The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is a lobbying group that is working to oppose federal (or state) legislation and regulation that would protect consumer privacy online. It recently led the lobbying campaign that removed from the new financial reform bill a key provision that would have enabled the FTC to better protect consumers. What companies are helping fund the IAB’s Orwellian named “Consumer Protection and Education Campaign” battling consumer and privacy groups? Here’s a list of the financial donors, who have ponied up about $500k so far. Other companies are contributing free online ad space for the IAB’s campaign–1 billion impressions worth. The donors are:
AdMob
AudienceScience
Canoe Ventures
Cars.com
CPX Interactive
eBureau
Eyeblaster
Feeva Technology
Google
IDG.net
IM Services Group
Mediamath
Meredith Interactive
Microsoft
Quantcast
Sharethis
ShortTail
Simulmedia
Time Warner
Traffic Marketplace
Tumri
Verizon
Washington Post
WildTangent
Category: consumer protection
Facebook Finagling: Getting You to Push the “Like” Button and Opt-In to Third Party Apps, Marketers, and Data Collection
As Facebook builds a larger online marketing and data collection infrastructure around the world, in the U.S., India, and in the EU, it’s important regulators, researchers, privacy and consumer protection advocates investigate how it operates its social media marketing business. Facebook prefers to keep its interactive “marketing to the social graph” ad approach largely out of public view. For example, last week, noted Inside Facebook, there was this change [our bold]:
“Open Graph-enabled third-party websites can now include Like buttons that create a connection with a Page, not just share an object. Page Likes can be more valuable because they opt a user into receiving updates about the Page in their news feed, and displaying the connection on their profile. Developers don’t need to include any description of what the Like button actually points to, meaning users may be unaware that their click is in fact subscribing and connecting them. The change will help developers convert one-time visitors into members of their Page’s community.”
This is a good illustration of how Facebook (and others) zeal in promoting third party data and financial relationships threatens to further undermine privacy and related consumer protection concerns.
Digital Junk Food Marketing Watch: Cox’s Adify Bringing Behavioral Targeting to Food Marketing to Youth and Others?
Adify–owned by Cox Enterprises–provides online marketing and network tools–including behavioral targeting. It offers advertisers the ability to track you site to site (retargeting), can “deploy tracking beacons,” and uses “sophisticated logic to define targetable behavioral segments.” Adify’s “platform powers more than 160 of the world’s best vertical ad networks, and connects premium brand advertisers to the deeply engaged audiences of thousands of quality mid- and long-tail sites.” Its network provides services for a number of sites, including those targeting African Americans, Gays and Lesbians and others. It now is moving into what is called the “food vertical” business–which means helping quick service restaurants and other food and beverage companies target youth and others.
The FTC is now looking into the digital marketing of food and beverages to youth–prodded by my CDD. No food marketer should use behavioral targeting or any related data collection and profiling technique when targeting children and adolescents. Questions must also be raised about vulnerable populations as well.  Cox should ensure that its Adify doesn’t multiple the country’s obesity epidemic.
Google Sells To Advertisers: User Profiles for Consumers Looking for Credit Cards [UK]
The new Consumer Financial Protection Board–and the FTC–will have their digital hands full as they begin to investigate the stealth world of online financial marketing.  Disclosure and consumer control has to be built into these applications–but they are not. Of interest is a trial run by Google in the UK to sell credit cards, part of its move into “comparison” marketing. According to New Media Age [my emphasis], “Google is testing its own [credit card] comparison product, launched earlier this year. Currently focused purely on UK credit card providers, it lets users search on Google, click on an interactive ad showing rates from participating advertisers and takes them to a comparison page. Advertisers bid for user profiles that match their target audience and pay on a cost-per-lead basis.”
Take a look at Google’s credit card comparison site; does a consumer know about the advertiser bidding to buy their profile? See also Google similar product selling mortgages here in the U.S.
Attention Shoppers: Google pitches itself to retailers that “one out of five searches on Google is related to location”
Google is promoting its online clout for generating offline sales. Given its expansion of mobile and location targeting, we think this upcoming panel featuring Google’s “Head of Consumer Goods” is of interest [our emphasis]:
Search terms for consumer packaged goods from “yogurt” to “laundry detergent” to “eyeshadow” have seen double-digit growth, year over year. Why? Today’s consumer actually begins the path to purchase long before she enters the store. She is tech savvy, equipped with Internet speed as well as a smartphone. The new “info shopper†capitalizes on research, reviews, sales, couponing and her online “community†to influence her in-store decisions. Because one out of five searches on Google is related to location, integration of digital in the complete path-to-purchase cycle is today’s shopper marketing game changer. In this session, Google will share data, insights and a case study that demonstrates the positive effect online marketing has on in-store sales.
Understand:
Why the consumer’s changing media and shopping habits necessitate the inclusion of a digital strategy in your integrated shopper marketing plans
How a best-in-class shopper marketing program leveraged strong manufacturer, retail and media integration to drive sales
How search specifically has been proven to drive sale
Mobile Marketer Delivers “Real World Behavioral Targeting”–they know where you are and what you do!
