Prof. Kathryn Montgomery and I just published an article in the Journal of Adolescent Health [JAH] on the the role interactive marketing plays in the current youth obesity epidemic. It is part of a special JAH issue focused on the obesity issue. It’s a very good introduction to the current digital marketing landscape, and is one of a series of reports we have done on the issue.
Category: European Commission
Microsoft Pushes a “Behavioral Targeting Product Roadmap” and it is “Betting” on Increased Consumer Targeting, inc. “Retargeting.” Company Wants to “Live the Data”
The potential combination of the behavioral targeting technologies of both Microsoft and Yahoo! should be one of the key areas investigated by antitrust authorities. Privacy issues are also important for regulators to address with the proposed deal. So these current behavioral targeting job openings at Microsoft provide a glimpse into these issues.
Microsoft is now seeking a “Product Marketing Manager of Behavioral Targeting on the Audience Select team…The Product Marketing Manager will establish the requirements and go to market strategy for Microsoft’s Behavioral Targeting product. S/he will partner with a team of world-class engineers, client service, business operations, legal, privacy and other product marketers to envision and design the industry’s best targeting technology to connect advertisers with their audience. The candidate chosen for this position will be responsible for creating the product GTM roadmap, developing and prioritizing segment requirements and designing GTM models to support the sale and delivery of behaviorally targeted advertising. S/he will be Microsoft’s resident expert on Behavioral Targeting and will be the first person to explain and communicate business metrics – particularly sell-thru – to field, business, and engineering…Articulate the behavioral targeting product roadmap to key customers and partners, and aggregate industry feedback in a form that is actionable for development…Influence long-range, multi-release planning for behavioral targeting…Someone with a deep passion for advertising technology and a deep knowledge of the targeted industry…”
Then look at this position for a “Taxonomist/Audience Intelligence.” Note that they include the fiction that Microsoft will compete with Yahoo!!!
Online advertising is the biggest growth opportunity for Microsoft. This business currently generates about $2B in revenue for Microsoft with tremendous opportunity ahead, given how the industry wide advertising is shifting to digital media. Join and help take our digital advertising to the next level to compete against Google and Yahoo with our initiatives in Audience Intelligence. Our group is chartered to develop an industry leading targeting system for all our ad products and services. Effective targeting helps an advertiser reach their core audience and will drive high value propositions to the end customers. We as a company is betting on this initiative to differentiate our advertising offerings to our customers and to further grow our advertising revenue.
We are seeking an experienced taxonomist to provide thought leadership in taxonomy, classification, and metadata management. Audience Intelligence enables the discovery and inference of user profiles, intent and interaction while respecting privacy and trust, with the ultimate goal of maximizing benefits for users, advertisers and publishers. Our focus spans all types of digital advertising such as search, display and emerging media including mobile, gaming, video on demand, and IPTV.
And they also want someone to help its behavioral retargeting initiatives (which it calls remessaging!)
The Search & Media Network Group within Microsoft Advertising is looking for a rock star product manager to deliver against revenue goals for Microsoft Advertising’s Re-Messaging product, by driving global business planning and execution, product marketing and competitive strategy…We work to seamlessly combine a range of individual online advertising products that span search, display and audience targeting, into solutions that address advertisers’ core campaign objectives.
Your core mission will be driving business revenue and field sales engagement with the Re-Messaging ad product (also known in the industry as Re-Targeting)… Live the data, by building a deep understanding of the key metrics associated with the Re-Messaging business, and driving analysis into trends and emerging opportunities…Specific partners will include product planning, trade / field marketing, sales, yield/monetization and more…
Behavioral Targeting System Tracks Users, Collects Data, and then Creates Ad Just for You!
