Lobbyists like to hire academics in order to give their agenda the patina of scholarly respectability. Many academics are ideologically aligned with the interests of major media and telecom companies–supporting an unregulated environment (and like to reap the bucks as well). Some academics want to schmooze with deep-pocketed special interests. So it’s not a surprise to learn that Time Warner Cable has a “Research Program on Digital Communications.” They have already released a volume of papers on the “Future of Digital Communications: Policy Perspectives.” Time Warner’s so-called research agenda is so self-serving that it would be laughable if the goal wasn’t ultimately to undermine the public interest and consumer protection. Luckily, there are scholars and other policy experts who care more about their integrity and the academic issues and wouldn’t consider taking such funding. Here’s what the first “research question” is for those seeking funding to ultimately help undermine consumer privacy by enabling Time Warner and other digital marketers to expand their behavioral targeting approaches:
Topic One: Advertising, Two-Sided Markets, and the Role of Network Operators (ISPs, MSOs)
The emergence of more precisely targeted (interest-based or so-called “behavioralâ€) advertising offers potential benefits to consumers while at the same time raising possible concerns about privacy. Application providers, network owners, advertisers, content providers, and other interested parties may play a role in allowing these potential benefits to be realized. By facilitating two-sided markets, or platforms that enable two distinct but related groups of customers (such as advertisers and consumers) to obtain value, service providers can expand the scale and scope of their offerings to consumers. Industry groups and the Federal Trade Commission have developed principles for self-regulation online, while some advocacy organizations and members of Congress have pointed to potential harm from more targeted advertising and are calling for new government mandates.
Key questions concern the types of disclosures and the level of consumer consent that should be required.
Questions
• What are the benefits of more precisely targeted advertising, and how prevalent is the practice?
• What technological innovations support the development of more targeted advertising over digital media?
• How are consumers affected by increasingly prevalent forms of targeted advertising, and what is the appro-
priate public policy response?
• What is the role for self-regulation, government intervention, and industry standard-setting?
• What role should network operators play in regulation (voluntary or prescriptive)?
• Describe the future of the advertising marketplace and the role of new and potential entrants, such as
Internet service providers (ISPs), cable operators, and other multichannel video programming distributors
(MVPDs) offering interactive television services.
• How can two-sided markets help encourage the development of new broadband and video services?
• How can regulation of advertising or privacy affect, promote, or retard the development of these new
services?
Category: Web 2.0 & Democracy
What AOL Should Have Told Reps. Barton & Markey
AOL also describes to Reps. Barton and Markey the way they use cookies that doesn’t reflect what they say to clients--such as “Target users based on attributes from user registration or third-party data (e.g. age, gender, income, kids)… Retarget users who visit your website… Target users within households using Experian’s statistical modeling based on hundreds of offline data elements that are most predictive for defining the specific audience of consumers.†For question 1, they refer to their privacy policy—something few consumers would read or understand. Nor does the privacy policy spell out how AOL collects and targets users, as they do for potential clients. See and compare to privacy policy. See how they offer targeting based on political information.
Question 2: They didn’t answer completely. They should have included information from here. And what their partners collect.
Question 3. They should have said they urge advertisers to use pixels, beacons and other tracking tools:   “Place pixels on all high-traffic pages… Target broadly… Most networks, including Advertising.com, look at IP or cookie data to determine if a user is part of a specific demographic or has demonstrated a particular online behavior, such as shopping for a car, browsing cooking sites, and so on. With user targeting, you reach those consumers directly, regardless of the sites they happen to be visiting.â€
And they say that the third party cookies don’t identify the “specific user.â€Â But that’s what AOL says it can target: “Target users within households… Retarget users who visit your website… Target users within households that demonstrate the highest propensity to buy certain products…â€
Question 7. They don’t say what they do. It’s monetizing all the data: “We monetize nearly 1.5 billion impressions per day on average.â€
10. They should have said how they target based on financial and health info. They didn’t. See its targeting for health, finance, teens, Hispanics, African-Americans.
14.  Users don’t have enough information on the process to really determine whether they should opt-out. Nor is AOL’s opt-out really visible.
