Category: wireless

Marketers Urging Targeting of Hispanic Tweens, including via Mobile [Annals of Mobile Marketing]

There’s nothing to say except read what this marketer wrote for MediaPost’s Engage series.

Excerpt:  “To effectively reach Hispanic tweens…Don’t forget mobile. Many tweens already have cell phones, and they use them daily to text their friends. Text messages are a key way to connect with tweens, especially if you offer them a fun service, such as daily horoscopes, that doesn’t feel like an ad. Cell phone numbers can be collected right alongside emails in your lead-gen efforts. You get a branding boost, as well as their mobile number in your database for future text messaging campaigns.”

source:  Make Your Marketing Dollars Pay: Target Tweens.  Engage Hispanics:  MediaPost.  February 6, 2009

Mobile Privacy Watch: What Mobile Marketers Can Target [Hint, it includes “Race/Ethnicty, Level of education, Socio-economic status”…]

Mobile Marketer, an excellent mobile trade publication, just published a 2009 “Mobile Advertising Essentials” guide.  In the section titled “What to Look For in a Mobile Advertising Partner,” it summarizes the kinds of targeting marketers should expect.  Here’s an excerpt:

“Mobile advertising partners should offer a wide array of targeting capabilities, the most common which include: Age, Gender, Race/ethncity, Level of education, Socio-economic status, Location, Carrier, Handset manufacturer and type, Handset platform or operating system, Handset capabilities (i.e. Web-enabled or vide-enabled), Time of day, Day of week.”

CDD Memo to President-elect Obama’s FTC Transition team

My organization provided the FTC-transition team of President-elect Obama a brief memo on what the agency should do as it changes leadership. With a new majority, the FTC should be in the forefront of addressing how the financial and marketing system has evolved in ways which threaten our fiscal well-being and privacy, among many other concerns.  Here’s an excerpt:

The Federal Trade Commission has a potentially extraordinary role to play in the new Administration.  The agency should be engaged in developing and promoting policies that protect privacy, ensure consumer welfare, and stimulate economic development.  Unfortunately, in recent years the commission has largely failed to comprehend the threats to consumer privacy arising from the data collection-based online marketing system.  It ignored, for example, the role that data collection and behavioral targeting played in the marketing of subprime loans and other consumer financial products…
Under new leadership, the FTC should view its role as a champion of consumers…. in consumer protection, privacy, and online-related competition policy, the agency has failed to conduct the kind of serious inquiry that would enable it to make sophisticated recommendations or decisions.  It has not developed a 21st century framework that will protect consumers in the digital marketing “ecosystem.”  We saw this with behavioral advertising and privacy policy, protecting children and youth from marketing linked to the obesity crisis, and in the approval of the Google and DoubleClick merger, for example.
If the FTC is to help the country move forward during this crucial period of economic transition, it should:
•    Make Consumer Protection its highest priority
•    Recruit new staff for consumer protection with a background and commitment to consumer interests
•    Engage in a serious and ongoing analysis of the digital marketplace, with a focus on the impact of interactive advertising/behavioral targeting on financial products, health and medical services, product purchasing, and children and adolescents
•    Propose new policies to protect consumer privacy and welfare online…
•    Work with the FCC and state authorities to create a new Mobile Marketing, Consumer Protection, and Privacy Task Force (with annual reports to the public, and, where appropriate, new legislation recommended to Congress).

Behavorial Tracking a User of Search and Display: Hey, FTC. Better Tighten Up Those Proposed self-regulatory rules [Annals of Behavioral Targeting]

Online ad companies, such as Microsoft, have been developing ways of tracking a users journey online (“engagement mapping” of the digital marketing “conversion funnel”) so the share of ad dollars can be more properly apportioned (meaning, it’s not only the ad companies providing the “last-click” that receives all the credit).  We have long been troubled by the stealth tracking and commercial surveillance system being put in place.  Rich media online ad company Eyeblaster has developed a similar service.  Here’s an excerpt from a trade article.  After you read it, think about the FTC during an Obama Administration, and what we should expect it to do under a new majority:

“Eyeblaster has introduced Channel Connect for Search, a service that helps marketers track consumers who click on their display ads but do not transact immediately.

The service places a cookie on a user’s computer that remains on his or her desktop for 30 days. Eyeblaster customers can then identify those individuals when they later convert through search.

