Category: consumer protection

Google & ad giant WPP search for scholars who can help them better target teens, mobile users, and promote pharmaceutical brands

For the second year, Google and global ad conglomerate WPP are searching for academics who will apply for their Marketing Research grants.  A look at some of the topics that are listed as “of interest” should help provide you with a better picture of the `brought to you by interactive advertising’ digital world to come:

excerpt:  Google and the WPP Group have launched the 2nd round of the research program they jointly created to improve understanding and practices in online marketing, and to better understand the relationship between online and offline media…

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Online and offline media interaction

  • How does a brand establish a framework for assessing how much should be spent online? How much advertising should be directed at brand development versus specific click generation?
  • How does offline media affect search and vice versa?
  • What are the best models for mobile advertising?…
  • What are good guidelines for moving traditional video spots from broadcast to broadband?…
  • What is the causal relationship between brand health and search success? And what is the link between search and sales? How does search contribute to word of mouth recommendation?…
  • How do you model the consumer response to digital advertising in social networks or mobile media?…
  • How can advertisers be welcome in social networks?
  • How should online audiences and online marketing tactics be measured in emerging markets – Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America? Does mobile hold the upper hand over online in some markets?…
  • How do teens interact with digital media and what are the implications?
  • Should heavy internet users be given different treatment than light users?
  • How influential are online influencers and what categories of consumers/behaviors are most affected by them?…
  • How can pharmaceutical brands engage more effectively online? How should marketers approach creative development given the full/risk disclosure requirements?
  • What are the unique marketing and targeting opportunities for other verticals: financial services, insurance, entertainment, consumer goods, retail, etc?
  • How do consumers interact with the mobile web and what are the opportunities for retail (coupons, QR codes, etc) within mobile?…
  • What is inhibiting mobile advertising and how can it be overcome? What is the role of mobile advertising in a new marketing communication strategy?

Microsoft’s “Sweeping Vision” for Online Ads: “unlocking the Holy Grail of marketing” by “mining user intent”

The digital data collection arms race is unleashing powerful forces focused on data collection and consumer targeting across much of the online world.  As advertisers meet to discuss and celebrate their accomplishment and plans, as part of Advertising Week, Microsoft is playing a leading role.  As you read about their plans from this excerpt in Adweek, keep in mind that they hope to bundle their search marketing platform with Yahoo!

Microsoft is heading into Advertising Week looking to capture the ad industry’s attention by laying out a sweeping vision for the online advertising market and the integral part it plans to play in its the future…At the heart of that undertaking is the plan to build a product that can determine exactly what ads Web users want to see and when. “At the core, the most important thing to us is mining user intent,” Howe [Scott Howe, corporate vp, Microsoft’s advertiser and publisher solutions group], said. “What does a user really want to see in the way of advertising.”

That’s easy in search. But intent is not so clear on content sites or social networks. “If Bing is step one [for Microsoft Advertising], step two is extending that engine to power the ads that someone sees across all display ad formats and multiple devices,” Howe said.

…”When people talk about behavioral targeting, often they’re talking about flat display formats on a PC — and we’re talking about across all digital devices,” he said. “And so, by having this engine power all the different things holistically, we’re actually in some respects unlocking the Holy Grail of marketing.”

Neuromarketing firm, backed by Nielsen, brings in expert on “attention, language…reading development”

Neurofocus–the global neuromarketing firm backed by Nielsen–has added to its staff Dr. Steven Miller [“A neuropsychologist with expertise in the assessment and treatment of problems in attention, language, or reading development, Dr. Miller has extensive experience using a variety of behavioral and brain-imaging methodologies (e.g., EEG, MEG and fMRI).”]

Here’s how Nielsen explains what Neurofocus can do for clients, such as brands:

Understand consumers’ subconscious responses to messages with brainwave analysis and increase the effectiveness of marketing and branding content.