ITIF’s psuedo and self-serving analysis of Info Politics. Note they like Federal funding
The idea that ITIF places itself as a “moderate” in its newly released “taxonomy” of Internet policy is laughable. The group is part of the elite and mostly corporate funded lobbying apparatus.  It classifies many public interest groups and academics as “social engineers,” in order to disparage their legitimacy (talk about a tactic designed to protect their own narrow interests!). But what they ignore is that groups such as my CDD and many others actually know about the workings of the industry and the issues we address. We don’t form baseless and knee-jerk ideological positions that protect the people paying the bills. We stand up for the public and what we believe is right, based on the facts. Groups like ITIF have failed to intellectually engage with the real dynamics of the privacy issue–conveniently ignoring what’s actually going on. Meanwhile, next time ITIF disparages the role of gov’t and regulation, remember how enthusiastic they are taking a $500K federal grant (however worthy the subject matter).
*****
ITIF Consortium Wins Federal Grant to Make Voting More Accessible for Injured Soldiers
October 4, 2010
WASHINGTON – The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) consortium is the winner of the Military Heroes Initiative grant competition, sponsored by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The $500,000 grant will help advance efforts to improve voting technology and processes for military service members disabled in combat operations.
“ITIF welcomes the opportunity to pioneer new research that will help ensure that the brave men and women injured in our military are able to exercise their right to vote,” said Daniel Castro, ITIF senior analyst. “This research will ultimately help increase voting accessibility for the approximately 50 million Americans with disabilities.”
EAC is an independent commission created by the Help America Vote Act. Under the terms of grant, ITIF will partner with Georgia Tech Research Institute, a leading research organization with extensive experience working with military institutions and conducting accessibility research, and Operation Bravo Foundation, a pioneer in developing voting alternatives for military and overseas citizens.
ITIF and its partners will undertake a review of current voting access and offer recommendations to improve the voting needs for military personnel with disabilities. The evaluation of current voting practices and emerging technologies to assist with balloting will not only be valuable for military personnel but also for others with disabilities that make it challenging for them to exercise their Constitutional rights. Recommendations will be delivered by early 2012 for potential use in the 2012 federal election.
The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and, more recently, the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, recognized the necessity for improving the voting process for people with disabilities and military personnel. The Military Heroes Initiative will help further these vital goals. Funding from this grant comes from appropriations made available under the Consolidated Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2009 (P.L. 111-8).
…
The new “Digital Advertising Alliance” self-reg plan. See if it tells consumers what its sponsor ad groups really say to each other. That they track and target your “digital footprint”
On Monday, the new self-regulation magical “icon” that is designed to make the online ad industry’s privacy problems disappear will be unveiled. A new group called the “Digital Advertising Alliance” will unveil the icon-based plan–all timed to help head-off the kinds of protections and safeguards consumers require. The current financial crisis affecting tens of millions of Americans require that government and big business groups do more than pay digital lip service to consumer protection.
As a kind of litmus test for the new self-regulation effort, see if the icon and the information connected to it really informs you about how data on you is collected and used for profiling, tracking and targeting. For example, last week, the Interactive Advertising Association (IAB), one of the key backers of the new Alliance, released a guide to targeting consumers at the local level. Here’s excerpts of what they say. See if that little icon is being honest when you click it. Of course, we really require rules that eliminate the kind and amount of data that can be collected on you and you family and friends in the first place–as well as honest disclosure on the process. Note as well that all that data on you is expensive–and others are cashing in on information that belongs to you! From the new “Targeting Local Markets” guide:
Explicit profile data Targeting. definition–
Explicit data is “registration quality data†collected either online or offline. For online registration data, the user has certain attributes in his or her registration profile at a particular site or service, and that data is associated with the user’s Web cookie or some sort of audience database when the user next logs in. Offline registration data includes the sorts of data held in the massive offline direct response industry databases built up over the last several decades. These are then matched to a user online when that user logs in somewhere that is a partner of the data company. The site at which the user logs in, usually an online mail or similar site, sends the name/email combination to the data company, which then makes the match and sends back data…pricing–In general, first party data commands a far more variable premium than third party data…Third party data is usually available in much larger quantities, and yet there is often a fee of anywhere between $0.50 to $2.00 or more paid to the data provider by the ad seller – thus increasing the cost of goods sold (COGS) on the ad, and therefore increasing the price…
Behavioral Targeting (Implicit profile data Targeting)-definition-
Behavioral Targeting is the ability to serve online advertising based on profiles that are inferred from an individual user’s technical footprint and viewing behavior…As the medium has grown from a “browsing†experience to interactional so have the levels of information gathered. Newer forms of information include the data collected about influences, social preferences through social networks and an individual user’s content created online…The data is often gathered in real-time and can be used for real-time decision-making so that relevant advertising can be delivered dynamically to an individual user during their online session…Behaviorally targeted advertising commands a higher price because of targeted placement versus general run-of-site (ROS) advertising…Behavioral Targeting can be highly accurate when the user is leaving a digital footprint of their activities as they move through the Web.