“It bridges the gap between display and search advertising,” said Thomas MciIheran, senior media manager with digital media agency Sicola Martin, which is based in Austin, TX. “It’s such valuable information, because there are clients who say display advertising isn’t working, and they think they should stop. This could be eye opening for them, because it shows that display is leading to search, and how much.” …The new service is “able to pinpoint crucial campaign data and draw important insights about the interaction of our search and display ads,” said Harry Case, director of media analytics and technology at Mindshare, in a written statement. “In the end, it provided us with a more comprehensive overview of user behavior.”

Ad Industry Lawyer Spins in Ad Age that Privacy Will Be on “Back Burner.” Not Only Incorrect–but self-serving

This week’s Advertising Age has a “Legal Issues to Watch in 2009” column.  Written by Douglas J. Wood of Reed Smith, it claims that: “PRIVACY TO THE BACK BURNER- Congress and regulators are in a Catch-22: While under constant pressure from constituents and consumerists to curtail the use of personal information or behavioral targeting, they recognize that advertising is the backbone of the internet. So while there will be occasional skirmishes, the war on privacy will continue in its stalemate. Regulators will also see browser makers offering more control to consumers to block ads and the collection of personal information as adequate progress.”

Mr. Wood, it turns out is “a member of Reed Smith’s Executive Committee and the firm’s Advertising Technology & Media Group…and is General Counsel to both the Association of National Advertisers and the Advertising Research Foundation.”

Perhaps Mr. Wood is too busy to really follow Hill and FTC developments, because he is wrong.  There will be considerable activity on the Hill and elsewhere.   His column should have been labeled as written by the lawyer for the ad industry lobby group.  But it does reflect a lack of insight about the online ad industry’s problems related to privacy and consumer protection.

AT&T Positions itself for its (hoped for) Digital Ad & Data Collection-driven Era [Attention: Future of Privacy Forum group]

AT&T, like other companies, understands that online advertising is an intrinsic part of the broadband era business model (along with subscriber charges, transaction fees, etc.). A number of reporters, charming cynics as they may be, are convinced that AT&T’s recent calls for some type of opt-in is merely a form of Google bashing (it’s really Google envy!). But, as this trade story describes below, AT&T wants to better cash in on online ad revenues). It underscores why Congress must enact opt-in rules and other safeguards to govern ISP data collection, profiling, and targeting–especially across platforms. It also suggests a flaw in how the new AT&T supported Future of Privacy Forum envisions safeguards. They are quoted in The New York Times saying they want “to move the debate beyond opt-in versus opt-out,”–meaning self-regulation would rule–or ruin–the data driven day. Here’s an excerpt from CED magazine on AT&T’s new restructuring plan so Internet ads can play a more prominent role:

“AT&T’s Advertising & Publishing business unit has been renamed AT&T Advertising Solutions and is responsible for all of AT&T’s advertising sales, according to the company, to take advantage of advertising opportunities that cut across print, Internet, TV and wireless. Meanwhile, AT&T’s Yellowpages.com business unit has been renamed AT&T Interactive. That operation gets expanded responsibility for the development, management and delivery of online and mobile advertising products across all of AT&T’s media platforms. AT&T Interactive is responsible for online and mobile advertising inventory and offerings.”

source: “AT&T realigns ad operations.” Brian Santo. CEDMagazine.com November 20, 2008.

Google’s new funding program for Academics: $ for studies on “Brand Development,” Click Generation” and “for moving traditional video spots from broadcast to broadband”

The advertising industry is engaged in a growing research effort to push the boundaries of marketing. It wishes, for example, to reach deeply into our unconscious mind in order to generate a range of behavioral responses. Marketers are exploring how the new tools of digital advertising can influence consumer emotions.

For example, Google is now engaged in consumer neuroscience research to make its YouTube ads more effective. But Google wants more academic help so it can improve its digital marketing prowess. So Google and global ad giant WPP have joined forces to create “a new research program to improve understanding and practices in online marketing, and to better understand the relationship between online and offline media.” The program will be run by a trio of scholars, including Google’s own Hal Varian, Professor John Quelch, senior associate dean of Harvard Business School (who is a a non-executive director of WPP), and Professor Glen Urban, former dean of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Varian told DM News that “We want to encourage more research about how online and offline media work together to influence consumer choices. We think that such research will contribute to more effective and more measurable advertising performance.” DM News also reported that Mark Read, CEO of WPP Digital and WPP’s director of strategy explained that “[T]he industry, our clients and our companies will benefit from the application of some of the world’s finest academic research minds into how online media influences consumers.”

Don’t expect, by the way, any grants to be awarded that examine the ethical dimensions of interactive marketing; or new threats to personal privacy and autonomy; the implications of Google’s growing global control over online ad revenues on publishing; or the negative environmental and social consequences of promoting a digital marketing system which could lead to over-consumption.