So-called “smart ads” and personalized advertising is part of the data collection for digital behavioral advertising paradigm. Here’s an excerpt from a Audience Science press release on its new approach:
AudienceScience (formerly Revenue Science) announced today the availability of Audience Relevant Messaging (ARM), a new dynamic targeting offering that enables advertisers to deliver personalized messages to consumers based on their individual interests and/or intent to purchase. ARM offers advertisers the potential for unparalleled ROI with dynamic display ad generation and results comparable to search performance providing the exact offer to motivate a prospect to purchase…ARM enables advertisers to target consumers who have abandoned their shopping cart with a message or offer pertaining specifically to their browsing behavior and the items in their cart, as well as search behavior, online and offline shopping history, demographics, geography, and more…With ARM AudienceScience can now easily pull the right creative for the right consumer at the right time and can also test creative and alter campaigns in real-time based on individual behavior and response.
source: AudienceScience Audience Relevant Messaging (ARM) Delivers Messaging Tailored to Individual Characteristics and Behaviors. Press release. 30 July 2009.
Microsoft/Yahoo: Regulators in U.S. and EU Must Ask–How will the Deal Really Protect Privacy, Serve Consumers & Promote Competition
The Center for Digital Democracy will ask regulators (in both the U.S. and EU) to closely– and skeptically– examine the Microsoft/Yahoo deal, including a thorough analysis of the proposed data collection, privacy and online ad-related business practices. This agreement basically merges the Microsoft and Yahoo search platforms. Instead of competing ad sales teams for “premium†search, Yahoo becomes the “exclusive†agent; the Bing search platform serves both MSN and Yahoo. There are questions that must be answered regarding the collection and sharing of consumer data by the two companies. We are concerned that this agreement is merely an initial step in what will eventually be the complete integration of Microsoft and Yahoo (including mobile, display, ad exchanges, research and development, etc.). Both Microsoft and Yahoo understand that to compete in today’s online advertising marketplace, search and display marketing (including data collection, analysis, and targeting) must be closely linked.
What we are now witnessing is the emergence of a global digital advertising duopoly: Google and Microsoft/Yahoo. While the rationale for the deal is to provide some much needed competition to Google (and income for Yahoo), the further consolidation of the global digital advertising system should be a concern to Internet users, privacy advocates, online marketers, and competition regulators. [Regulators in both the U.S. and the EU helped set the stage for this Microsoft/Yahoo deal when they approved without conditions Google’s takeover of DoubleClick –which CDD and others opposed].
Regulators will have to demonstrate to both consumers and search advertisers that they will actually benefit from this proposed deal:Â will it really reduce the cost of search ads, bring tangible financial gains to consumers, and truly protect our privacy?
Facebook’s “Targeting Factors” for Advertising
To keep up with Facebook, it’s important to read the social media marketing publications and reports. All Facebook is one such very useful online source. Here are two recent excerpts from July 2009 posts on Facebook’s targeted advertising system:
 “Facebook provides 11 targeting factors for advertisers (with three new factors announced yesterday). Below is an outline of each of those factors:
1. Location – Facebook enables advertisers to target by country, state/provice, city, and metropolitan areas. All advertisements are required to have a location selected. This should be pretty straight-forward as to which location you’d like to select.
2. Age – Age is a standard demographic factor. Most marketers that have a well defined target-market will be able to select their age.
3. Birthday – This is one of Facebook’s latest advertising targeting filters. It should be pretty obvious what types of ads should be presented to people who’s birthday it is. Try wishin [sic] the user a happy birthday and offer them a gift for higher conversion rates.
4. Sex – Gender is another typical targeting filter for Facebook.
5. Keywords – Keywords will are based on a user’s profile information including Activities, Favorite Books, TV Shows, Movies, and more. I believe job titles are included in this field and I typically spend the most time trying to brainstorm effective keywords. What types of products do your customers like? What’s their job position within an organization? Spend time on this field and you’ll be rewarded.
6. Education – While you can target based on their level of education, this is most effective for targeting ads based on the schools that people went to. Want to announce a reunion for the University of Illinois class of 1996? This is a great way to promote it.
7. Workplaces – This is another great targeting filter. Often times you will know the companies that your target market works at. If you are looking to get new clients or looking to spread awareness within specific organizations, this filter can be priceless.
