Category: Global Digital Marketing

Facebook Tells Big Advertisers: We’re not “a pure social media site”

That’s what Facebook’s “Chief Revenue Officer” Mike Murphy told big brands like Coca Cola and Pepsi  at an invitation only event focused on better targeting teens and young adults.  The “PTTOW! Youth Media Summit is an annual, invite-only conference focused on the trillion dollar young adult market.  Bringing together the top marketers from the world’s most innovative companies, the event serves as a high-level forum for discussing youth media, marketing and culture across every major industry category.”

Facebook was there pitching its wares, helping big brands better target its users.  Mr. Murphy is quoted as saying that its Fan pages have become “a sustainable asset even after the campaign ends.” We all know that Facebook needs ads to thrive.  But it has to become honest with its users–and privacy and consumer protection policymakers–about the data it collects and how it’s used.  It’s also useful to know that Facebook doesn’t see itself only as a social media site–because it’s really part of online marketing [including increasingly for food and beverages linked to the global youth obesity crisis].

Do You Want Marketers to Target You via a “SocialDNA platform”?

33 Across is one of the recipients of a Google/WPP ad research reward.  As 33Across explains, it “enables brand and performance marketers to unlock the power of the Social Web. Our SocialDNAâ„¢ platform uses previously untapped social data sources, in combination with advanced social network algorithms, to create unique and scalable audience segments.”   In a job posting, they add that it can “enable advertisers to deliver high-performance media programs by activating the social graph around their brands. Our patent-pending SocialDNATM platform creates custom segments of people who are socially connected to a client’s existing customers, and reveals deep insights into the social network characteristics of a marketer’s brand. Our clients include many of the top online advertisers.”

Google & WPP Fund Academics to Help Expand Online Marketing Clout, including data collection

When drug companies fund pharmaceutical research at universities, questions on conflict and ethical behavior are raised.  So too when online marketers fund academic research designed to help Google and the largest advertisers better understand “how online media influences consumer behavior, attitudes and decision making.” Here are the new grants Google and ad giant WPP gave to 11 research projects:

  1. Michael Smith and Rahul Telang, Carnegie Mellon: Channels and Conflict: Efficient Marketing Strategies for Internet Digital Distribution Channels.
  2. Chrysanthos Dellarocas, Boston University and William Rand, University of Maryland: Media, Aggregators and the Link Economy: An Analytical and Empirical Examination of the Future of Content.
  3. Anita Elberse, Harvard University and Kenneth Wilbur, Duke University: What Is The Right Mix Between Offline And Online Advertising? A Study Of The Entertainment Industry.
  4. Arun Sundararajan, NYU and Gal Oestreicher-Singer, Tel Aviv University: The Breadth Of Contagion Of The Oprah Effect: Measuring The Impact Of Offline Media Events On Online Sales.
  5. Yakov Bart, Miklos Sarvary, Andrew Stephen, INSEAD: Consumer Responses To Mobile Location-Based Advertising.
  6. V Kumar, Vikram Bhaskaran and Rohan Mirchandani, Georgia State University: Measuring the Total Value of a Customer through Own Purchases and Word of Mouth Referrals: A Field Study in India.
  7. Alan Montgomery and Kinshuk Jerath, Carnegie Mellon: Predicting Purchase Conversion From Keyword Search Using Associative Networks.
  8. Shawndra Hill, University of Pennsylvania and Anand Venkataraman, 33Across: Collective Inference For Social Network-Based Online Advertising.
  9. Anindya Ghose, NYU: Modeling The Dynamics Of Consumer Behavior In Mobile Advertising And Mobile Social Networks.
  10. Jane Raymond, Bangor University: The Importance Of Relevance: Cognitive Science Research On Distraction By Advertisement On The Internet.
  11. Koen Pauwels, Dartmouth, Oliver Rutz, Yale, Shuba Srinivasan, Boston University and Randolph Bucklin, UCLA: Are Audience-Based Online Metrics Leading Indicators Of Brand Performance?  …
     Clients of WPP and Google may volunteer to provide case studies and data for research being conducted by award recipients. The specific study topics will dictate which clients and client data will be of most value to the research. The Program Committee will assist in identifying the most beneficial client contributions. The program sponsors (WPP & Google) will engage clients to solicit and secure their involvement.

Google Paper on “Opt-in Dystopias”: Doesn’t Reflect What Google Actually is doing with data

The Google Policy blog promoted a paper by two Google employees on the opt-in/opt-out policy debate.  The paper is worth reading, but its use is limited because it doesn’t reflect the actual online marketing data collection process.  Here’s what I just wrote on the Google site:

The authors need to revise their paper based on the goals and actual practices with online marketing and data collection done by Google and its affiliates. While it’s true that the binary opt-in, opt-out debate is unfortunately narrow, it is used to address far-reaching data collection and targeting strategies implemented by Google and other online marketers. The authors, for example, should examine Google’s use of neuromarketing for its YouTube advertising products; or the role of purposefully developed “immersive” multimedia tied to data collection by DoubleClick. They should analyze Google’s advertising goals, including what it promises to the largest pharmaceutical and financial advertisers, for example. Or examine the growing role of merging offline and online data collection tied to a specific user cookie to be auctioned off that is now routinely used in online ad exchanges (Google owns one such exchange). They should also reflect on how Google–when rushing to catch up with Facebook in the social media marketing business–launched its Buzz product without a careful analysis of its impact on data collection. Google’s researchers on privacy, in other words, would be more credible if they carefully analyzed how their own company uses–and plans to use–data. This issue deserves a robust debate–and we know the authors are sincere in their interest to make an important contribution. But they should also have been candid that Google is fighting off policy proposals from privacy advocates that would empower a user/citizen by allowing them to protect their privacy–including using opt-in.  The failure to have global policies that protect privacy is the high social and political cost the public should not have to bear.