Influencing the unfiltered feelings locked in the subconscious and protected by thousands of years of evolutionary defenses has been the bane – and the bread and butter – of advertisers and market researchers since the beginning of the media age. The Nielsen Company and NeuroFocus, Inc. offer neuroscience-based products, services and metrics in retail, consumer packaged goods, television, film and emerging media. Using established electroencephalographic (EEG) techniques to measure degrees of attention, memory retention and emotional engagement, neurological testing provides precise, projectable insights into consumer behavior along with recommendations for increasing message effectiveness.

With NeuroFocus, Nielsen supports an array of marketing challenges:

Understanding Your Audience By addressing consumer responses in the subconscious, where purchase intent is formed, determine precisely how consumers react to a message.

Microsoft Extends Behavioral Targeting to Mobile [Bing Will be Ringing & Tracking & Profiling]

Read this excerpt from the Microsoft Advertising announcement released today.  And ask if your privacy is really protected when they use your search data to target you over mobile devices for “financial services,” “lifestyles,” and other “behavioral segments.”

Today we launched our Mobile Behavioral Targeting Solution, which means all of the powerful behavioral targeting options, segments and categories previously only available on our online properties are now available to buyers of our mobile display inventory as well.

Mobile behavioral targeting enables advertisers to reduce advertising waste and maximize the impact and ROI of their mobile campaigns by targeting consumers who have already demonstrated an interest in specific product categories. Over one hundred behavioral segments across popular advertiser categories such as Automotive, Financial Services, Health, Lifestyle, Life Stages, News and Entertainment, Retail, Technology and Travel are available for purchase.

How does Microsoft measure behavior?

Microsoft Behavioral Targeting works by anonymously tracking behaviors of users and classifying these users into unique segments using information from the following data sources:

. PC Web keyword search behavior from Bing Search

. PC Web Site visits to various sites across the Microsoft network

. Microsoft network data (i.e. Hotmail newsletters, Xbox subscription data)

. Profile data from Windows Live

With Microsoft Mobile Behavioral Targeting, data from these sources and others is factored together along with its relevancy to create hundreds of unique, specific segments. Within these niches are the consumers who are most likely to be receptive to your message. Your mobile ads are served only to users in your desired segments, enabling you to refine your reach and increase your campaign’s performance. Simple yet powerful, Behavioral Targeting is one of the most effective and efficient forms of mobile advertising available today.

Here at Microsoft we understand that preserving consumer trust is essential to the success of our business. Microsoft maintains a strong focus on protecting customers’ privacy and adheres to high privacy standards. Our Mobile Behavioral Targeting Solutions do not utilize personally identifiable information (like name, address or phone number).

“a behavioral targeting platform…, allowing advertisers to identify and track their desired audience on an unprecedented level”

excerpt:

interCLICK’s innovative behavioral targeting filters allow you to target the right individual users at the right time, increasing the effectiveness of your campaigns. With over 350 behavioral categories, interCLICK can get as precise as you want.

We segment users based on observed behaviors into 3 interest levels: slightly, moderately and very. Furthermore we use frequency and recency to classify these interest as short, mid, or long term interests. As the user navigates throughout our network of sites, we continually adjust their profile based on anonymous observations, assuring the accuracy of our profiles.

Leverage interCLICK’s massive data warehouses to effectively target users who have been determined to exhibit certain behaviors throughout interCLICK’s network. interCLICK offers over 350 different Behavioral Targeting categories/sub-categories… [including]
FINANCIAL:    Personal Banking Seekers
Credit Card Seekers
Retirement Investing
see also:   interClick Improves Scalability of Data Targeting with Latest Platform Upgrade

Online Ad Lobby: A Failure of Vision and Ethical Responsibility

Online ad and other marketing industry lobbyists, in responding to the recent call for Congress to enact privacy safeguards, have failed to seriously address the central public interest issues.  One lobbyist even went so far as to suggest that people want to be tracked, profiled and targeted through their ethnic/racial and political online behaviors.  Others have claimed that providing the public control over what information about them is collected and how it’s used would somehow lead to the erosion of online publishing.  Beyond the absurdity and short-sightedness of such claims, what these online ad leaders fail to address are the civil liberties and consumer protection concerns at the core of the debate.