8. Relationship – Want to target people that are about to get married? This is a great tool for that. If you are a bar or club, you most likely want to go after those people that are single. While this filter can be useful, you also need to keep in mind that selecting any of these settings will remove all users that haven’t selected a relationship status in their profile.
9. Interested In – This factor is useful if a user’s sexual preferences are relevant to whatever you are advertising. I tend to skip this field for most of my ads.
10. Languages – If your ad is in English but the user speaks Chinese, it’s probably not a good idea to be displaying ads to them.
11. Connections – The connections fields were launched yesterday by Facebook and they enable you to include and exclude users based on pages, events, and applications that the users have joined and you happen to be the administrator of. If you’ve created a Page and don’t want the ads to display to people who have already joined, this is a great way to avoid duplicate clicks.
If you aren’t taking advantage of the numerous targeting factors then you aren’t using Facebook advertising effectively. In order to have an increased conversion rate on your advertisements, increase the targeting in order to make the advertisement more relevant for the users. Relevance will get people to respond to your ad.”
*****
Over the past couple weeks I’ve been writing about hints of new targeting features for Facebook Ads. As of today, those features have gone live. This evening Facebook posted a note on the Facebook Ads page about three new filters: Connections, Locations, and Birthdays. We already posted about the multi-country advertisements but not about the additional two filters: connections and birthdays.
Connections enable advertisers to target members of groups, pages, or events that they own or target those users that are not already members. This avoids having ads show up for people that have already joined. Facebook is also now enabling advertisers to target those individuals who’s birthdays it is. These are extremely powerful targeting features that I’m sure advertisers will welcome.
Currently there are no advertising platforms (that I’m aware of) that provide this level of targeting capabilities. With these new features, Facebook will be able to increase revenue while increasing the effectiveness of ads. One thing that has been challenging for Facebook is to receive high conversion levels but with these new targeting features, creative advertisers will be able to increase their conversion levels.
One group that can also benefit from this new ad platform is application developers. Want to get new users that aren’t yet using your application? Now you can exclude all users of your existing application and only target those that haven’t installed it. This is something that as far as I know, no cost-per-install networks are able to provide yet. Facebook has been heavily focused on improving their advertising offerings over the past few weeks and with this latest announcement, it’s clear that Facebook is looking to provide powerful tools for all advertisers.
Disney’s Bob Iger, Kids and Behavioral Tracking/Targeting: He Claims “Kids don’t care” about their Privacy
My friend the children’s TV activist Peggy Charren, back during the 1970’s and 1980’s, had a favorite expression when it came to dealing with self-serving media moguls who trampled on concerns about kids: “I’d like to wash your mouth out with soap,” she would exclaim (given her tenacity, they knew she meant business). Robert Iger, the head of Disney, is quoted in Reuters saying that: “If we could sell your behavior to an advertiser — I am actually pretty bullish about what technology is going to allow in terms of behavioral tracking. I think we are going to have information to sell to marketers.”
Unbelievably, Mr. Iger, when citing concerns over privacy, says that: “Kids don’t care,”…adding that when he talked to his adult children about their online privacy concerns “they can’t figure out what I’m talking about.”
Mr. Iger has just dramatically tarnished the Disney brand, by suggesting that it’s okay to engage in digital marketing and data collection to children and adolescents. Not only is he thumbing his nose at the bipartisan Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, but the growing concern health, parenting and children’s groups have regarding youth privacy and consumer protection. Instead of Disney being a youth industry leader when it comes to digital marketing, it appears the company is shirking what its role should be. Peggy–I hope you still have one of those bars of soap!
Audience Science Behavioral Targeting System: “200 billion behavioral events to look at every day”
From this week’s Behavioral Insider (discussing Hulu’s move into behavioral targeting). The behavioral industry still claims all this data collection and targeting is privacy friendly because it’s allegedly not “personally identifiable.” We are glad that Congress, the FTC and the EU are now examining this industry.
