Category: behavioral targeting watch

Those who gain access to our consumer data: “will be the new kingmakers”

As we have explained all along, the ability to collect and analyze data about us and our social networks is the “DNA” of contemporary advertising and marketing.  There is a very thoughtful piece in “Metrics Insider,“ and I hope you will look at this excerpt:

“The future of advertising is not about social, not about viral videos, not about mobile, not about any new medium or any new ad unit — but about data. Those who know what to do with this will be the new kingmakers, the new rulers of Madison Avenue — or the creators of a new Avenue of media…The critical component that makes this new world work is data — not simply general research data, but data about you. This goes far beyond just behavioral targeting, to your preferences, your interests, your actions — all of the signals you send as you move through the grand stage of life. The revelation is that this new world is no longer the far-off land on the horizon — we’ve hit the beach.”

 from:  Death Of The Impression/Rise Of The Data Economy.  Michael D. Andrews.  Mediapost.  February 18, 2010.

Buzz and all that Social Media Data `Jazz’

As we explained to reporters, the larger issue to be addressed when discussing Google’s Buzz is the  role of social media marketing and our privacy.  There’s a race to “monetize” our relationships and connections–the so-called social graph.  It wasn’t a coincidence that at the same time Google launched books it acquired social media marketing company Aardvark.    Here is an insightful excerpt from this week’s Search Insider:

” …by building its own social tools into the growing user base for Gmail, Apps and iGoogle, Google’s algorithms will be able to see what sorts of conversations, questions or responses you offer not only through email correspondence or in a collaborative exchange on Wave, but also via Aardvark and, by extension, Facebook and Twitter.  Which represents an opportunity to serve highly targeted, extremely relevant ads in ways that go well beyond the keyword search.”

MicroHoo & Digital Data Consolidation: Despite DoJ okay, FTC Needs to Act and Protect Consumer Privacy

Today’s announcement that Microsoft and Yahoo have received clearance from the DoJ and EU to proceed with its partnership continues the global trend towards online marketing consolidation.  Given Google’s dominance in search, the Microsoft `helps save Yahoo deal’ creates what some hope will be more robust competition in the search market.  But the real issue with the deal is data privacy.  That’s why the Federal Trade Commission needs to dig into this new partnership and ensure consumer privacy is protected.

AOL: “we live and breathe data,” inc. Behavioral Targeting & Retargeting

Here’s what AOL says it can do for marketers who want to target users [excerpt]:
You wouldn’t order pizza from a bank. So why would you try to sell a luxury travel package to a high school student?…

Behavioral targeting
Target consumers based on what they read – and where they click.

Audience behaviors: Hit your audience sweet spot. AOL Advertising observes consumer behavior (anonymously) across thousands of websites, then organizes people into groups based on their interests. Choose from over 350 pre-packaged audiences…With our LeadBack suite, you can retarget consumers who have… – Visited your website (Advertiser LeadBack)
– Seen or clicked on your ad creative (Creative LeadBack)
– Visited a webpage that you’re sponsoring (Sponsorship LeadBack)
– NOT visited your website – a great way to reach more unique visitors (Reverse LeadBack)…Demographic/Household: Target individuals, households or sites based on user registration data.
– Survey-Based: Target users based on their responses to consumer survey questions (e.g., MRI).
– Purchase-Based: Target users based on products they’ve purchased…Look-Alike Modeling: Target users who exhibit similar characteristics to your customers (or other valuable audiences).

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and AOL Advertising also says that “we live and breathe data…AOL’s new content management system, Seed, uses advanced algorithms to measure consumer demand and determine the next hot topics.”

Microsoft to Advertisers: “Behavioural targeting is transforming the capabilities of online advertising”

In a recent post, Microsoft extolled the virtues of using its behavioral targeting service profiling mobile phone users.  It explained that “campaigns can target individuals based on their online behaviour, including the sites that they visit, the actions they take and the terms they enter into search engines. In the US behavioural targeting on mobiles has already delivered increases in click-through rate of 215% for the fashion and beauty sector, 97% for airlines and 76% for auto advertisers.”

Microsoft Differs from IAB Lobby on Strengthening FTC Consumer Safeguards [via a letter sent to CDD]

We asked both Microsoft and Google, which serve on the executive committee of the Interactive Ad Bureau [IAB]  trade lobbying group, whether they supported its recent letter opposing congressional action to strengthen the FTC. The letter was signed by IAB and other marketing and advertising organizations.  Microsoft has just replied.  We are glad they aren’t in lock-step with the ever so transparent–and terrified of consumer protection policy–IAB.  Here’s what they emailed me today:


Jeff,

 

Thank you for your inquiry.

