Are they a lobbyist to reach out to the GOP or a mere “customer service” representative who can help guide powerful politicians through the Facebook social media marketing maze? Read this excerpt from Clickz.com and decide for yourself:
Facebook has hired a Republican Party insider to beef up its political outreach team. Former digital strategist at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Katie Harbath…will join the firm’s small Washington, D.C.-based team as associate manager, policy…The company considers the role to be a customer service position, aimed at helping legislators and their staffers, congressional committees and political campaigns make better use of Facebook. Until now, Facebook’s U.S. Politics Page, politics-related media partnerships, and Capitol Hill outreach has been handled primarily by two Facebook public policy execs, Adam Conner Andrew Noyes, the firm’s manager, public policy communications….[and] Twitter also is building out a D.C. staff. In January, Adam Sharp, was set to begin his work as the company’s government and political partnerships manager. He is charged with helping lawmakers, politicians, and government staff take better advantage of the micro-blogging site.
Category: social media marketing
Pepsi Exec Tells What Keeps Facebook’s Zuckerberg “Up at Night”–Guess What it Is [Annals of Social Media Marketing & Privacy]
Shiv Singh is the head of digital marketing for Pepsi’s beverage line-up. At a recent “Social Media Week” event, he discussed how brands should increase efforts to “listen” to social media conversations. Mr. Singh said that:
“Twenty-five percent of all time spent online is spent on Facebook. We only get to see and listen to a small slice of that. That [larger slice] is the missing link. We sometimes overstate the benefits of listening and we don’t acknowledge the fact that we’re not listening to everything as a whole. Mark Zuckerberg and his team at Facebook are brilliant, but if there’s one thing that keeps him awake at night it’s that the default state for profiles is not public.â€
No doubt, if privacy advocates and responsible policymakers–and concerned Facebook users–hadn’t objected, the profiles would be public by default. Given that Facebook’s ad revenues are connected to having such a goldmine of data free to its partners, having profiles be public by default would give us privacy nightmares.
Leading Health, Privacy, and Consumer Groups Call on FTC to Protect Adolescent Privacy online
For Immediate Release:Â Feb. 18, 2011
Child, Health and Consumer Advocates Ask FTC for Teen Privacy Protections, including Do-Not-Track and No Behavioral Targeting
Today a Coalition of Child, Health and Consumer Advocates filed comments on the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed privacy framework asking for increased privacy protections for adolescents.  The coalition includes leading advocates such as the Center for Digital Democracy, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Pediatrics, Children Now, and the Consumer Federation of America.
Privacy protections are needed as teens are increasingly subjected to privacy invasions online. Teens are using new media technologies for key social interactions and to explore their identities. This increased use of digital media subjects them to wholesale data collection and profiling of even their most intimate interactions with friends, family, and schools. Meanwhile, recent research in psychology and neuroscience reveals that teens are more prone to risky behavior when their anxieties and peer relations are exploited. Privacy protections are needed to keep the online world social and safe.
Companies should not use data to behaviorally profile teens. The framework should also provide enhanced choice for adolescents, including a Do Not Track feature. In implementing “privacy by design,†companies should consider the needs and vulnerabilities of teens. They should address those vulnerabilities by, for example, minimizing the amount of data collected from teens. Data that is collected should be retained for only short periods and should be afforded greater security.
“Teens live online today,†said Guilherme Roschke, attorney for CDD. “This time of development and maturation requires privacy protections. Teens cannot go it alone against the vast data collection and profiling infrastructure of new media technologies that not even adults can understand.â€
“Because of their avid use of new media, adolescents are primary targets for digital marketing,†explained co-signer Kathryn C. Montgomery, Ph.D. “The unprecedented ability of digital technologies to track and profile individuals across the media landscape, and to engage in sophisticated forms of targeting, puts these young people at special risk of compromising their privacy.â€
The full coalition includes:
Center for Digital Democracy, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Pediatrics, Berkeley Media Studies Group, a project of the Public Health Institute, Children Now, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, David VB Britt, Retired CEO, Sesame Workshop, Ellen Wartella, Kathryn Montgomery, National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity, a project of Public Health Law & Policy, The Praxis Project, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Public Good, Public Health Institute, Tamara R. Piety, and World Privacy Forum
Guilherme Roschke
Staff Attorney / Fellow
Institute for Public Representation
First Amendment and Media Center
Georgetown University Law Center
T:(202) 662-9543
F:(202) 662-9634
gcr22@law.georgetown.edu
http://www.law.georgetown.edu/clinics/ipr/
**********
Statement of Jeff Chester on the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force Privacy and E-Commerce: a Bill of Behavioral Targeting “Rights” for Online Marketers?