Here’s an excerpt from the story:
As part of an effort to support the massive amounts of data coming in from the little tags, AudienceScience has built the capability to pull and store more than two billion behavioral events each day. The system stores the data for 90 days before purging it. “We have about 200 billion behavioral events to look at every day,” [Jeff Hirsch, president and CEO of AudienceScience] says. “So, when we have advertisers searching for people that have researched and want specific things, we have massive amounts of information to create target segments, all with non-personally identifiable information.”Â
source: Targeting Consumers Anywhere They Consume Media. Laurie Sullivan. Mediapost. July 22, 2009 [reg. required]
PS:Â the author tells me that the “two billion” and “200 billion” behavioral events describe different Audience Science metrics.
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.
Behavioral Marketers Collect “terabytes” of data on consumers via cookies and other techniques [Annals of Behavioral Targeting]
Take a quick look at the first two graphs from this week’s Behavioral Insider newsletter. And keep in mind that the online marketing industry is currently working to prevent Congress from enacting safeguards that protect consumers, including their privacy:
The lack of technology that sorts and stores the mounds of data collected from cookies and ad tags could contribute to the slow adoption of behavioral targeting, according to some advertising insiders.
The culprit becomes the terabytes of data from hundreds of thousands of ad impressions collecting geographic location, content on page, time of day, interaction with ads, frequency in which ads serve up, and more.
source: Behavioral Targeting Creates Filter And Purge Technology Gap. Laurie Sullivan. Behavioral Insider. July 16, 2009
Viacom/MTV Uses Neuromarketing to research ads in video games [Annals of Neuromarketing]
As we explained last month in our congressional testimony on behavioral targeting and advertising, the growing reliance on neuroscience-related techniques to design digital marketing messages is a serious policy issue. Here’s an excerpt from a recent Viacom/MTV press release on a study it commissioned:
Using breakthrough biometric monitoring, a new study by MTV Networks has uncovered the most effective strategies for marketers to reach casual gamers. The study, “Game Plan: Strategies for Marketing through Casual Games,†found that casual games command 99 percent focused attention from consumers. By tracking respondents’ hand sweat, heart rate, respiration, movement patterns and visual attention during game play, the research yielded a clear road map for harnessing that engagement through targeted ad formats, lengths and integrations.
“Casual gaming continues to grow as a dominant online activity, and marketers have more opportunities than ever to connect with these highly engaged consumers from nearly every demo,†said Nada Stirratt, Executive Vice President of Digital Advertising, MTV Networks. “This study provides a blueprint on how to leverage casual games for every marketing objective from driving awareness to increasing purchase intent to building a brand.â€
The study was presented today to marketers and media buyers at MTV Networks headquarters in New York.  The research revealed a number of strategies for marketers looking to connect with casual gamers:
o    Get Ahead of the Action: Video placed before action games is among the most effective use of online video, commanding up to 85 percent focused attention.
o    Shorter is Better: A fifteen second pre-roll ad before a game commands 85 percent focused attention for the duration of the ad. Significantly, longer pre-rolls can be damaging, as aided recall for these drops by more than half.
o    Get in the Game: Brand integrations, or advergames, are best for games requiring higher levels of mental processing and focused attention. In games where brands achieved fifteen seconds or more of focused attention, aided recall approached 80 percent.
o    Anticipation = Opportunity: Consumer anticipation is a powerful opportunity — the load screen, menu pages and reward screens in games represent ideal placements for brand messaging, as gamers have the highest level of cognitive processing while waiting for their game to begin.
“Game Plan†tracked eye and biometric measures of respondents as they engaged in four online gaming experiences. These included a combination of branded and unbranded games, as well as video and display advertising around the games. Biometric signals were integrated with data obtained from eye trackers, which measured players’ visual attention and pupillary response…
source: Breakthrough Biometric Research Uncovers the Most Effective Advertising Strategies for Connecting with Casual Gamers: New MTV Networks Study Reveals The “Game Plan†For Casual Gaming Advertising. June 10, 2009