Category: Web 2.0 & Democracy

“Behavioral targeting, by camouflaging the tracking of consumers, can damage the perceived trustworthiness of an e-commerce site or the actor it represents”

That’s from an important new research paper by Professor Catherine Dwyer of the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, Pace University.  “Behavioral Targeting: A Case Study on Consumer Tracking on Levis.com” was presented at the 15th Americas Conference on Information Systems.   We have sent the paper to Congress, the European Commission and the FTC.  In its summary, Prof. Dwyer explains that:

In order to illustrate the nature of consumer tracking, a case study was conducted that examined behavioral targeting within Levis.com, the e-commerce site for the Levis clothing line. The results show the Levis web site loads a total of nine tracking tags that link to eight third party companies, none of which are acknowledged in the Levis privacy policy. Behavioral targeting, by camouflaging the tracking of consumers, can damage the perceived trustworthiness of an e-commerce site or the actor it represents.

The “Hidden Persuaders” returns with the growing role of Neuromarketing: “Your message or materials will be absorbed directly into the consumer’s subsconscious” [Annals of Mass Micro-Persuasion]

As we have explained to policymakers in the US and EU, the growing use of neuroscience techniques requires government scrutiny and regulatory safeguards. Even political campaigns appear to be using such methods.  No one should be permitted, in my opinion, to devise any public effort that is designed to deliberately influence the unconscious part of our brain.

Here’s an except from a research paper by a Nielsen backed neuromarketing firm called Neurofocus.   The paper is “Absorption:  How Messages Morph into Meaning And Value in The Mind,” and was written by Dr. A. K. Pradeep.  [published September 2008]

Engagement brings you to the threshold. Absorption carries you beyond, to the state where your message or other material has been fully taken in by the consumer’s brain... Full absorption is also when your message or materials or retail environment, etc. return the highest rate of impact and value for your investment. But neuroscientific research demonstrates that you cannot, and will not, reach that goal consistently and most effectively unless and until you understand how the brain actually functions, and you shape your messages/material /environment accordingly.

For example, as I cited above, we have identified 67 specific ‘best practices’ that should be implemented when words and images are presented on a screen (any screen, from a TV or PC to a mobile phone or movie theater). They are the result of advanced neurological research into various brain functions, and especially research that has delved into the mysteries of diseases like Alzheimer’s, and brain conditions like ADD/ADHD, obsessive/compulsive behavior, and bipolar disorder.

Follow these best practices, give the brain what it wants and likes most, and you stand the best chance of success for your brand and your investment. Your message or materials will be absorbed directly into the consumer’s subconscious, where we can measure them for their effectiveness at the level devoid of any ‘outside’ contaminating influences like education, language, cultural ethnicity or other factors.





Neuromarking for Politics and Online Ads: “which [ad] has a greater effect on the brain”

excerpt:  At MindSign Neuromarketing we use the only free-standing independent functional MRI facility and our own brain activation methodology to show what consumers are thinking while using a new product, and seeing an ad… Pennsylvania Avenue (politics):  We take your political TV, Web Video or Radio ad, and show you what parts or scenes cause activation and what parts cause deactivation, which parts we’re the most engaging, and which parts were the least, for each and every demographic and political affiliation. We compare your ads to your competitor’s ads to see which is more activating and at what parts. We then graph the brain responses to your ad versus our database and show you which parts of your ad are more activating than the average brain response to an advertisement, and which parts are less activating. We make a video graph, so you can watch your ad and see the brain reaction mapped over it in real-time—you can see what about your ad causes brain activation or deactivation moment by moment…Madison Avenue (advertising)…We take your Print or Web Advertisment and compare it to our database to see if your product design is more or less activating than the average brain response for all similar advertisements. We compare your product to your competitor’s and see who’s is most activating. Finally, if you’re trying to decide between different versions of your own print or web advertising, we’ll show you which one has a greater effect on the brain, helping you make a better final decision.

Microsoft’s Behavioral Targeting includes Web, Mobile and Xbox

As the debate in Congress, the FTC, the European Commission heats up about behavioral targeting and online privacy–and as regulators examine the Microsoft/Yahoo data deal–here is how Microsoft plans to extend it’s use of behavioral targeting [from MediaPost, excerpt]:

 Microsoft last week began offering behavioral targeting for ads running on its mobile network. But while the service offers a range of online targeted categories — about 100 –to advertisers buying mobile display inventory, the launch really means so much more.

Jamie Wells, Microsoft’s global director of trade marketing, mobile advertising solutions, says the targeting cuts across the Web, mobile and Xbox platforms when consumers sign into their Windows Live account. It allows media buyers to purchase consumer profiles demonstrating interest in specific categories, as well as specific times in a purchase funnel.

