The enterprising Kate Kaye from Clickz posted an article on Sen. Obama’s online ad spending. The latest stats, she notes, is nearly $5.5 million, with $3.3 spent on Google. In a telling commentary on the state of search marketing competition, Mr. Obama’s campaign spent only $700,000 on Yahoo and a slightly less than $250k for Microsoft/MSN. See Ms. Kaye’s piece for more details.
Category: new media & campaigns
Interactive Ad Bureau to Congress and Public: If Your Privacy is Protected, The Internet Will Fail Like Wall Street!
It’s too disquieting a time in the U.S. to dismiss what a lobbyist for the Interactive Advertising Bureau said as merely silly. The IAB lobbyist is quoted in today’s Washington Post saying: “If Congress required ‘opt in’ today, Congress would be back in tomorrow writing an Internet bailout bill. Every advertising platform and business model would be put at risk.” [reg. required]
Why is the IAB afraid of honest consumer disclosure and consumer control? If online ad leaders can’t imagine a world where the industry still makes lots of money–while simultaneously respecting consumer privacy–perhaps they should choose another profession (say investment banking!).
Seriously, online ad leaders need to acknowledge that reasonable federal rules are required that safeguard consumers (with meaningful policies especially protecting children and adolescents, as well as adult financial, health, and political data). The industry doesn’t need a bail-out. But its leaders should `opt-in’ to a responsible position for online consumer privacy protection.
Behavioral Targeters Use Our Online Data to Track Our Actions and, They Say, to “Automate Serendipity.” Attention: FTC, Congress, EU, State AG’s, and Everyone Else Who Cares About Consumer Welfare (let alone issues related to public health and ethics!)
NPR’s On the Media co-host and Ad Age columnist Bob Garfield provides policymakers and advocates with an arsenal of new material that support the passage of digital age consumer protection laws. In his Ad Age essay [“Your Data With Destiny.” sub required], Garfield has this incredibly revealing–and disturbing–quote from behavioral targeting industry leader Dave Morgan (Tacoda) [our emphasis]:
“Now we have the ability to automate serendipity,” says Dave Morgan, founder of Tacoda, the behavioral-marketing firm sold to AOL in 2007 for a reported $275 million. “Consumers may know things they think they want, but they don’t know for sure what they might want.”
Garfield writes that “In 2006 Tacoda did a project for Panasonic in which it scrutinized the online behavior of millions of internet users — not a sample of 1,200 subjects to project a result against the whole population within a statistical margin of error; this was actual millions. Then it broke down that population’s surfing behavior according to 400-some criteria: media choices, last site visited, search terms, etc. It then ranked all of those behaviors according to correlation with flat-screen-TV purchase…“We no longer have to rely on old cultural prophecies as to who is the right consumer for the right message,” Morgan says. “It no longer has to be microsample-based [Ã la Nielsen or Simmons]. We now have [total-population] data, and that changes everything. With [those] data, you can know essentially everything. You can find out all the things that are nonintuitive or counterintuitive that are excellent predictors. … There’s a lot of power in that.”
There’s more in the piece, including what eBay is doing. As the annual Advertising Week fest begins in New York, we hope the leaders of the ad industry will take time to reflect on what they are creating. You cannot have a largely invisible system which tracks and analyzes our online and interactive behaviors and relationships, and then engages in all manner of stealth efforts to get individuals (including adolescents and kids) to act, think or feel in some desired way. Such a system requires rules which make the transaction entirely transparent and controlled by the individual. The ad industry must show some responsibility here.
Time for National Policy Providing Basic & Free Broadband for All: Metering and Ad-Supported Access Not the Answer
As Time Warner and the other broadband monopolists craft schemes to begin imposing pricing plans for broadband which limit and meter our online use, it’s time to push for a meaningful public interest “universal service” digital age policy. A 21st Century democracy should provide a reasonable amount of free access to every citizen in their home (along with more plentiful free access in schools, libraries, and community sites). Today’s New York Times has an non-analytical article on the Time Warner broadband metering trial [“Putting a Meter on the Computer for Internet Use.” Reg may be required].
