We believe academics should pursue research that is independent–and not funded by vested interests. Here are some of the academics that just received “Google Focused Research Awards.“ The check also comes with a further relationship with Google [“These unrestricted grants are for two to three years, and the recipients will have the advantage of access to Google tools, technologies, and expertise.]
Privacy:
Ed Felten, Princeton
Lorrie Cranor, Alessandro Acquisti and Norman Sadeh, Carnegie Mellon University
Ryan Calo, Stanford CIS
Andy Hopper, Cambridge University Computing Laboratory
and: Use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring: Gaetano Borriello, University of Washington and Deborah Estrin, UCLA
Category: Havas Digital
Consumer and Privacy Groups at FTC Roundtable to Call for Decisive Agency Action
Washington, DC, December 6, 2009 – On Monday December 7, 2009, consumer representatives and privacy experts speaking at the first of three Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Exploring Privacy Roundtable Series will call on the agency to adopt new policies to protect consumer privacy in today’s digitized world. Consumer and privacy groups, as well as academics and policymakers, have increasingly looked to the FTC to ensure that Americans have control over how their information is collected and used.
The groups have asked the Commission to issue a comprehensive set of Fair Information Principles for the digital era, and to abandon its previous notice and choice model, which is not effective for consumer privacy protection.
Specifically, at the Roundtable on Monday, consumer panelists and privacy experts will call on the FTC to stop relying on industry privacy self-regulation because of its long history of failure. Last September, a number of consumer groups provided Congressional leaders and the FTC a detailed blueprint of pro-active measures designed to protect privacy, available at: http://www.democraticmedia.org/release/privacy-release-20090901.
These measures include giving individuals the right to see, have a copy of, and delete any information about them; ensuring that the use of consumer data for any credit, employment, insurance, or governmental purpose or for redlining is prohibited; and ensuring that websites should only initially collect and use data from consumers for a 24-hour period, with the exception of information categorized as sensitive, which should not be collected at all. The groups have also requested that the FTC establish a Do Not Track registry.
Quotes from Monday’s panelists:
Marc Rotenberg, EPIC: “There is an urgent need for the Federal Trade Commission to address the growing threat to consumer privacy. The Commission must hold accountable those companies that collect and use personal information. Self-regulation has clearly failed.â€
Jeff Chester, Center for Digital Democracy: “Consumers increasingly confront a sophisticated and pervasive data collection apparatus that can profile, track and target them online. The Obama FTC must quickly act to protect the privacy of Americans,including information related to their finances, health, and ethnicity.â€
Susan Grant, Consumer Federation of America: “It’s time to recognize privacy as a fundamental human right and create a public policy framework that requires that right to be respected,†said Susan Grant, Director of Consumer Protection at Consumer Federation of America. “Rather than stifling innovation, this will spur innovative ways to make the marketplace work better for consumers and businesses.â€
Pam Dixon, World Privacy Forum: “Self-regulation of commercial data brokers has been utterly ineffective to protect consumers. It’s not just bad actors who sell personal information ranging from mental health information, medical status, income, religious and ethnic status, and the like. The sale of personal information is a routine business model for many in corporate America, and neither consumers nor policymakers are aware of the amount of trafficking in personal information. It’s time to tame the wild west with laws that incorporate the principles of the Fair Credit Reporting Act to ensure transparency, accountability, and consumer control.â€
Written statements and other materials for the roundtable panelists are available at the following links:
CDD/USPIRG: http://www.democraticmedia.org/node/419
WPF: http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/pdf/WPF_Comments_FTC_110609fs.pdf
CFA: http://www.consumerfed.org/elements/www.consumerfed.org/File/5%20Myths%20about%20Online%20Behavioral%20Advertising%2011_12_09.pdf
EPIC: www.epic.org
“Cookie Wars, Real-Time Targeting, and Proprietary Self Learning Algorithms: Why the FTC Must Act Swiftly to Protect Consumer Privacy”
That’s the title of comments filed at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission by my Center for Digital Democracy and U.S. PIRG. I also just gave a presentation with the same name at last week’s meeting of data protection commissioners in Madrid, Spain.  It’s available here.
Here’s an excerpt:  Today, consumers online face the rapid growth and ever-increasing sophistication of the various techniques advertisers employ for data collection, profiling, and targeting across all online platforms. The growth of ad and other optimization services for targeting, involving real-time bidding on ad exchanges; the expansion of data collection capabilities from the largest advertising agencies (with the participation of leading digital media content and marketing companies); the increasing capabilities of mobile marketers to target users via enhanced data collection; and a disturbing growth of social media surveillance practices for targeted marketing are just a few of the developments the commission must address. But despite technical innovation and what may appear to be dramatic changes in the online data collection/profiling/targeting market, the commission must recognize that the underlying paradigm threatening consumer privacy online has been constant since the early 1990’s. So-called “one-to-one marketing,†where advertisers collect as much as possible on individual consumers so they can be targeted online, remains the fundamental approach.