The technology doesn’t rely on cookies, but rather the user’s Windows Live ID. Cookies present a challenge on the Web, but even more so on mobile. Sometimes telecommunication carriers either strip out cookies or don’t accept them from third-party companies. So, rather than use cookies, Microsoft relies on behavioral profiles associated with Hotmail email and Xbox accounts through Windows Live ID. When a person on a mobile phone uses that same ID, Microsoft can link the behavior on the Web with behavior on their mobile phone and Xbox.

Although tight-lipped on Microsoft’s strategy, Wells admits “this is just the beginning.” Microsoft plans to expand its approach to tie together the Web, mobile and Xbox, drawing on the power of the entire Microsoft network. The strategy will integrate the audience, he says.

“The mobile application addresses one of the biggest challenges, which is targeting,” Wells says. “This is a way to circumvent the cookie problem and use online profiles. Also, some folks would argue that there’s a much higher bar for ad relevancy on mobile, and BT speaks right to that.”

“Behavioral Targeting provides realtime visibility into actions of indviduals” says marketer

Excerpt from EMC.com’s Fast Facts on behavioral targeting:

Unprecedented Opportunity

Behavioral targeting provides realtime visibility into actions of individuals…Firms that specialize in audience segmentation have refined the use of behavioral targeting…Ten years ago, it would have been impossible for a marketer to reach an individual who lived in Seattle, enjoyed tennis, and tended to surf on a high-speed connection at 10 A.M. on Tuesday’s.  Today, it is not only possible to identify the target, but it is also possible to reach the target with highly customized messaging.  Behavioral targeting variables, or targeted schemas, are limited by only two factors: a marketer’s imagination and the advertising network offering visibility into web-wide behavior.

Behavioral advertising networks…provide a piece of tracking code to be placed on one or more pages of the market’s website.  The code is used to identify a visitor to the site as a person eligible to receive a targeted message elsewhere on the web…some large portal websites such as Yahoo! do not need a “network” to define behavioral segments across their thousands of content categories.

Network Neutrality, a Narrowed Internet and Digital TV [Attention DoJ, FTC & FCC]

It appears that the network neutrality fight now also must be focused on how new TV sets are connected to the Internet.  A narrow, closed universe, of digital lite applications are to be part of the new high definition television universe, according to Variety.  For example, new TV’s connect to a version of the Internet but haven’t been “built for full-fledged Web browsing.”   But these sets “will come pre-installed with targeted applications for specific websites, somewhat like iPhone apps.” [our emphasis]  Some 50 million people are predicted to have these Net-lite sets by 2013.

Variety explains that:  Indeed, apps are seen as the keys to success with Web-enabled TV. There are no plans for a central app store, but analysts say they wouldn’t be surprised to see one. For now manufacturers can “push” new apps onto TVs but viewers can’t add any themselves.  This puts manufacturers in the new position of deciding which sites gain access to their customers’ screens, and there is already talk that they are contemplating selling such access via revenue-sharing deals. 

The Obama Administration has been a strong supporter of network neutrality.  It should challenge this threat to competition and new threat designed to narrow the Internet.  Beyond concerns on openness and content diversity, it’s worth noting that some in the TV industry see the deliver of Internet services via TV’s a way to expand the impact of commercials and ads (since online video ad can’t be fast-forwarded or easily skipped).  These Net-enabled devices also raise important privacy and consumer protection issues.  Notes Variety, “[T]he new technology also could add power to an advertiser’s message, with consumers able to click a link and instantly learn more about a product — and with ads being better targeted based on a person’s viewing and browsing history.”

source:  Television’s killer app: New HD TVs equipped with internet connection.  Chris Morris.  Variety. August 14, 2009.

Google PR Job Goals: “mitigate negative media coverage that might lead to unnecessary regulation”

Google has a job opening for a “Communications Manager, Multiple Focus Areas.”  Here’s an excerpt from the job description:

As a member of the Communications team based at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California you will…devise specific campaigns that establish solid contacts with journalists, face-to-face meetings with commentators and other opinion formers and develop print and web-based materials targeted at a range of different audiences, and counter misinformation and mitigate negative media coverage that might lead to unnecessary regulation or interfere with our business and ability to serve our users in other ways. Managers are very strong writers who can process complex technology issues – through blog posts, FAQs, video scripts and more – and explain them in clear language internally and externally. 

A Microsoft/Yahoo! Deal will Raise Privacy and Competition Issues [Annals of Behavioral Targeting Mergers]

Microsoft and Yahoo!  should expect privacy and consumer groups to vigorously press regulators to closely and skeptically examine any deal–and at the very least urge them to impose a series of tough conditions on data collection and ad practices.  This digital duo will not get a free data collection pass from privacy and consumer groups, even if a new combination would provide much needed competition to Google.  Microsoft and Yahoo have created elaborate data collection services across platforms and applications, including for behavioral targeting.  They have competing ad targeting businesses in search, display and mobile, for example.  Both companies operate leading ad exchanges (where our profile data is bought and sold like food commodities). They also have competing ad targeting research and development efforts. Beyond the US, there are important competition and privacy issues for the EU as well.