Online Advertisers Side with Kids Junk Food Marketers: Opposing Consumer Protection by FTC, Even to Address Childhood Obesity Epidemic

The Interactive Ad Bureau [whose board members include Google, Fox, NBC, Comcast] is working with the marketing and data collection lobby to oppose proposed Obama Administration legislation that would enable the FTC to protect consumers.  It’s clear from the comments below in Reuters, that the IAB is siding with those that don’t want to really address the youth obesity crisis.  If the FTC is allowed to conduct the same rulemaking procedures that the FCC and other agencies already do, it might actually be able to better protect consumers, including kids.  Shame on the IAB and its lobbyist colleagues for being on the side of those against the public health of our nation’s children.  By preventing the FTC to engage in consumer protection, the IAB, ANA and others are supporting the same deregulatory scheme which led to the current financial disaster for so many Americans and our economy.  Here’s the Reuters excerpt:

“A more powerful FTC could boost its oversight of advertising of sugary and salty snacks to children, the online collection of personal data by advertisers and green advertising, said Dan Jaffe of the Association of National Advertisers…This (financial reform/CFPA bill) is a fast moving train,” said Zaneis. “The FTC provisions that are likely to be added onto the CFPA bill really are industry’s no. 1 legislative priority.”

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.

Ad Exchanges, Real-Time Auctioning of Users and Privacy: “our ability to target across many dimensions”

Last week, CDD, USPIRG and World Privacy Forum filed a complaint with the FTC asking it to protect the privacy of U.S. consumers.   Over the last two years, the growth of the data collection, tracking, analysis and targeting industry online–including the real-time auctioning off a consumer based on sets of their data–raises many concerns.  This blog will be covering the field, as CDD works to encourage the FTC and the EU to address the issue.  For now, it’s always useful to see what people from the online ad business say about these practices. In OMMA magazine, here are some excerpts from an article on the topic.

“We are definitely seeing the most exciting things for us in display in our ability to target across many dimensions,” says David Cohen, U.S. director of digital communications at Universal McCann. “Whether that is behavioral targeting or third-party data or our own platform – that is where we are seeing the most excitement – in targetability.” …“If you are an owner of display advertising, this is a great time to be in the marketplace,” says Dave Zinman, vice president and general manager of display advertising at Yahoo, which delivered 521 billion ad impressions in 2009… A new alphabet soup of suppliers and technologies emerged last year that promised at long last to apply better science to the art of display. Data providers like BlueKai or Media6Degrees helped marketers find the right audiences amidst the endless inventory of the Web. Much hope is circulating around real-time bidding (RTB) at ad-exchange engines like PubMatic, Yahoo’s RightMedia and The Rubicon Project. In these models, user data combines with real-time analysis of available inventory so an advertiser can buy individual impressions across a wide array of sites. Your ad appears only when just the right person hits a page… agencies have jumped on board with their own demand-side platforms (dsps) that buy inventory on the exchanges and networks along with third-party data in order to create their own audiences for clients…At the No. 2 seller of display, Fox, Mark Papia, senior vice president of the Fox Audience Network, is as enthused as anyone about the prospects for laser-targeting through the technologies and data layers that have been assembled over the last year. With 158 million uniques combined with data from Fox and 800 other publishing partners, he believes FAN has the scale and data to profit from next-gen display.

source:  Can Science Save the Banner?  Steve Smith.  OMMA.  April 2010.

NAI New “Study” on Behavioral Targeting: Self-Defense for Privacy-Threatening Data Collection

The Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), the online ad industry’s toothless self-regulatory scheme–has released a report designed to undermine policy safeguards protecting consumer privacy.  The NAI engaged the services of Prof. J. Howard Beales--a former FTC official who largely supported self-regulation of online data collection during his tenure at the agency–to issue a study.  Not surprisingly–and something anyone who follows behavioral online advertising knows–is that these practices work.  When you track, collect, profile a consumer online and know their interests, background, location, you can make a better ad experience.  Privacy is only mentioned once in the report.   The study’s message is really that if it makes money, don’t think of protecting consumer privacy.   The NAI explained in a release that “Behaviorally targeted ads sell for twice the price and offer twice the effectiveness of normal run-of-network ads, significantly enhancing the advertising revenue engine driving the growth of the Internet.”