Mobile marketers have embraced the behavioral tracking, profiling and targeting paradigm–but they now add real location. Brightkite, which offers “highly targeted mobile media, says it delivers “Ultra-Targeted Advertising,” including:
Real World Behavioral targeting
Want to target people who have purchased items in a hardware store? Or people who go to the movies more than twice a month? Or people that buy coffee more than three times a week? We know who they are, and can put your campaign in front of an audience who cares.
Examples:
For Pantene, we targeted people in hair salons.
For Dentyne, we targeted people in social groups of two or more…
For Dentyne, we targeted people in social groups of two or more…
Location and Place targeting
We can target by precise geography – such as, people in Tulsa, people within 2 miles of a KFC, people at Costco, people in a bar, etc.
Examples:
For Chevrolet, we targeted people within 3 miles of a dealership on a given weekend.
For Jack in the Box, we targeted people within 2 miles of a restaurant in the week following the launch of smoothies in each restaurant…
Activity
Want to target people who are currently doing something specific? We know what our members are doing throughout the day, so we can get a relevant ad to match their current activity.
Example:
For Grey Goose Vodka, we targeted people over 21 engaged in drinking and nightlife activities…
Weather
We know the location of our millions of users, and we also know the precise weather in each location. This allows us to target or optimize ads according to the local weather. We can deliver ads only when the temperature is over certain threshold, or deliver different creatives if the weather is sunny, cloudy, raining, snowing.
Example:
Diet Coke wanted to target people when the afternoon temperature was over 75°.
Big-O tires wanted to target to days with ice or heavy rain.
Facebook Promotes its “Virtual” Currency–and its data tracking–via Cancer Charity
When big advertising and media companies want to introduce a new or expanded form of marketing, they generally found some non-profit cause. Who can complain about the techniques used–say for mobile ads, data collection, online games–when the funds are earmarked for a worthy charity? It’s a time honored tactic, done by the Ad Council, initiatives such as Pepsi Refresh and now Facebook. AllFacebook reports that “Stand Up to Cancer” is asking supporters to donate using “Facebook Credits.” It explains that:
Facebook has been making great progress in its goal of making Credits the main or exclusive virtual currency on the site, with Zynga the latest social game company to agree to an exclusive deal. Facebook makes a 30% cut when users spend Credits on virtual goods in social games such as Farmville or Mob Wars… Facebook does gain in other ways from the collaboration, besides feeling good about helping cancer research. The fundraising event will help promote Facebook Credits as a payment system, both on the site through user activity and potentially also through the hour-long celebrity fundraising telethon on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and some cable channels …
On the Facebook “Stand Up to Cancer” page, one can learn that “Facebook Credits are the safe and easy way to make payments on Facebook. You can buy Facebook Credits using PayPal, your credit card, or mobile phone. Please keep in mind if your donation includes Facebook Credits that you received for free, the value of your donation will be reduced by those free credits. Also, your donation may not be tax deductible, so please consult a tax professional. For this event, Facebook is waiving its processing fees and 100% of your donations go to Stand Up To Cancer.”
Facebook has ambitious plans for its Credit initiative: it “wants Credits to be the universal currency in social games on its platform.” The social network is using Credits with a Target stores partnership. Earlier this month, Facebook took “a step closer to establishing Credits as the exclusive payment system for virtual goods on the social networking site, wrapping up a deal with the biggest social game company, Zynga…Facebook gets a 30% cut from the game developer for all transactions via Credits.” Virtual goods, as its called, is already a major business–estimated with $1 billion sales this year.
But there are questions around Facebook Credits and other virtual currencies–on privacy, consumer protection rules, and digital marketing. Charities and others should be more cautious when endorsing such schemes. The FTC, EU and other regulators need to place digital currencies on a real–not virtual–policy radar.
Google’s new `simplifed’ Privacy Policy: More disclosure and honesty required [updated]
Last week Google announced it was “simplifying and updating” its privacy policies. As it so often does, the announcement was framed as a `we did for your good’ kind of effort. “[W]e want to make our policies more transparent and understandable,” it explained, noting that “most privacy policies are still too hard to understand.” But as so often with Google and other online marketers, you have to both read between the digital lines and also analyze what’s really going on.
Google’s revised policy, which takes effect October 3, fails to really explain to consumers/users what’s actually going on. Like other privacy policies, Google claims that all its data collection is to “provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services.” But what they really mean–and what the Congress, the FTC and other regulators must require them to disclose–is that they have crafted a wide-ranging system designed to foster personalized data collection and online targeting. Missing from the revised Privacy Policy (which Google, btw, is pitching to privacy advocates and no doubt others as a paragon of digital virtue) is any candid disclosure on how its Doubleclick, Admob, Google Display Network, Ad Exchange, Teracent, and other services collect information from and about us.
Google isn’t alone–Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and everyone else rely on a purposefully deceptive privacy policy to engage in data collection activities that require disclosure and individual user control. Google is also reshaping its privacy policy to better capture all the data it can collect across multiple platforms and applications. Here, just for the record, is what Google advertised in Ad Age’s recent Ad Exchange and online advertising guide [excerpt]: No matter how you define performance, the Google Display Network offers a solution. By bringing more measurability and precision to your advertising, it enables you to create, target and optimize ads based on real-time data, meaning better returns for you.