A merger that further concentrates control by a dwindling very few over the digital marketing and advertising business illustrates how quickly consolidation has emerged as a principal and worrisome feature of the Internet era.

Google to EU: Protecting Privacy and Regulating Behavioral Targeting Could Threaten the Economy [Annals of Hypocrisy and Digital Chicken Licken Scare Tactics]

It’s both silly and disingenuous when companies tell policymakers, as they regularly do, that if they act to protect consumers it would undermine a country’s economic status.   Both that’s what Google’s chief privacy official appears to have told top European Union officials responsible for privacy and consumer protection last month.  At the Interactive Advertising Bureau/EU annual conference, Peter Fleisher, Google’s Global Privacy Counsel [my bold], “underlined the economic importance of web 2.0. Targeted advertising does not only affect online platforms but also advertisers themselves and the broader economic ecosystem. He urged the Commission to consider the wider economic repercussions before imposing any regulation on behavioural advertising.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft continued its digital doublespeak efforts, telling some it supported privacy legislation while it also simultaneously worked on ineffective self-regulatory schemes.   At the IAB EU event, Peter Cullen, Chief Privacy Strategist at Microsoft “explained [to EU officials] the many benefits consumers get from online advertising as it finances a variety of free services available to them. Mr Cullen warned that policy initiatives must not exacerbate the problem and that a balance of self regulation, policy making and industry unity was required.”

The failure to regulate the economy has brought havoc and suffering for many millions of people throughout the world.  Google and Microsoft, as digital leaders, should be acting responsibly and support meaningful legislation that protects and empowers citizens and consumers.  The economy (and civil society) will be even healthier when it is governed by policies that ensure individuals comprehend and control the digital data collection and targeting system that is now unleashed throughout the world.

Online Consumers Require Real Privacy Safeguards, Not the Digital Fox [AAAA, ANA, BBB, DMA & IAB] in Charge of the Data Hen House

The self-regulatory proposals released today [2 July 2009]  by five marketing industry trade and lobby groups are way too little and far too late. This move by the online ad industry is an attempt, of course, to quell the growing bi-partisan calls in Congress to enact meaningful digital privacy and consumer protection laws. It’s also designed to assuage a reawakened Federal Trade Commission–whose new chair, Jon Leibowitz, recently appointed one the country’s most distinguished consumer advocates and legal scholars to direct its Bureau of Consumer Protection (David Vladeck). The principles are inadequate, even beyond their self-regulatory approach that condones, in effect, the “corporate fox guarding the digital data henhouse.” Effective government regulation is required to protect consumers. We should have learned a painful lesson by now with the failure of the financial industry to oversee itself. The reckless activities of the financial sector—made possible by a deregulatory, hands-off government policy–directly led to the current financial catastrophe. As more of our transactions and daily activities are conducted online, including those involving financial and health issues–through PCs, mobile phones, social networks, and the like–it is critical that the first principle be to ensure the basic protection of consumer privacy. Self-dealing “principles” concocted by online marketers simply won’t provide the level of protection consumers really require.

The industry appears to have embraced a definition of behavioral targeting and profiling that is at odds with how the practice actually works. Before any data is collected from consumers, they need to be candidly informed about the process–such as the creation and evolution of their profile; how tracking and data gathering occurs site to site; what data can be added to their profile from outside databases; the role that data targeting plays on so-called first-party websites, etc. In addition, the highest possible consumer safeguards are necessary when financial and health data are involved. Under the loosey-goosey trade industry principles, however, only “certain health and financial data” are to be treated as a “sensitive” category. This would permit widespread data collection involving personal information regarding our health and financial concerns. The new principles, moreover, fail to protect the privacy of teenagers; nor do they seriously address children’s privacy. (I was one of the two people that led the campaign to enact the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act).

The failure to develop adequate safeguards for sensitive consumer information illustrates, I believe, the inability of the ad marketing groups to seriously address online privacy. The so-called “notice and choice” approach embraced by the industry has failed. More links to better-written privacy statements don’t address the central problem: the collection of more and more user data for profiling and targeting purposes. There needs to be quick Congressional action placing limits on the collection, use and retention of consumer data; opt-in control over profile information; and the creation of a meaningful sensitive data category. Consumer and privacy groups intend to work with Congress to ensure that individuals don’t face additional losses due to unfair online marketing practices.

[press statement by the Center for Digital Democracy]