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…

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 consentIndeed, 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.”

The new Self-Reg Online Ad Plan–Digital “Deja-vu” All Over Again! See What they Say about the NAI Now!

In 1999, online marketers promised consumers they would protect their privacy.  Leading interactive ad companies created the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) as a scheme to head-off proposals by the FTC that would help regulate online profiling.  Now it turns out, says the online ad industry, the NAI really couldn’t work.  So they have developed yet another self-regulatory effort.  Here’s what online marketers told Ad Week today:  “The move marks the most significant regulation the industry has imposed on companies and goes significantly farther than the Network Advertising Initiative, which held third-party advertisers needed to allow consumers to opt out. Doing so, however, was a cumbersome process.“   So the industry didn’t tell the FTC or consumers that the NAI wasn’t consumer friendly and “cumbersome.”  Yet they have used the NAI as a political bulwark to head-off consumer protection rules.  Shame on them.  Meanwhile, in the same story, it’s revealed that only now–as pressure mounts to protect online consumers—does the industry recognize protecting privacy is important:  “The guys that drive the industry have figured out this privacy stuff does matter,” said Scott Meyer, CEO of Better Advertising Project, which will help companies comply with the requirements.

The new “aboutads.info” website established by the industry fails to provide consumers serious information about cookies and behavioral targeting and profiling.  It reveals how little the industry is committed to protecting privacy and informing U.S. consumers about the process.  To see how this new plan is really designed to protect the data collection business, examine the rules for sensitive information. Beyond the children’s privacy law (COPPA) we got enacted in 1998, this scheme permits full-scale collection and use of financial and health information.   Under the “new” self-reg policies, the narrowest of definitions for respecting your financial and health information has been created:  “Entities should not collect and use financial account numbers, Social Security numbers, pharmaceutical prescriptions or medical records about a specific individual for OBA without Consent.”
Shame on them.  Online marketers spent some $3 billion last year on online financial marketing and will spend $1 billion for pharma and health related targeting in 2010. Consumer data collected by online financial and health marketers, much of which is sensitive and personal, is ok under the industry’s “new” plan.

PS:  The folks at Better Advertising need to take a course in online marketing–and change its new website so it really informs consumers about the process.  What it has now would get a C-minus in any class on online marketing.  They can start with 360 degree targeting, online and offline profiling, rich media, a serious description of online auctions, the tracking process, work on “engagement” and neuromarketing,” social media marketing, etc.  Consumers deserve better.

Online Marketers, Privacy & Self-Regulation: “Repeatedly Failed Promises Syndrome”

To help undermine the impact of the forthcoming FTC proposal to protect consumer privacy, a coalition of online ad lobby groups will unveil yet another self-regulation plan.  According to Mediapost, online consumers will soon see “[I]cons to signify behavioral advertising — or serving ads based on people’s Web activity.”  Since 1999, online ad groups have rolled out self-regulatory regimes promising to protect consumers online.  Each has failed to do so.   This new effort involves the very same groups and companies that offered self-regulatory promises in the past.   For example, see the World Privacy Forum’s report on the failure of the Network Advertising Initiative’s self-reg schemes; that group is part of the new effort, btw.

This new effort is seriously flawed–and before marketers and advertisers adopt it, it must be independently evaluated by consumer groups, independent academics, and the FTC.  We believe that the system will fail to protect consumers–because it will not candidly inform them about how the data is collected and used.  Meanwhile, in a revealing flip-flip, the IAB’s UK counterpart deep-sixed its just released safeguard on retargeting.  According to a new report, “[O]nline advertising trade body the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has withdrawn a code of practice which recommended that behavioural advertising retargeting cookies should expire after 48 hours. The IAB’s Affiliate Marketing Council (AMC) published the code last week. It applied to the practice of ‘retargeting’ web users who had visited a site with ads for that site on other people’s websites, using cookies to track their movements and activities…That code has been withdrawn and will be reworked after further industry consultation, though, the IAB said. The code has disappeared from the IAB’s website.”

Consumers and citizens require real safeguards governed by law and regulation–not flimsy digital promises designed to sanction ever-expanding data collection practices.

Google Exec on Behavioral Targeting: “massive benefit for advertisers” [note he didn’t call it “Preference” Marketing!

Online industry reaction to the Wall Street Journal privacy series, and generally, illustrate a basic disconnect in how they view the privacy concerns raised by digital profiling, tracking and targeting.  Leading online marketers frequently claim that behavioral targeting and related data-focused techniques are actually good for the consumer.  The problem, they argue, is that consumers lack basic information about the process.  Presumably, they believe, if we really understood how it worked, we would be relieved.  In truth, of course, the opposite is true.  The more one knows about the processes underlying what the online ad industry claims is a digital marketing “ecosystem,” the more a consumer and citizen should be alarmed.