Google to EU: Protecting Privacy and Regulating Behavioral Targeting Could Threaten the Economy [Annals of Hypocrisy and Digital Chicken Licken Scare Tactics]
It’s both silly and disingenuous when companies tell policymakers, as they regularly do, that if they act to protect consumers it would undermine a country’s economic status.  Both that’s what Google’s chief privacy official appears to have told top European Union officials responsible for privacy and consumer protection last month. At the Interactive Advertising Bureau/EU annual conference, Peter Fleisher, Google’s Global Privacy Counsel [my bold], “underlined the economic importance of web 2.0. Targeted advertising does not only affect online platforms but also advertisers themselves and the broader economic ecosystem. He urged the Commission to consider the wider economic repercussions before imposing any regulation on behavioural advertising.”
Meanwhile, Microsoft continued its digital doublespeak efforts, telling some it supported privacy legislation while it also simultaneously worked on ineffective self-regulatory schemes. Â At the IAB EU event, Peter Cullen, Chief Privacy Strategist at Microsoft “explained [to EU officials] the many benefits consumers get from online advertising as it finances a variety of free services available to them. Mr Cullen warned that policy initiatives must not exacerbate the problem and that a balance of self regulation, policy making and industry unity was required.”
The failure to regulate the economy has brought havoc and suffering for many millions of people throughout the world. Google and Microsoft, as digital leaders, should be acting responsibly and support meaningful legislation that protects and empowers citizens and consumers. The economy (and civil society) will be even healthier when it is governed by policies that ensure individuals comprehend and control the digital data collection and targeting system that is now unleashed throughout the world.
Online Consumers Require Real Privacy Safeguards, Not the Digital Fox [AAAA, ANA, BBB, DMA & IAB] in Charge of the Data Hen House
The self-regulatory proposals released today [2 July 2009] by five marketing industry trade and lobby groups are way too little and far too late. This move by the online ad industry is an attempt, of course, to quell the growing bi-partisan calls in Congress to enact meaningful digital privacy and consumer protection laws. It’s also designed to assuage a reawakened Federal Trade Commission–whose new chair, Jon Leibowitz, recently appointed one the country’s most distinguished consumer advocates and legal scholars to direct its Bureau of Consumer Protection (David Vladeck). The principles are inadequate, even beyond their self-regulatory approach that condones, in effect, the “corporate fox guarding the digital data henhouse.†Effective government regulation is required to protect consumers. We should have learned a painful lesson by now with the failure of the financial industry to oversee itself. The reckless activities of the financial sector—made possible by a deregulatory, hands-off government policy–directly led to the current financial catastrophe. As more of our transactions and daily activities are conducted online, including those involving financial and health issues–through PCs, mobile phones, social networks, and the like–it is critical that the first principle be to ensure the basic protection of consumer privacy. Self-dealing “principles†concocted by online marketers simply won’t provide the level of protection consumers really require.
The industry appears to have embraced a definition of behavioral targeting and profiling that is at odds with how the practice actually works. Before any data is collected from consumers, they need to be candidly informed about the process–such as the creation and evolution of their profile; how tracking and data gathering occurs site to site; what data can be added to their profile from outside databases; the role that data targeting plays on so-called first-party websites, etc. In addition, the highest possible consumer safeguards are necessary when financial and health data are involved. Under the loosey-goosey trade industry principles, however, only “certain health and financial data†are to be treated as a “sensitive†category. This would permit widespread data collection involving personal information regarding our health and financial concerns. The new principles, moreover, fail to protect the privacy of teenagers; nor do they seriously address children’s privacy. (I was one of the two people that led the campaign to enact the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act).
The failure to develop adequate safeguards for sensitive consumer information illustrates, I believe, the inability of the ad marketing groups to seriously address online privacy. The so-called “notice and choice†approach embraced by the industry has failed. More links to better-written privacy statements don’t address the central problem: the collection of more and more user data for profiling and targeting purposes. There needs to be quick Congressional action placing limits on the collection, use and retention of consumer data; opt-in control over profile information; and the creation of a meaningful sensitive data category. Consumer and privacy groups intend to work with Congress to ensure that individuals don’t face additional losses due to unfair online marketing practices.