The Obama Administration asks some important questions about protecting the privacy of U.S. consumers. But given the growth of online data collection that threatens our privacy, including when consumers are engaged in financial, health, and other personal transactions (including involving their families), this new report offers us a digital déjà vu.  The time for questions has long passed.
Instead of real laws protecting consumers, we are offered a vague “multi-stakeholder†process to help develop “enforceable codes of conduct.â€Â If the Commerce Department really placed the interests of consumers first, it would have been able to better articulate in the report how the current system threatens privacy.   They should have been able to clearly say what practices are right and wrong—such as the extensive system of online behavioral tracking that stealthily shadows consumers—whether on their personal computer or a mobile phone.  The paper should have firmly articulated what the safeguards should be for financial, health and other sensitive data. The report should have rejected outright any role for self-regulation, given its failures in the online data collection marketplace. While the report supports a FIPPS framework, these principles can be written in a way that ultimately endorses existing business practices for online data collection and targeting.
This illustrates one of the basic problems with the Administration’s approach to protecting consumer privacy online. The Commerce Department is focused on promoting the interests of industry and business—not consumers. It cannot play the role of an independent, honest broker; consequently it should not be empowered to create a new Privacy Policy Office.  Having the Commerce Department play a role in protecting privacy will enable the data collection foxes to run the consumer privacy henhouse. We call on the Administration and Congress to address this issue. A new Privacy Policy Office should be independent and operate under the Administrative Procedures Act—ensuring there are safeguards for meaningful public participation and transparency.
The Commerce paper’s real goal is to help U.S. Internet data collection companies operate in the EU, Asia/Pacific and other markets as “privacy-free†zones. Under the cover of promoting “innovation†and trade, I fear the U.S. will craft a crazy-quilt code of conduct regimes that they will claim should pass muster in the EU (which has a more comprehensive framework to protect privacy). The Obama Administration appears to be promoting a kind of “separate, but equal†framework, where it will argue that no matter how weak U.S. privacy rules are, other countries should accept them as the equivalent of a stronger approach. The new paper should have acknowledged the U.S. has to play catch-up with the EU when it comes to protecting consumer privacy.
We have been promised meetings with the new White House subcommittee on privacy, where consumer and privacy groups will raise these and other concerns.
IAB Gets a new Chance to Play Constructive Role as Randall Rothenberg Goes to Time Inc.
The departure of Randall Rothenberg, the head of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, provides a critical opportunity for the IAB to revisit its position on protecting consumer online privacy (including Do Not Track). Under Mr. Rothenberg, the IAB lobbied Congress to restrict the FTC’s ability to protect consumers, including on privacy. With new leadership, the IAB could begin playing a more constructive role by working with consumer groups to build a consensus on federal privacy rules. Instead of confrontation and denial, we hope the online ad lobby pursues serious engagement with privacy advocates.  The IAB has become just another inside the Beltway lobbying group–and has lost credibility among many policymakers. A new IAB leader should be someone who can really help the mission of the industry by engaging in the kind of diplomacy and debate that supports the higher purposes of online advertising, digital publishing, and the public interest.
At Time, Mr. Rothenberg will now be in charge of its online ad network, which uses behavioral targeting and other interactive data techniques. How Time responds to the growing call for better consumer privacy will be one of Mr. Rothenberg’s new challenges.
Five Ways to Protect Privacy
[a version we wrote of this ran in Multichannel News]
Five Ways for Digital Marketers to Protect Consumer Privacy
If George Orwell were writing today, 1984’s Winston Smith would be working as a “Doublespeak†specialist crafting privacy policies and creating self-regulatory regimes. That’s not what consumers and citizens need in the interactive marketing era.  All Americans should have their privacy respected and protected when they go online—including when they use mobile phones.
1.    Tell your users what you actually say to your advertisers—about how the profiling and targeting process really works. There is a disconnect that is unfair and deceptive between what companies say in their privacy policies and pitch to their clients and potential partners.  Be honest about the “360 degree†ways you engage in online marketing.
2.    Don’t collect information and target consumers based on their interests in finance and health. These two most “sensitive†categories should be opt-in only.  When consumers go online for loans, credit, mortgages, and health concerns they require the upmost privacy. Although online financial, health and so-called lead-generation advertising is big business, consumers should not be forced to have their online financial and health behavior stealthfully-tracked and compiled. The risks to consumers are great if we don’t develop special rules for this data.
3.    Racial and ethnic profiling data should also be opt-in. Hispanics, African-Americas, Asian-Americans and other minorities are increasingly the focus of a growing behavioral targeting and online marketing apparatus. In the “offline†world, we have witnessed a disturbing use of racial profiling practices to discriminate against individuals. In today’s online environment, users are being identified as being a member of a racial or ethnic group without either their awareness or consent. While we all want to see the growth of diversely owned online publishing, it should not be done at the expense of civil liberties in the digital era. We must prevent the growth of online racial profiling, that when tied to income, geography and other data can be used to create 21st Century forms of discrimination.