The Google Display Network helps advertisers and agencies achieve performance at scale by delivering relevant, accountable ads to their target audiences—in more places, more often…Precisely target your audience: The Google Display Network’s technology enables you to find customers based on their interests, sites they visit and when they’re engaging with relevant content via contextual targeting, or show specific messages to users who’ve already visited your site with remarketing…The Google Display Network provides opportunities to advertise in all such environments—feeds, games, mobile, social networks and video streams— enabling you to create an immersive experience for your audience.
PS. Well, Google just also announced what its interactive display ad system can do for marketers. How come this isn’t in the privacy policy in understandable language and full consumer control? Excerpt: Advertising with Google used to be all about four lines of text, on Google.com and on our partner sites. No longer. Did you know that, outside of ads alongside search results, more than 40 percent of the ads that we show are now non-text ads? And that doesn’t include the 45 billion ads that our DoubleClick advertising products serve every day across the web.
We get excited by display advertising for a number of reasons…Teracent’s technology can automatically tailor and select the creative elements in an ad, and adjust them based on location, language, weather and even the past performance of ads, to show the optimal ad. We’re focused on helping advertisers get the best results from their campaigns—by enabling creative branding campaigns, precise targeting, wide reach and effective measurement. Over recent years, we’ve added a ton of new features to YouTube and the Google Display Network, to help advertisers get—and measure—the results they’re after. From remarketing to Campaign Insights to video targeting on YouTube, we’re building tools that are helping advertisers get great results and enabling them to run some of the most amazing ad campaigns the world has ever seen.
Microsoft Fuels Youth Obesity Epidemic via Xbox tie-ins: Digital Product Placement and Beyond
Microsoft is one of the most aggressive online marketing companies targeting teens online. Across the globe, Microsoft Advertising touts its ability to deliver interactive food and beverage ads on PCs, mobile phones, gaming devices and via IM, Bing, etc. Teens and young adults are the key target–but so are young children. In its desperation to catch up with online ad leader Google, Microsoft has strained to be the “yes we will” digital agency. For several years, Microsoft has had a close tie with Pepsi’s Doritos and Mountain Dew, offering various special games that feature the chip. Now Microsoft is continuing that alliance, as the new Halo:Reach edition comes to market. As explained by Variety, “helping build Microsoft’s brand is Madison Avenue, which has fully embraced the franchise’s main character, Master Chief, and turned him into a pitch soldier, with PepsiCo plastering him on 300 million Mountain Dew cans and 30 million bags of Doritos for the launch of the latest game.”
Microsoft officials–and those who play a influential role in the company–should not endorse digital marketing schemes that target youth–and especially contribute to such major public health problems as youth obesity. For shame, Microsoft.
Google’s non-neutral YouTube–Gives Advertisers “Brand Protection” to bypass online videos
Google, like other major advertising and media companies, works hard to please its biggest advertisers. For decades, radio and TV networks relied on Standards and Practices divisions to screen programs to make sure they were suitable “environment” for commercials. So-called “brand protection” has mushroomed online–as we predicted it would many years ago. The business model for TV and the Internet are aligned–it must please the Fortune 1000 advertiser first. So it’s no surprise that Google has launched a “brand protection feature” for YouTube, explains Ad Age, that provides “more control for advertisers to exclude objectionable videos, genres, channels.” Ad Age explained that YouTube’s new feature, is called “target excludes.” It’s “part of the site’s Video Targeting Tool, which gives advertisers the choice to exclude as few as one video they don’t want their product associated with as well as specific genres and channels. The feature addresses the most often-criticized aspect of YouTube: You can buy video there, but you never know what you’ll get.Other uses for this new feature by advertisers include improving returns by excluding channels or videos that are not relevant to the brand or those that are performing poorly.”
Here’s how Google explains it: “We’re constantly working to give advertisers control and flexibility over their YouTube campaigns. We place great value on this because ads are an extension of what a company represents as a business, and we want YouTube to be a place where that reputation and image can flourish. To that end, we’ve been rolling out features to keep advertisers in control of their campaigns…Google has also been investing significantly in ensuring brand safety, transparency and control for advertisers across the Google Display Network. We’re hoping that these added layers of control will make your campaign targeting even more precise.”
As we said, so-called online brand protection is a booming business. But its purpose, explains one online advertiser, is to be “a preemptive technology and is designed to block ads from appearing next to controversial content…protecting brands from potentially damaging negative associations resulting out of negative content adjacencies.” But questions should be raised now about how decisions will be made placing videos and other content on so-called censoring “whitelists” [which are really blacklists]. How will it ultimately affect the diversity of controversial content online? Does YouTube further go from a quasi common carrier to an environment where, as we already see, Google favors some content over others?  Will the online medium be further transformed to reflect the TV model, with consequences to serious journalism and independent content? The questions are larger than what Google does. But given Google’s network neutrality flipflop and its online ad and data collection ambitions, a debate about the impact of so-called “brand protection” on the future of the online media is in order.