Online Marketers, Privacy & Self-Regulation: “Repeatedly Failed Promises Syndrome”
To help undermine the impact of the forthcoming FTC proposal to protect consumer privacy, a coalition of online ad lobby groups will unveil yet another self-regulation plan. According to Mediapost, online consumers will soon see “[I]cons to signify behavioral advertising — or serving ads based on people’s Web activity.” Since 1999, online ad groups have rolled out self-regulatory regimes promising to protect consumers online. Each has failed to do so.  This new effort involves the very same groups and companies that offered self-regulatory promises in the past.  For example, see the World Privacy Forum’s report on the failure of the Network Advertising Initiative’s self-reg schemes; that group is part of the new effort, btw.
This new effort is seriously flawed–and before marketers and advertisers adopt it, it must be independently evaluated by consumer groups, independent academics, and the FTC. We believe that the system will fail to protect consumers–because it will not candidly inform them about how the data is collected and used. Meanwhile, in a revealing flip-flip, the IAB’s UK counterpart deep-sixed its just released safeguard on retargeting. According to a new report, “[O]nline advertising trade body the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has withdrawn a code of practice which recommended that behavioural advertising retargeting cookies should expire after 48 hours. The IAB’s Affiliate Marketing Council (AMC) published the code last week. It applied to the practice of ‘retargeting’ web users who had visited a site with ads for that site on other people’s websites, using cookies to track their movements and activities…That code has been withdrawn and will be reworked after further industry consultation, though, the IAB said. The code has disappeared from the IAB’s website.”
Consumers and citizens require real safeguards governed by law and regulation–not flimsy digital promises designed to sanction ever-expanding data collection practices.
Online Advertising: “Overnight” Ratings–a la TV– Come to the Internet, inc. Mobile. Facebook Endorses Nielsen’s Cross-Platform Tracking
For years, we have explained that the Internet’s future has been tied to the TV and advertising business models of the past. So it’s not surprising that this week comScore announced that “digital overnights” are now part of its service offerings for marketers and advertisers. In a release, they explain that its “new service features several groundbreaking enhancements for digital media planning and optimization, including the availability of digital GRP “overnights,†campaign reporting across global markets, verification of ad delivery by audience and geography, and detailed campaign analysis by creative and placement strategy…By offering views of digital performance that have long been the standard in the TV business, any buyer should be supremely confident about allocating dollars to the platform where the most valuable attention can be found.â€
Nielsen also added ratings for online programming to its product offerings, as part of the move to measure and track users across all platforms, including mobile. As its release noted: “marketers and media companies alike will now have a simpler way to measure the combined reach of TV, the web and even mobile advertising…Nielsen will be able to provide reach, frequency and Gross Rating Point (GRP) measures for online advertising campaigns of nearly any size, running nearly anywhere on the web. Campaign reporting will be available within just days after the launch of a campaign, providing vital delivery information in-flight to both advertisers and publishers.”  Facebook, which is partnering with Nielsen to help expand its big brand ad selling business, enthusiastically endorsed the new product: “More and more marketers are creating integrated, cross-platform campaigns and we need a better way to measure how they perform,†said Mike Murphy, Vice President, Global Sales, Facebook. “We think creative campaigns are more effective when marketers combine TV and digital in a way that extends the big idea online and makes it social through an ongoing, two-way connection. With their expertise, Nielsen can help marketers measure the impact of true cross-platform campaigns.â€
Google & Microsoft Tout their Mobile Targeting Clout, inc. Behavioral, Location, Gender, etc.