Here are some of the research questions Google hopes will draw academics into its program:

    • 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 do you set digital advertising budgets and tactics when in intensively competitive product categories?…
    • 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 can banner ads be more effective?
    • How do you model the consumer response to digital advertising in social networks or mobile media?
    • What do we know and what more do we need to know about on-line audiences?
    • How can advertisers be welcome in social networks?
    • Recipients will be invited to attend a conference in Fall 2009 (Sept/Oct) where they can share their preliminary findings.

Interactive Ad Bureau to Congress and Public: If Your Privacy is Protected, The Internet Will Fail Like Wall Street!

It’s too disquieting a time in the U.S. to dismiss what a lobbyist for the Interactive Advertising Bureau said as merely silly. The IAB lobbyist is quoted in today’s Washington Post saying: “If Congress required ‘opt in’ today, Congress would be back in tomorrow writing an Internet bailout bill. Every advertising platform and business model would be put at risk.” [reg. required]

Why is the IAB afraid of honest consumer disclosure and consumer control? If online ad leaders can’t imagine a world where the industry still makes lots of money–while simultaneously respecting consumer privacy–perhaps they should choose another profession (say investment banking!).

Seriously, online ad leaders need to acknowledge that reasonable federal rules are required that safeguard consumers (with meaningful policies especially protecting children and adolescents, as well as adult financial, health, and political data). The industry doesn’t need a bail-out. But its leaders should `opt-in’ to a responsible position for online consumer privacy protection.

Behavioral Targeters Use Our Online Data to Track Our Actions and, They Say, to “Automate Serendipity.” Attention: FTC, Congress, EU, State AG’s, and Everyone Else Who Cares About Consumer Welfare (let alone issues related to public health and ethics!)

NPR’s On the Media co-host and Ad Age columnist Bob Garfield provides policymakers and advocates with an arsenal of new material that support the passage of digital age consumer protection laws. In his Ad Age essay [“Your Data With Destiny.” sub required], Garfield has this incredibly revealing–and disturbing–quote from behavioral targeting industry leader Dave Morgan (Tacoda) [our emphasis]:

“Now we have the ability to automate serendipity,” says Dave Morgan, founder of Tacoda, the behavioral-marketing firm sold to AOL in 2007 for a reported $275 million. “Consumers may know things they think they want, but they don’t know for sure what they might want.”

Garfield writes that “In 2006 Tacoda did a project for Panasonic in which it scrutinized the online behavior of millions of internet users — not a sample of 1,200 subjects to project a result against the whole population within a statistical margin of error; this was actual millions. Then it broke down that population’s surfing behavior according to 400-some criteria: media choices, last site visited, search terms, etc. It then ranked all of those behaviors according to correlation with flat-screen-TV purchase…“We no longer have to rely on old cultural prophecies as to who is the right consumer for the right message,” Morgan says. “It no longer has to be microsample-based [à la Nielsen or Simmons]. We now have [total-population] data, and that changes everything. With [those] data, you can know essentially everything. You can find out all the things that are nonintuitive or counterintuitive that are excellent predictors. … There’s a lot of power in that.”

There’s more in the piece, including what eBay is doing. As the annual Advertising Week fest begins in New York, we hope the leaders of the ad industry will take time to reflect on what they are creating. You cannot have a largely invisible system which tracks and analyzes our online and interactive behaviors and relationships, and then engages in all manner of stealth efforts to get individuals (including adolescents and kids) to act, think or feel in some desired way. Such a system requires rules which make the transaction entirely transparent and controlled by the individual. The ad industry must show some responsibility here.

Google/Verizon Deal: will increase “Google’s stranglehold on the mobile search market”

That quote in the headline comes from a new analyst note written by ad agency Avenue A/Razorfish. It explains [our emphasis] that: “[T]he deal will most certainly increase Google’s stranglehold on the mobile search market, and will be another blow to Yahoo and Microsoft, who are rapidly losing browser search share as well. Google currently owns 61% of the mobile search market, and already has deals in place with Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile. A deal with Verizon would give the search engine access to the current no. 2 wireless provider – but soon to be no. 1 once Verizon’s acquisition of Alltel closes.”

Regulators need to examine this deal on both competition and privacy grounds. The current review of the Google/Yahoo combination underway by the Department of Justice would be remiss if it didn’t address the mobile marketing issues. After all, Yahoo! mobile is a significant part of that company’s ad serving business. We still want to know whether Google will also be serving up mobile ads on Yahoo! as part of its forthcoming alliance.
source: Issue No 112 | August 27, 2008. SMTrends. Ave A/Razorfish.