Under Michael Powell’s FCC, the Bush Administration gave a broadband monopoly to the phone and cable giants–ending the hope for any serious competition. By rewarding the old monopolists (cable TV & phone) with a new digital domain to lord over, the Powell FCC ensured that consumers and citizens would eventually have to confront threats to both affordable service and content diversity online [that’s the network neutrality part of the story]. The plan by Google and others to free up extra spectrum isn’t a complete answer either. More bandwidth governed by an advertising-centric business model will foreground some kinds of content over others–leaving, we believe, digital content that illuminates democratic expression a hostage to commercial forces.
That’s why everyone must be guaranteed some form of free basic bandwidth so they can access news, information, and even entertainment without fear of running afoul of a cut-off (or huge bill) by their local cable or phone ISP. What that free access amount should be needs to be debated; but it should be generous enough so individuals can consume mighty multi-media amounts of educational, civic, and political content.
It will be a true test for the groups working on communications policies–as well as the leaders of our major political parties–to see if they have the vision and courage to call for what is right. If they merely confine themselves to be a part of the safe and narrow dimensions of what are the usual U.S. media policy debates, they will fail to address one of the critical public interest issues of our time.
Why We Require Rules Regulating Political Ads Online
We have long been calling for rules regulating political online and digital advertising. Beyond the privacy concerns, which are enormous, we fear that the same big-money driven politics will be played out online. The time to impose “free time” and campaign limits for digital political advertising is now (along with rules governing data collection and profiling). Here’s a quote about a new study on search and politics [our emphasis]
“With no restrictions on how much an individual or political action committee can spend buying search terms, and no record of who is buying the ads, the candidate with the most sound search strategy could end up swaying the remaining undecided voters and winning the 2008 election,” stated Kevin Lee, CEO and co-founder of Didit.”
Big money, I suggest, will change the way the Internet (and other digital media, inc. mobile web) as we know it operate. Â We should be addressing this issue now, before–like our current corrupt system–it becomes a inextricable part our political culture.
Behavioral Targeting and Political Campaigns: The tip of the Online Targeting Iceberg
We hope readers will review the excellent articles on behavioral targeting and the election that appear in Businessweek [“The Candidates are Monitoring Your Mouse”] and The Washington Post [“Candidates’Websites Get to Know the Voters”].
Most observers understand that there are serious privacy issues involved when anyone–be it a marketer and (especially) a politician engages in data collection and micro-targeting online without prior consumer/citizen consent. While a few might express sentiments of cynicism–claiming that because some lawmakers may use these techniques it’s unlikely they will support safeguards–the opposite is true. Responsible lawmakers will recognize that in a digital democracy, protecting everyone’s privacy is crucial. Just as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which I helped spearhead, received strong bi-partisan support (Sen. John McCain was a co-sponsor, along with Rep. Ed Markey, for example), so will new rules which protect everyone online. Responsible parties will support meaningful safeguards–or be on the wrong side of much consumer ire.
PS: NPR has a fascinating and a very revealing video interview on this topic with Michael Bassik, Vice President for Interactive Marketing at MSHC Partners. MSHC represents the Democratic National Committee, Moveon.org, and the Center for American Progress, among many others. Here’s an especially informative excerpt [my transcription]:
“…in the past we were able to determine whether an advertisement was delivered, and we call those advertising impressions; we were able to determine how many people clicked on an ad, which is called the click-thru rate, and we could figure out from there the cost-per-click. That was about the extent of the reporting we had in the past. But now in 2008 we have tremendous deep reporting capabilities. So I can tell you, for example, who saw a John McCain banner ad on which site. And which placement on that site and which size the ad was. I can tell you how long that ad was on the page for before someone click on it. I can tell you if they clicked on it whether they donated, whether they signed –up. But also tell you whether someone saw that ad, but did not click on it. But two weeks later went to John McCain’s website on their own and made a donation. We can tie that donation back to the fact that they saw an ad on CNN.com three weeks prior in the political section in the 728 by 90 leaderboard size. I used McCain as an example, but of course all the candidates, including our Democratic and progressive candidates, are doing that.â€
Yahoo! wants politicians to use Behavioral Targeting to target voters–Privacy and voter manipulation ethics ignored
Yahoo! is urging elected political officials and campaigns to use the arsenal of online advertising tools, despite the questions such dubious techniques raise on privacy and other consumer protection issues. Here’s an excerpt from a Yahoo! VP for political ads piece urging pols to embrace behavioral targeting. From Politics magazine online:
“Use the Internet as a more efficient, less expensive channel to reach voters with certainty… political campaigns are about seven years behind the private sector in their use of the Internet as a paid media vehicle…campaigns can make the web work harder for them by using online display media…Our studies indicate that a targeted ad based on geography or demographics can increase response rates by 50 percent. And when ads are targeted based on behavior, those rates increase to 66 percent. These are campaigns based on certainty-whereby a specific audience is messaged to and managed to produce a desired result. This is true whether it’s a campaign to acquire donations or e-mail addresses, or a persuasion or get-out-the-vote message. Moreover, the results can be seen in just hours or days, letting you keep doing what works and kill what doesn’t…the real opportunity is to use the Internet as a paid media platform to run, track and move persuasion metrics.”