4.    Don’t use neuromarketing and other subliminal and subconscious-based advertising.  Fortune 1000 advertisers and online marketers such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Google are using new forms of ad testing and development involving the latest tools of neuroscience, such as fMRI’s and EEGs. Neuromarketing’s goal is to directly influence a consumer’s subconscious, and when combined with the power of online data targeting, offers powerful—and frightening—new forms of manipulation.
5.    Users need to consent to having their profiles be bought and sold on so-called online ad exchanges. Selling off the right to target a consumer online, via real-time auctions that happen in milliseconds, is dehumanizing. Nor should we permit the growing combination of offline and online databases to be used for targeting, including via these new digital auction houses.
Interactive marketing is now a fundamental operating principle for the cross-platform media economy throughout the world.  But right now, it’s a digital “wild west” that doesn’t serve the interests of consumers, citizens and most marketers.
Facebook to TV Business: We can boost your audience: “it’s all about making that data available”
Yesterday, Facebook pitched itself to the global commercial TV industry at MIPCOM. Facebooks’ EMEA rep Joanna Shields touted how Facebook could help generate more viewers and greater involvement with TV programs, such as “X-Factor.” Ms. Shields said that Facebook Places location targeting system might let its users “check in” to a program: “…you could check into a television show and tell everyone what’s happening. You could say I am watching this and you got to see it… It could become a very powerful marketing tool at some stage…It’s all about data, it’s all about making that data available.” Other quotes from Ms. Shields: “The voice of your fan can be amplified to a chorus, and a focus group can be the size of a country…30% of all TV viewers have admitted to being logged onto to Facebook while watching a TV show…[TV program] stories are the beginning of the conversation, and not the last word…I can see someday the ability to sign in using your Facebook ID to a show.”
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.
The new “Digital Advertising Alliance” self-reg plan. See if it tells consumers what its sponsor ad groups really say to each other. That they track and target your “digital footprint”
On Monday, the new self-regulation magical “icon” that is designed to make the online ad industry’s privacy problems disappear will be unveiled. A new group called the “Digital Advertising Alliance” will unveil the icon-based plan–all timed to help head-off the kinds of protections and safeguards consumers require. The current financial crisis affecting tens of millions of Americans require that government and big business groups do more than pay digital lip service to consumer protection.
As a kind of litmus test for the new self-regulation effort, see if the icon and the information connected to it really informs you about how data on you is collected and used for profiling, tracking and targeting. For example, last week, the Interactive Advertising Association (IAB), one of the key backers of the new Alliance, released a guide to targeting consumers at the local level. Here’s excerpts of what they say. See if that little icon is being honest when you click it. Of course, we really require rules that eliminate the kind and amount of data that can be collected on you and you family and friends in the first place–as well as honest disclosure on the process. Note as well that all that data on you is expensive–and others are cashing in on information that belongs to you! From the new “Targeting Local Markets” guide:
Explicit profile data Targeting. definition–
Explicit data is “registration quality data†collected either online or offline. For online registration data, the user has certain attributes in his or her registration profile at a particular site or service, and that data is associated with the user’s Web cookie or some sort of audience database when the user next logs in. Offline registration data includes the sorts of data held in the massive offline direct response industry databases built up over the last several decades. These are then matched to a user online when that user logs in somewhere that is a partner of the data company. The site at which the user logs in, usually an online mail or similar site, sends the name/email combination to the data company, which then makes the match and sends back data…pricing–In general, first party data commands a far more variable premium than third party data…Third party data is usually available in much larger quantities, and yet there is often a fee of anywhere between $0.50 to $2.00 or more paid to the data provider by the ad seller – thus increasing the cost of goods sold (COGS) on the ad, and therefore increasing the price…
Behavioral Targeting (Implicit profile data Targeting)-definition-
Behavioral Targeting is the ability to serve online advertising based on profiles that are inferred from an individual user’s technical footprint and viewing behavior…As the medium has grown from a “browsing†experience to interactional so have the levels of information gathered. Newer forms of information include the data collected about influences, social preferences through social networks and an individual user’s content created online…The data is often gathered in real-time and can be used for real-time decision-making so that relevant advertising can be delivered dynamically to an individual user during their online session…Behaviorally targeted advertising commands a higher price because of targeted placement versus general run-of-site (ROS) advertising…Behavioral Targeting can be highly accurate when the user is leaving a digital footprint of their activities as they move through the Web.
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.