In the UK, EU and in the U.S., companies like Google and Microsoft are working together on PR campaigns to convince both the public and policymakers all is well with behavioral profiling for marketing.  One Google executive in the UK recently told New Media Age that “The use of behavioural targeting is growing and is a massive benefit for advertisers wishing to serve more relevant ads. It also helps pay for content and services. But there is user confusion about how it works…Lack of understanding is the biggest problem facing behavioural targeting in the UK. There’s a knowledge gap between those who work in the industry and are familiar with terms such as cookies, remarketing and aggregated data, and users who search the web for information and goods. It’s our job, along with the rest of industry, to inform those users about how online advertising works and the choices they have.” 

But in reality, the industry–including Google–has failed to be candid with consumers and policymakers about all the data collection practices that are deployedsuch as by Google subsidiaries Doubleclick, Admob, & Teracent, for example.

Microsoft is also very bullish about behavioral targeting–especially since it’s in a global digital fight with Google to deliver data-enriched ad targeting for the biggest brands.  In the same New Media Age issue [22 July 2010], Zuzanna Gierlinska, head of Microsoft Media Network at Microsoft Advertising explains that:  “We’re not saying you should use targeting – whether that’s behavioural targeting or re-messaging – just to push conversion.  But it can have a strong brand uplift. People come into a channel, see a nice creative with high-impact imagery and then go away. But that message stays with them.”  The article goes on to explain that: It’s this ability to talk to people on an ongoing basis, and give them a better experience, that’s the key to why combining re-messaging and behavioural targeting with a standard brand buy works, argues Gierlinska. For example, with re-messaging, users are already a warm lead, while behavioural targeting tightens the focus on users who are demonstrating an interest… This positive experience benefits both conversion and brand uplift among the target audience. “Targeting benefits everyone,” Gierlinska says. “It benefits the publisher because it’s not wasting impressions or serving ads to just anyone. It benefits the advertiser because it has efficiencies with its media buy. But it’s also really beneficial to the users because they’re getting relevant messaging that’s timely and ideally helping their productivity in what they’re doing online, rather than just being served random messages.”

Much of how the industry addresses the behavioral targeting and its related data mining application are rationalizations [maybe all their therapists are on vacation or Freudians!  Just kidding].  But it reflects a failure by industry leaders to recognize a serious problem that affects the public.  That’s the same kind of `it’s all good for us, regardless of what we do’ behavior that led to the recent–and ongoing–global financial collapse.

Draftfcb uses neuromarketing, academic ties to create Institute for Subliminal Advertising

Actually, the ad giant says it’s calling its new research arm the Institute of Decision Making. But given their plan to harness neuromarketing to better tap into the “instinctual ways that consumers behave,”  we think it should be renamed.  At the Cannes ad festival, Draftfcb discussed, according to a report, “how advertising messages have a mere 6.5 seconds to make a connection with the audience.”  A Draft exec. told the New York Times that “[U]nderstanding the foundation of consumers’ behavior decisions has become more complex [as they] consume more information and make decisions faster” [than before].   Hence, marketers like Draft–whose clients include MillerCoors and Levis–want to use neuroscience to create ads that deliberately bypass  a consumers rational decision-making system.   The ad agency is working with academics at UC Berkeley and Stanford–raising questions about the role scholars should play helping marketers–or anyone else–deliberately tap into our subconscious minds in order to influence our behavior.

Ad Agencies Expand the role of Neuromarketing: Time for EU and US Regulation

The continued growth of neuromarketing to create advertising messages that are crafted to target a consumer (and citizen) subconscious mind should be a top policymaker concern–and we have raised this with both the FTC and EU.  Here’s an excerpt from a recent major marketing company’s plans to expand its neuroscience based efforts:


Millward Brown has tasked its head of innovations Graham Page with setting up a neuroscience division with the goal of supplementing its existing advertising research offer with techniques that aim to uncover the inner workings of the human mind.

Page, who takes the role of executive vice president of consumer neuroscience, said the agency was banking on the division as being one of its big growth areas this year.

Advertisers, he said, were becoming more receptive to approaches like electroencephalography (EEG) brainwave measurement, eye tracking and implicit association tests – all of which will be rolled out across Millward Brown globally in the coming weeks and months.

Page said the company had been experimenting with neuroscience techniques for six years, but the creation of a dedicated division marked “an important milestone”, while the research approaches themselves promised “a different perspective” on how consumers respond to advertising and brand communications… Page said some 60 projects had already been completed across the US, UK and Europe, with clients including Panasonic, Kraft and Royal Mail.Partner companies include EmSense, which supplies Millward Brown with the EEG equipment used to record consumer brain activity.

Where Does Google and Microsoft Really Stand–with the IAB and ad lobby or for Consumer Protection?

Both Google and Microsoft serve on the executive committee of the Interactive Ad Bureau, a trade association fighting against consumer privacy proposals in Congress and the FTC.  The IAB just sent a letter signed by other ad and marketing industry lobbyists opposing Obama and congressional proposals to expand the ability of the FTC to better protect consumers.  My CDD just sent emails to officials at both Google and Microsoft asking them to clarify where they stand on the IAB’s letter [see below].  Do our two leading online marketing leaders support financial and regulatory reform, including protecting privacy?  Or does the IAB letter–and Google and Microsoft’s own role helping govern that trade lobby group–really reflect their own position against better consumer protection? Not coincidently, the IAB’s PAC has expanded its PAC contribution giving to congress.