Here’s Your Real Online Advantage … And No, It’s Not Viral Videos. Richard J. Kosinski. Politics. 4/1/08
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Online marketers want to track you–from click to click to “last ad” click
Microsoft and Google, along with many partners, are working to perfect a consumer tracking and analysis system so they can better figure out who gets to share in the growing online ad revenue pie. It’s called “engagement mapping.” Although if you are concerned about privacy, you might want to say, “let’s call the whole thing off.” Here’s an excerpt from the April 14, 2008 Ad Age article:
“The concept appears simple, but the technology is complex: raw log-file data, time-stamped and collected by ad-serving companies like Google’s DoubleClick and Microsoft’s Atlas, along with a short line of code known as a pixel hidden in web pages, keep a record of each time consumers enter or exit a web page, click on a link or ad and enter information in a search box or application. Those data are fed into software platforms designed by companies such as Atlas, Epic Advertising, Media Contacts and Starcom.
“It’s sort of like reading an advertising diary,” said Ben Winkler, VP-interactive media director at New York-based Ingenuity Media Group, which joined Atlas’ project earlier this year. “It’s like you opened a diary where someone wrote, ‘I saw three billboards, I heard a radio ad, saw a few banners ads, and searched through Google to find and buy the product.’ “
Rather than wait for a crisis to tell the advertising client something isn’t working, media buyers can rely on these data to identify when consumers had contact with the ads, even if it’s an hour, day or week later.
“We know the person saw ad No. 4 on Yahoo Finance an hour ago,” said David L. Smith, CEO at Mediasmith, which is participating in Atlas’ and DoubleClick’s tests with advertisers. “Embedded code in the pixels lets us track the pages and things they interact with on the site.”
source: New metrics give `credit where due.’ Laurie Sullivan. Ad Age. April 14, 2008 [sub may be required]
Google as “media company” & favoring its own sites–a report from a search engine trade show
John Battelle was on a panel at the recent Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in New York. Here’s an excerpt from his blog post–which I hope you will read in full [our emphasis]: Google’s brand promise – to be neutral, to be above monetary interest – is in conflict with, well, the rest of Google’s brand promise, to be a superstar stock, to grow faster than any company in the history of the world. And all of that is in conflict with …. Google’s brand promise, to get consumers to the best answer, fastest, regardless of who owns the content. Because…sometimes, that content is now owned by Google…Why when you search for stocks does Google Finance come first? Let’s be honest here. It’s not because some neutral algorithm chose Google Finance. It’s because Google owns that data. Google’s representative admitted as much on our panel today. And, given that, can one reasonably ask why, according to Comscore’s data, the preponderance of results that come up in Google’s universal search are YouTube? Might it be because they are they best results? Sure. Might it also be because Google owns YouTube, which is madly trying to monetize the second, third, and fourth click with new models that it hopes to heck are going to pay off?
Consider this a form of `let’s help Google try and be more honest about privacy and data collection’ public service.
Excerpt from PC World:
“Google’s YouTube will soon give marketers more data about viewership of its videos, so that they have a better understanding of clips’ reach and effectiveness at boosting brand awareness and sales.
The online video site plans to make more granular metrics available in this year’s second and third quarters, including data about the usage of YouTube videos that are embedded in external sites, said Brian Cusack, YouTube sales team manager.
“YouTube has enormous amounts of data, but not great reporting on that data yet,” Cusack said during a keynote speech at the eRetailer Summit….YouTube…is building models to distinguish content that is universally interesting from content that is locally interesting, in order to make that useful for its advertising customers, Cusack said.
YouTube to Improve Usage Metrics: New data about Google’s YouTube video viewership will be availabletp marketers. Juan Carlos Perez. IDG News. March 3, 2008
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