My CDD and USPIRG asked the FTC in January 2009 to investigate mobile marketing and its threat to both privacy and consumer protection issues (Ringleader Digital, now the subject of lawsuits and stories in the WSJ and NYT, was included in the complaint, btw). Online mobile marketers, including Microsoft and Google, illustrate how regulators in the U.S. and abroad should require safeguards to protect the public from unfair and deceptive practices–including those that involve their privacy. In Ad Age, both Google and Microsoft loudly proclaim what their mobile marketing services can do for brands, ads and marketers. Here are some choice excerpts:
Microsoft: “Microsoft Advertising’s industry-leading mobile display and search advertising solutions engage more than 43 million on-the-go U.S. consumers each month—regardless of a user’s mobile phone or wireless carrier. Its innovative ad placements and ad formats include display, rich media, search, video and custom in-app ad units…
Advanced Targeting Options
- Profile targeting: age, gender, household income, location, time of day
- Behavioral targeting: more than 120 custom segments (e.g., “movie watchers” and “business travelers”)
- Device: make and model
- Wireless carriers: on-deck inventory
- Keyword targeting: exact or broad match…Complete mobile ad solutions for automotive, CPG, entertainment, financial services, retail, technology, telecommunications, travel and other sectors…
- More than 43 million, or 55 percent of active mobile web users in U.S.
- More than 80 million active mobile users globally in 32 countries.”
Google: “Today’s consumers are on the move. More than ever before, audiences are searching and browsing the web on their mobile devices. How do advertisers connect with the on-the-go consumer…As customers go mobile, advertisers need smart mobile advertising strategies. With Google, they can easily target and tailor messages according to location and automatically show their customers relevant local business information or phone numbers to enable them to take immediate action. Once a campaign is up and running, marketers can measure their results via detailed reports. Additionally, integrated mobile reporting in Google Analytics allows them to track and optimize conversion, e-commerce and engagement metrics on mobile devices. They can take advantage of Google’s mobile-specific ad formats. Click-to-call text ads, animated mobile banner ads, click-to-download ads and other display ad formats are examples of how Google is innovating for the small screen. Google closed its acquisition of AdMob, one of the world’s leading mobile advertising networks, in May. AdMob’s innovative rich media ad units—including full-screen expandable, animated banner and interactive video—create opportunities for advertisers to engage with a relevant audience on their mobile devices. Now the Google and AdMob teams are working to create new ways to deliver engaging and innovative advertising experiences that will help marketers drive their businesses forward…
CASE STUDY
CHALLENGE: Esurance, a direct-to-consumer personal car insurance company, wanted to ensure that customers could do business with it on their own terms and at their own convenience… To make the connection between mobile users and Esurance agents, Esurance used Google mobile ads with integrated click-to-call functionality. The CTC ads gave mobile users the option of clicking through to Esurance’s mobile-optimized landing page or initiating a phone call with a licensed insurance agent…Results…
- Boosted conversion rates: Click-to-call mobile ads drove a 30 percent to 35 percent higher response.”
PS: Attention Music Lovers. In the same Ad Age piece, the online music service Pandora exclaims that it can provide:“Through powerful hypertargeting, reach the right person, at the right time, without waste. Target based on age, day, gender, location, mobile platform, time and type of music…Pandora offers a broad array of formats and rich media functions to create an immersive mobile experience, including:
- Tap to video
- Drag and drop
- Tap to app
- Tap to call
- Tap to e-mail
- Tap to expand
- Tap to find a location
- Tap to iTunes
- Tap to mobile webpage
- Standard banners”
Facebook’s Partnership with Target Stores: Is this leading to its work thwarting a Boycott effort?