[press statement by the Center for Digital Democracy]
Google’s Retention of Search Data–tied to selling ads [Google Connects Offline Behavior To Digital Marketing]
This excerpt from an online ad news report illustrates perhaps a more compelling reason for Google to retain user data for longer periods, so it can better analyze the decision-making process for consumer purchasing for its ad businesses:
“We now understand the types of keywords people use at specific points prior to purchase,” says Davang Shah, head of automotive marketing at Google. “Six months prior to the purchase, we see roughly 56% of the auto searches buyers conducted were on non-branded search terms such as fuel efficient or hybrid sedan.”…Search plays a critical role throughout the purchase process…The data, related to paid, organic and display advertising as well as online marketing, includes the facts that 68% of buyers visit a manufacturer’s site in the six months prior to purchase, and 77% visit a third-party site. In aggregate, 84% visit at least one or the other…Shah says Google will cut the data by brand and provide the information to manufacturers, dealers and third-party companies…”
source: Google Connects Offline Behavior To Digital Marketing. Laurie Sullivan. Online Media Daily. May 22, 2009. Â
Google and WPP Fund Neuromarketing Research for Digital Ads: Ethical Issues and the Need for Policymaker Scrutiny [with an update on the grants!]
The Wall Street Journal and other publications report that Google and ad giant WPP will announce today the $4.6 million grants it will award for academic research designed to “improve understanding and practices in online marketing, and to better understand the relationship between online and offline media.” Among the research efforts given funds are projects that will “analyze internet users’ surfing habits to determine their thinking styles, such as whether they are most influenced by verbal or visual messages or if they are more holistic or analytical, and how to tailor ads accordingly” and an “analysis into how online ads effect blood flow to different areas of the brain. This research would seek to show the role that emotions play in decision making.” Â Academics from MIT, Stanford, and Harvard will receive funds, among others. (And for those of us concerned about the role online advertising and data collection is playing in China–and impacts human rights and environmental sustainability–one of the new grants will fund “how Chinese web users respond to different online-ad formats, such as display and search ads”).
As we will tell the European Commission at the end of the month, at a workshop they have organized to discuss interactive advertising and consumer protection, the evolving role of neuromarketing with online advertising raises a number of troubling concerns–and should trigger a serious policy review.  We have not yet seen a final list of the grantees. But Google should be funding independent research that will honestly explore the impact and ethics of online marketing. They should be ensuring that the ethical issues of online marketing–such as the concerns raised by their new behavioural profiling and targeting system–receive a honest scholarly review.
The growing controversy over the role pharmaceutical companies are playing with scholarly research on drugs, we think, has implications here. We believe all the academic institutions receiving these grants must vet them to ensure they truly address the real impact online ad techniques have on individuals and society.
Update: Google & WPP made the academic research announcement–eleven grants awarded. Here are some to ponder–and raise questions:
* “Targeting Ads to Match Individual Cognitive Styles: A Market Testâ€; Glen Urban, Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management;
* “How do consumers determine what is relevant? A psychometric and neuroscientific study of online search and advertising effectivenessâ€; Antoine Bechara, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Department of Psychology/Brain & Creativity Institute, University of Southern California and Martin Reimann, Fellow, Department of Psychology/Brain & Creativity, University of Southern California;
*“Unpuzzling the Synergy of Display and Search Advertising:Insights from Data Mining of Chinese Internet Usersâ€; Hairong Li, Department of Advertising, Public Relations, and Retailing, Michigan State University and Shuguang Zhao, Media Survey Lab, Tsinghua University;
*â€Are Brand Attitudes Contagious? Consumer Response to Organic Search Trendsâ€; Donna L. Hoffman, Professor, A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management, University of California Riverside and Thomas P. Novak, A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management, University of California Riverside;
*“Marketing on the Map: Visual Search and Consumer Decision Makingâ€; Nicolas Lurie, Assistant Professor of Marketing, College of Management, Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Management and Sam Ransbotham, Assistant Professor of Information Systems, Carroll School of Management, Boston College.
Ad agency has “profiled more than one-third of the world’s online population”
Developments in advertising, data collection, consumer analysis and targeting must be transparent and accountable to the public. In a profile of Havas Digital, OMMA Magazine notes that [our emphasis]:
“Havas has created a dynamic online ad trading system that separates audiences from publishing content, and it makes user profile and unique cookie data king, rather than the inventory a publisher serves. The core of Havas Digital’s virtual brand network is its Artemis database management and reporting system, which has already profiled more than one-third of the world’s online population. That and the agency’s Adnetik system help deliver customized roi analytics for media buying.” “Artemis is the central piece of our media buying offering,†Kasper [Adam Kaspar, a senior VP] says. “Its importance has only grown as the technology has improved.â€Coupled with proprietary algorithms, that database has allowed the agency to develop systems that draw on data from third parties, including clients, publishers and networks, that helps it understand which audiences command the most value at a particular time for specific brands.”
Artemis is a “marketing data warehouse.” Yahoo is using the service, including for its already data-enabled Right Media Exchange. Havas describes Artemis as “our proprietary marketing decision support system – a secure warehouse for all your marketing data, plus reporting tools that help make sense of it all. Unlike some of the less sophisticated reports advertisers may receive from ad-servers, for instance, Artemis® provides detailed reporting right down to the user level.”
The FTC, EU, Congress and others will need to need to investigate the growing role consumer data plays in targeting us on and offline. We don’t need private ministries of information tracking the global public.