The suggestion that we should not be concerned about privacy even if these practices threaten consumer protection is absurd.  Anyone who suggests that we should permit a wholesale invasion of privacy (and more) because it helps support online publishing isn’t addressing the critical question.  How can we protect consumers and also have a robust online content system?  Both can–and must–be done.

The IAB’s Targeting/Data Collection Glossary: Oh, What a Tangled Privacy Threatened Web They Weave [Annals of Geo. Orwell meets Madison Ave.]

The Interactive Advertising Bureau has released for public comment a telling document that illustrates why Congress and the FTC need to develop some rules to protect consumers.  Take a look at the definitions the IAB has embraced on targeting and data collection–and ask yourself.  Based on what they say, can this really be–as the IAB claims–non personal information? Here are some of the definitions from the Networks & Exchanges Quality Assurance Guidelines [Feb. 2010]:

*Audience Targeting:A method that enables advertisers to show an ad specifically to visitors based on their shared behavioral, demographic, geographic and/or technographic attributes.  Audience targeting uses anonymous, non-PII data.

*Behavioral Targeting:  Using previous online user activity (e.g., pages visited, content viewed, searches, clicks and purchases) to generate a segment which is used to match advertising creative to users (sometimes also called Behavioral Profiling, Interest-based Advertising, or online behavioral advertising).  Behavioral targeting uses anonymous, non-PII data.

*Attribute – A single piece of information known about a user and stored in a behavioral profile which may be used to match ad content to users.  Attributes consist of demographic information (e.g., age, gender, geographical location), segment or cluster information (e.g., auto enthusiast), and retargeting information (e.g., visited Site X two days ago).  Segment or cluster information is derived from the user’s prior online activities (e.g., pages visited, content viewed, searches made and clicking and purchasing behaviors).  Generally, this is anonymous data (non-PII).

*Behavioral Event – A user-initiated action which may include, but not limited to: searches, content views, clicks, purchases, form-based information and other interactions.  Behavioral events are anonymous and do not include personally identifiable information (PII).

*Clickstream Data – A Clickstream is the recording of what a computer user clicks on while web browsing.  As the user clicks anywhere in the webpage or application, the action is logged on a client or inside the web server, as well as possibly the web browser and ad servers.  Clickstream data analysis can be used to create a user
profile that aids in understanding the types of people that visit a company’s website, or predict whether a customer is likely to purchase from an e-commerce website.

*Cookie – A small text file sent by a website’s server to be stored on the user’s web- enabled device that is returned unchanged by the user’s device to the server on subsequent interactions.  The cookie enables the website domain to associate data with that device and distinguish requests from different devices.  Cookies often store behavioral information.

*Cross-site Advertiser Analytics – Software or services that allow an advertiser to optimize and audit the delivery of creative content on pre-bought publisher inventory.  Data can range from numbers of pages visited, to content visited, to purchases made by a particular user.  Such data is used to surmise future habits of user or best placement for a particular advertiser based on success.


*Deep Packet Inspection – A form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data and/or header part of a packet as it passes an inspection point. In the context of online advertising, it is used to collect data, typically through an Internet Service Provider, which can be used to display targeted advertising to users based on previous web activity.

* Retargeting (or re-targeting) – The use of a pixel tag or other code to enable a third-party to recognize particular users outside of the domain from which the activity
was collected. See Creative Retargeting, Site Retargeting.

*Creative Retargeting:  A method that enables advertisers to show an ad specifically to visitors that previously were exposed to or interacted with the advertisers’ creative.

*Unique User – An individual user that has interacted with online content, which is smaller than or equal to the number of cookies observed.  The number of unique users to a website is usually an estimate.  

Yahoo to Pharma Marketers: Come `Engage’ & Target Health Consumers Online


As my CDD has explained to both the FDA and FTC, the digital marketing of drugs and health information require serious privacy and consumer protection safeguards.  What may be acceptable when selling cars & travel online using the online ad tool-set is not appropriate when transferred wholesale to such sensitive categories as drugs.  Here’s an excerpt [pdf] from Yahoo!s promotional piece entitled “Social Media:  Pharmaceutical Marketing in the Age of Engagement.”

Social media marketing is a compelling opportunity for pharmaceutical companies to reach their most influential audience. Recent research conducted by Manhattan-based Hall and Partners Healthcare found that online health consumers are hyper-engaged and leverage almost twice as many information sources

to learn about disease states and prescriptions than the average consumer… For every creator of content – a physician writing a blog, for example – there are

roughly 10 synthesizers actively commenting, sharing, rating and reacting. For each group of synthesizers, roughly 100 consumers read, watch, listen and enjoy

while participating only occasionally. All three of these groups have a valid place within the community. event forms. Just as we have built communities of physicians who speak openly with each other about our products, we have an opportunity to nurture and learn from consumer communities as well. First, we must listen with intent…Analyzing what you hear can reveal a gap in consumer awareness. What’s more, a number of tools have emerged to help consolidate the vast array of social media input, from free online evaluators like Intelliseek, to sophisticated and customized tracking services like Cymfony. Once marketers have a firm grasp on the language, attitudes, brand perceptions and key COLs in their consumer community, pharmaceutical company participation can range from targeted media placement to integration and empowerment. All approaches are open to branded or unbranded programs…