.”

Artemis is a “marketing data warehouse.”  Yahoo is using the service, including for its already data-enabled Right Media Exchange.  Havas describes Artemis as “our proprietary marketing decision support system – a secure warehouse for all your marketing data, plus reporting tools that help make sense of it all.  Unlike some of the less sophisticated reports advertisers may receive from ad-servers, for instance, Artemis® provides detailed reporting right down to the user level.”

The FTC, EU, Congress and others will need to need to investigate the growing role consumer data plays in targeting us on and offline.  We don’t need private ministries of information tracking the global public.

The “Revised” Network Advertising Initiative Principles: Ghost-written by Bernard Madoff?

That was really what we felt reading the “NAI Response to Public Comments” released yesterday.  It accompanied the 2008 principles announcement by the self-regulatory trade online marketing trade group.  The “response” is worth reading, because it really reveals the inability of the group to meaningfully address how to protect consumers online.  You would think that an organization which has Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Time Warner and many others as paying members could at least clearly state what happens to our data in the online marketing process.  But the real goal of the NAI is to prevent the enactment of serious state and federal privacy policies that would protect consumers. My group put out a statement yesterday discussing the new principles.

The credibility of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Time Warner are at stake.  They should be able to ensure that their own organization can honestly address the implications of online advertising.  But it’s time to abandon any call for self-regulation.  That has been a failure.  It’s clear that a growing number of consumer and privacy groups are calling for a legislative solution, as well as a more effective FTC.  Responsible online ad companies will support such regulation.

Outside DoJ Expert Litvak on Why Google/Yahoo Deal was Opposed: “Google had a monopoly”

From American Lawyer Daily’s interview with Sandy Litvak (the outside expert DoJ asked to review the now scuttled Google/Yahoo search ad combine). Excerpt: “Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. called off their joint advertising agreement just three hours before the Department of Justice planned to file antitrust charges to block the pact, according to the lawyer who would have been lead counsel for the government. Sanford “Sandy” Litvack left Hogan & Hartson in September to consult for the department’s antitrust division on a possible court challenge to the Web giants’ agreement. The companies abandoned the deal in November after the Justice Department informed them it would seek to block the deal. “We were going to file the complaint at a certain time during the day,” says Litvack, who rejoins Hogan & Hartson today. “We told them we were going to file the complaint at that time of day. Three hours before, they told us they were abandoning the agreement.”…The never-filed government complaint would have charged that the agreement violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, Litvack tells the Am Law Daily in one of his first interviews since the companies canned the venture. Section 1 bans agreements that restrain trade unreasonably. Section 2 makes it unlawful for a company to monopolize or attempt to monopolize trade.

“It would have ended up also alleging that Google had a monopoly and that [the advertising pact] would have furthered their monopoly,” Litvack says.


source: Hogan’s Litvack Discusses Google/Yahoo. Nat Raymond. TheAmLaw Daily. Dec. 2, 2008

New AT&T-funded “Future of Privacy” Group: Will it Support Real Privacy Protection or Serve as a Surrogate for Self-regulation and Data Collection?

A new group co-directed by former DoubleClick and AOL chief privacy officer Jules Polonetsky, called the “Future of Privacy Forum,” has been announced. It is connected to the law firm representing AT&T–Proskauer Rose–which has a considerable practice in the online marketing and data collection area. Other backers include Intel, General Electric, IBM and Wal-Mart.

We are concerned, however, that the role of the Forum is to help discourage Congress from enacting an opt-in regime for data collection. Both ISPs–such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner–as well as online advertising companies such as Google/DoubleClick, Yahoo, and Microsoft must be governed by privacy laws which empower and protect consumers. The role of ISPs in any data collection for targeted online marketing, in particular, requires serious analysis and stringent safeguards. AT&T, Google, Microsoft, Comcast, the online ad networks, and social media marketers (to name a few) must be required to provide meaningful disclosure, transparency, accountability and user control (with special rules governing health, financial and data involving children and youth). Self-regulation has failed. If the Future of Privacy group is to have any legitimacy, it will work to support serious federal rules. But if it trots out some sort of voluntary code of conduct as a way to undermine the growing call for real privacy safeguards, this new group may soon be viewed as beholden to its funders and backers.