A democratic society in the digital era–given the current and prospective power of the global online data collection and targeting system–requires serious limits on both commercial and governmental surveillance.  The development of digital dossiers on citizens and others is the realm of dictatorships and autocrats–not a democracy.  That’s why it’s in the interest of responsible advertisers as our fellow citizens to help ensure there are limits on data collection, analysis, use.  By providing individuals greater control and autonomy over the digital marketing process–through federal rules requiring transparency, accountability, and meaningful limits to data collection–we can help protect our civil liberties and provide needed consumer protections.  Everyone recognizes that we are using online to engage in very personal transactions, including health, finance, and politics.  We will be, needless to say, writing more on all this.

Our new Journal of Adolescent Health article on the Youth Obesity Epidemic and Digital Marketing

Prof. Kathryn Montgomery and I just published an article in the Journal of Adolescent Health [JAH] on the the role interactive marketing plays in the current youth obesity epidemic.  It is part of a special JAH issue focused on the obesity issue.  It’s a very good introduction to the current digital marketing landscape, and is one of a series of reports we have done on the issue.

Microsoft Pushes a “Behavioral Targeting Product Roadmap” and it is “Betting” on Increased Consumer Targeting, inc. “Retargeting.” Company Wants to “Live the Data”

The potential combination of the behavioral targeting technologies of both Microsoft and Yahoo! should be one of the key areas investigated by antitrust authorities.  Privacy issues are also important for regulators to address with the proposed deal.  So these current behavioral targeting job openings at Microsoft provide a glimpse into these issues.

Microsoft is now seeking a “Product Marketing Manager of Behavioral Targeting on the Audience Select team…The Product Marketing Manager will establish the requirements and go to market strategy for Microsoft’s Behavioral Targeting product. S/he will partner with a team of world-class engineers, client service, business operations, legal, privacy and other product marketers to envision and design the industry’s best targeting technology to connect advertisers with their audience. The candidate chosen for this position will be responsible for creating the product GTM roadmap, developing and prioritizing segment requirements and designing GTM models to support the sale and delivery of behaviorally targeted advertising. S/he will be Microsoft’s resident expert on Behavioral Targeting and will be the first person to explain and communicate business metrics – particularly sell-thru – to field, business, and engineering…Articulate the behavioral targeting product roadmap to key customers and partners, and aggregate industry feedback in a form that is actionable for development…Influence long-range, multi-release planning for behavioral targeting…Someone with a deep passion for advertising technology and a deep knowledge of the targeted industry…”

Then look at this position for a “Taxonomist/Audience Intelligence.”  Note that they include the fiction that Microsoft will compete with Yahoo!!!

Online advertising is the biggest growth opportunity for Microsoft. This business currently generates about $2B in revenue for Microsoft with tremendous opportunity ahead, given how the industry wide advertising is shifting to digital media. Join and help take our digital advertising to the next level to compete against Google and Yahoo with our initiatives in Audience Intelligence. Our group is chartered to develop an industry leading targeting system for all our ad products and services. Effective targeting helps an advertiser reach their core audience and will drive high value propositions to the end customers. We as a company is betting on this initiative to differentiate our advertising offerings to our customers and to further grow our advertising revenue.

We are seeking an experienced taxonomist to provide thought leadership in taxonomy, classification, and metadata management. Audience Intelligence enables the discovery and inference of user profiles, intent and interaction while respecting privacy and trust, with the ultimate goal of maximizing benefits for users, advertisers and publishers. Our focus spans all types of digital advertising such as search, display and emerging media including mobile, gaming, video on demand, and IPTV.

And they also want someone to help its behavioral retargeting initiatives (which it calls remessaging!)