 

As a company, Microsoft has not taken a position on the Consumer Protection Financial Agency bill.  As a whole, the bill is directed at other industry sectors.  Nor has Microsoft taken a position on the expansion of the Federal Trade Commission’s regulatory authority as proposed in that legislation.

 

Microsoft has supported the expansion of FTC authority, including in our longtime support for comprehensive federal privacy legislation and in a recent legislative proposal on protecting consumers related to cloud computing, where we said that the FTC should play a key role.  In the current environment, there ought to be better alternatives to guide the marketplace than de facto rulemaking through enforcement activity.

 

It is our view that there is merit to having FTC rulemaking authority mirror that of other agencies — we favor increased certainty and the ability for comment on proposed rules that will impact our industry.  At the same time, the reasons the FTC’s existing mechanisms were put in place (as articulated in the industry letter you cited) should not be ignored.  Perhaps there is room for a balanced approach.

 

We understand that the status of the financial reform bill may be uncertain, at least the status of the relevant provision in the Senate version of that legislation.

 

We are open to discussing these issues further with you and other interested stakeholders.

 

Sincerely,

Frank Torres

Director, Consumer Affairs

What the new online ad industry-sponsored plan to identify Behavioral-Targeted Ads and Data Collection with the letter “i” really stands for: ineffective [And should be relabeled “ID”—Ineffective and Disingenuous]

Statement of Jeff Chester, executive director, Center for Digital Democracy, Washington, D.C. www.democraticmedia.org

A new self-regulatory scheme designed to head-off meaningful consumer privacy rules by Congress and the Federal Trade Commission is to be released today, according to several reports.  In addition, the Council of Better Business Bureaus has issued a RFP asking for technology solutions to bolster its online advertising self-regulatory approach.

These efforts are trying to place a flimsy band-aid over a gushing consumer data privacy wound.  Disclosure and more opportunities to opt-out is an online ad industry copout. Interactive marketers have created a data collection monster.  What’s needed are Fair Information Principles for the digital age, enforced by regulators, which dramatically minimize how much data is collected, stored, sold and resold–and limit how it can be used.   Instead we get fancy package relabeling fashioned by Madison Avenue.

Consumers face a bewildering, far-reaching, and complex system created by the online ad business that collects and harvests their information—including financial, health, and other personal details—that is non-transparent and unaccountable.  These new self-regulatory initiatives are disingenuous, because they don’t address the real problem:  that through a range of largely stealth online marketing techniques, digital media has been designed to ensure that consumers provide reams of their personal data.

As the FTC holds its second privacy hearing this Thursday, and as the House Commerce Committee finalizes its proposed legislation, policymakers must ask themselves:  how can we do a better job protecting consumers–instead of enabling the same kind of self-regulatory approach that helped bring our economy to the brink of disaster.  Consumers and lawmakers should especially be concerned that the approach backed by Truste and Future of Privacy Forum will permit monopolistic broadband Internet Service Providers, such as Comcast and AT&T,  to gather even more personal information on their subscribers.

Civil Liberties, Consumer & Privacy Groups to FCC: Protect Privacy


The American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, Privacy Lives, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Privacy Times, and U.S. PIRG told the FCC in a filing 22 January 2010 that: “There are significant problems concerning the collection and use of personal data by companies, especially sensitive data and children’s data; (2) The FCC should not rely on industry self-regulatory models because they do not adequately protect consumer privacy; and (3) The principles and standards that should serve as the foundation of consumer privacy protection should be the Fair Information Practices, especially as they are implemented in the OECD Guidelines on data privacy… The FCC should consider all avenues it may use to protect consumers, including exercising its ancillary jurisdiction to address broadband privacy issues, and working with Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), which has substantial expertise in consumer privacy protection.”


To learn more, click here.


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

Facebook to Graduate Students: Come help us data mine, boost online advertising, and we will pay your tuition

Facebook’s new academic Fellowship program places the social network along with other companies, such as Google, that like to tap into the “academy,” especially students.  Facebook says every day it “confronts among the most complex technical problems and we believe that close relationships with the academy will enable us to address many of these problems at a fundamental level and solve them.”   Among the areas Facebook wants inexpensive help with is “Data Mining and Machine Learning: learning algorithms, feature generation, and evaluation methods to produce effective online and offline models of behavioral signals.”  There are several other areas of interest, including “Internet Economics: auction theory and algorithmic game theory relevant to online advertising auctions.”

In exchange, Facebook offers to pay tuition, a $30k stipend, a travel allowance, and a chance for a paid summer internship.  The pitch must be endorsed by a faculty member that “clearly identifies the area of focus and applicability to Facebook.”   Our suggestion:  students should apply with projects which hold Facebook more accountable for its privacy and data collection practices.