Why does the IAB and other ad groups want to scuttle a more capable FTC?  Think online financial products, including mortgages, pharmaceutical operated social networks, digital ads targeting teens fueling the youth obesity crisis, ads created by brain research to influence our subconscious minds, a mobile marketing system that targets us because it knows our location, interests and behavior.  The IAB is terrified that a responsible consumer protection agency will not only peek under the ‘digital hood,’ as the Obama FTC is currently doing.  But actually propose policies and bring cases that rein in irresponsible and harmful business practices.  So Microsoft and Google:  who are with?  Consumers or the special interest advertising lobby?
*****

letter to Google:  22 January 2010

Dear Pablo, Jane, Peter and Alan:

As you may know, the Interactive Advertising Bureau recently sent a letter  to Congress, along with other ad related groups, opposing the expansion of FTC regulatory authority as proposed in the Consumer Financial Protection Agency bill and related reauthorization [http://www.clickz.com/3636212].

Google serves on the executive committee of the IAB’s board.  For the record, does Google support IAB’s stance that, as news reports say, if the FTC is given additional enforcement and penalty-making authority, “the FTC could essentially act as an unelected legislature governing industries and sectors across the economy.”

If Google disagrees with the IAB’s letter, I ask that it make its position public as soon as possible.  I also respectfully request Google state its position regarding the Consumer Financial Protection Agency proposal, as well as its position on expanding FTC authority.

Regards,

Jeff Chester
Center for Digital Democracy
www.democraticmedia.org

letter to Microsoft:  22 Jan. 2010:

Dear Mike and Frank:

As you may know, the Interactive Advertising Bureau recently sent a letter to Congress, along with other ad related groups, opposing the expansion of FTC regulatory authority as proposed in the Consumer Financial Protection Agency bill and related reauthorization [http://www.clickz.com/3636212].

Microsoft serves on the executive committee of the IAB’s board.  For the record, does Microsoft support IAB’s stance that, as news reports say, if the FTC is given additional enforcement and penalty-making authority, “the FTC could essentially act as an unelected legislature governing industries and sectors across the economy.”

If Microsoft disagrees with the IAB’s letter, I ask that it make its position public as soon as possible.  I also respectfully request Microsoft state its position regarding the Consumer Financial Protection Agency proposal, as well as its position on expanding FTC authority.

Regards,

Jeff Chester
Center for Digital Democracy
www.democraticmedia.org

Which “Network/Entertainment” Company is Expanding its use of Neuromarketing? NeuroFocus Looks for Specialist to help that showbiz client “Develop actionable insights from neurological studies”

Companies that rely on influencing brain behavior in order to achieve marketing goals are treading on a very slippery regulatory slope.  Nielsen-backed NeuroFocus is currently searching for a “Partner” in its “Consulting Practice.”  That person will be “responsible for the development and presentation of neurological studies commissioned by our key client in the network/entertainment industry…Of primary focus will be…developing insights from the neurological study results to benefit the client leading to a lasting relationship. Summary of essential job functions:


• Develop actionable insights from neurological studies
• Present results of neurological studies directly to clients
• Deep understanding of entertainment industry / network & cable television industry
• Experience in management consulting, market research, and advertising…

NeuroFocus, Inc. is the market leader in bringing neuroscience to the world of advertising, messaging, packaging, and product development. NeuroFocus clients include Fortune 100 companies across consumer package goods, food and beverage, entertainment, financial services, automotive, consumer electronics and retail sectors. NeuroFocus clients also include major companies in the TV and Motion Picture industries.”

CNN uses Neuromarketing to Help Advertisers on its news site

The lead ad in the Dec. 14, 2009 print edition of Brandweek is from CNN.com touting its “more effective ad units.”  The trade ad from the “#1 news homepage” says that it tested its ad products using “objective biometric and eye tracking researching.”   CNN engaged the services of neuromarketer Innerscope Research and its co-founder, Harvard professor Dr. Carl Marci.  Innerscope just became the first “neuroscience- based biometric company validated by the Advertising Research Foundation’s [ARF] review process.”  According to ARF, Innerscope:
 “Addresses all levels of impact and response to media with its capabilities;
• Combines well-developed, biological-psychological concepts and theories with both scientifically-validated tools and creative approaches to research problems;
• Delivers “superb” scientific and analytic expertise, with a scientific approach that supports a consistent, thorough validation program;
• Provides results that are reliable and valid, helping clients to make proper advertising and marketing decisions; and
• Possesses tools and methods that can be used for any communication element, including hard-to-measure areas such as product placement, ads in video games and social media.” 

Among the proven benefits to advertisers of its interactive ad units (based on this research) says CNN.com in its Brandweek ad are:
“17% increase in thought and processing; 21% higher emotional engagement; 22% better recognition; 31%  faster recognition; 50% increase in thought and processing; 56% higher emotional engagement.”