The Search & Media Network Group within Microsoft Advertising is looking for a rock star product manager to deliver against revenue goals for Microsoft Advertising’s Re-Messaging product, by driving global business planning and execution, product marketing and competitive strategy…We work to seamlessly combine a range of individual online advertising products that span search, display and audience targeting, into solutions that address advertisers’ core campaign objectives.
Your core mission will be driving business revenue and field sales engagement with the Re-Messaging ad product (also known in the industry as Re-Targeting)… Live the data, by building a deep understanding of the key metrics associated with the Re-Messaging business, and driving analysis into trends and emerging opportunities…Specific partners will include product planning, trade / field marketing, sales, yield/monetization and more…

Database Games AOL May Play: “Database Matching” Subscribers Behavior Online and Off

We think it’s ironic that the same week AOL joins with several other leading digital marketers to kill-off a new online privacy law in Maine designed to protect adolescents, an article in Advertising Age reveals how much it covets–and hopes to financially harvest–data from its 5.8 million customers.  Here’s an excerpt on so-called database matching–in essence, a digital spy watching what you do offline and on AOL:

Valuable eyeballs
While many major ad-supported internet properties would kill to have as many paying users as AOL, it’s the users’ behavior that puts them in the company’s sweet spot. Subscribers are AOL’s uber-users — more valuable than average because they use more AOL properties and products than typical web visitors and, as a whole, are a large part of the traffic that sees ads and then converts, either by clicking through or making a purchase.

The company also sees subscribers as a valuable source of research and insights — a sort of panel it can use to understand online behavior and ad receptivity.

“There are other ways they can bring value, ways we can use the data and understand how they interact with content,” Mr. Levick said [AOL’s president for global advertising and strategy]. “If we can look at them in the aggregate and see how they interact with certain advertising, it could bring us closer to the last mile of online research.”

How it would do that isn’t exactly clear, but like other web properties, AOL has databases of users who have registered for services and can work with marketers to “database match.”

“[Database matching] is interesting in terms of connecting online exposure to offline sales,” said Carrie Frolich, managing director-digital at Mediaedge:cia. “If I have a client that directly sells their product, be it a pizza-delivery or phone company, they know names and addresses, and AOL knows that. With the assistance of a third party, they can match up our database and their database and come up with a matched set that you can load into ad server and measure exposures and measure the lift.”

source:  Why once-dispensable access biz is central to AOL’s strategy.  Abbey Klaassen.  Ad Age.  August 24, 2009

Billy Tauzin, Wheeler dealer for PhRMA lobby and the Two-House MegaDeal Even Hollywood Wouldn’t Make

If you followed the career of Billy Tauzin while he was a power on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, you know that he supported further media & telecommunications deregulation, more media consolidation, and led an effort that would have undermined Internet network neutrality.  Tauzin, now head of the drug industry’s lobbying group PhRMA, recently brokered a sweet deal with the Obama White House on health care reform.  In order to secure support for a national heath care plan from a major industry lobbying group,  the Obama Administration agreed to a plan where drug manufactuers would provide some $80 billion in discounts and subsidies over the next ten years.  But the agreement, in my opinion, leaves the drug industry off the hook.

But here’s the Hollywood connection and why Tauzin’s wheeler-dealer skills have ended up working on behalf of PhRMA.  As Tauzin prepared to retire from Congress,  he sought much greener ($$$$) pastures, including taking over Jack Valenti’s role as head of the Motion Picture Association of America, MPAA.  According to Variety [Jan. 23, 2004], “negotiations between the MPAA and Tauzin had broken down because Tauzin wanted too much compensation. Valenti is one of the highest-paid lobbyists in Washington, pulling in more than $1 million a year, but Tauzin asked for hundreds of thousands of dollars more as well as a residence in both L.A. and New York.  “He was just over-reaching,” one source said.  Tauzin accepted “a more generous offer to become the pharmaceutical industry trade association’s top lobbyist…The offer from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America is said to be unprecedented for a Washington trade association. Tauzin currently chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees legislation affecting the telecom and media industries, as well as the pharmaceutical industry.”

In negotiating the deal with the Obama White House to protect the pharmaceutical industry from having to make meaningful contributions to national health care, Tauzin has clearly earned PhARMA’s “more generous offer” that trumped the MPAA.