As news reports emerge that Facebook is preventing a group boycotting Target Stores for its political positions able to use the social network’s functionality, it’s important to connect its business relationship with the chain store.  Facebook recently made a deal with Target as part of its marketing push for its virtual “Credits” currency. The growing relationship of the biggest brands and Facebook, and what happens to our information and how these companies get preferred treatment, must be on the policy and advocates agenda. Politico reported that: “As the number of Facebook members signed up for the “Boycott Target Until They Cease Funding Anti-Gay Politics†page neared 78,000 in recent days, Facebook personnel locked down portions of the page — banning new discussion threads, preventing members from posting videos and standard Web links to other sites and barring the page’s administrator from sending updates to those who signed up for the boycott.”
Facebook and Target stores are new partners, something which may explain its censorious efforts. Inside Facebook also recently reported:“Following recent efforts by Zynga, Playdom and other social gaming companies to launch pre-paid cards for virtual goods in stores, Facebook is going direct — starting this Sunday, it will allow users to buy pre-paid cards for its virtual currency, Credits, within 1,743 Target retail locations across the US and on Target.com.
Cards can be purchased in $15, $25 and $50 increments, similar pricing to what you’ll see for a wide variety of other pre-paid game cards already available in Targets and other stores around the country.
Facebook itself is also helping to push the new integration, by including a Target store finder on its official Credits splash page. When users click on the “Redeem Gift Card†in the Facebook Credits gift cards section of the Credits page, they’ll see a popup window asking them to enter the scratch-off number on the back of the Credits card. Clicking “Redeem Now†will add the amount of Credits purchased to their Facebook account.”
Yahoo’s Targets Millions of Users for its Largest Advertisers, via a “Magic Formula” Powering its Ad Auction System
That’s the formula Yahoo is using to please its largest advertisers, explains an article in The Register. The report explains that Yahoo’s economist Preston McAfee has created a “magical formula” for its ad targeting service: “a formula designed to keep Yahoo!’s largest advertisers as happy as possible. It lets each of those guaranteed-contract advertisers pick and choose — in remarkably precise fashion — how their ads are targeted, even though there are more than three trillion possible targets…Yes, Yahoo! has advertisers who only want to reach women between the ages of twenty and thirty. But it also has advertisers who only want to advertise in cities where the sun is shining. There are brokerage houses who only want to advertise when the stock market is up…What is really ‘magic’ about this is that it gave us a backdoor way to price three trillion different pieces of advertiser demand,” McAfee says…The setup also gives Yahoo! fine-grain control over each advertiser’s campaign. “It gives us a dial to favor an advertiser,” he continues. “If one of our advertisers is not getting enough impressions, we turn the dial and increase their bids, to make sure we fulfill the contract.”
But what’s needed is a policy formula–that creates privacy and other consumer protection safeguards. Online marketing’s use of advanced computing systems and real-time ad auctions of data on individual users underscores the problem–the industry is running amok.  Consumers shouldn’t be subject to powerful invisible technologies that track, profile, target and sell them to the highest bidder.
Rules Required for Data-mining and Consumer Protection: A good offer for you– but not for your neighbor!
As Congress and the FTC focus on 21st Century consumer protection safeguards to address the digital marketplace, a guiding principle should be accountability and transparency. Advanced computer systems for both business and government far out-strip the ability of a single consumer to understand–let alone control–how their information is collected and used. We need to have fair marketing rules so some people–because of their income, where they live, what the spend and what on and especially–race/ethnicity–find themselves confronting the emerging discriminatory web. Take what Stream Base Systems does for e-commerce–and ask yourself: wouldn’t you want to understand how such real time data tracking and mining is used to determine prices and offers made for you? [excerpt]:
As Internet transactions and data volumes continue to skyrocket, more and more traditional eCommerce and Web 2.0 businesses need to monitor and instantly react to all user activity in real-time in order to ensure a positive customer experience, high customer retention rates, and greater profit…
- Website Monitoring: With clickstream and transaction rates soaring, a growing number of high-traffic e-businesses are seeking to monitor and react instantaneously to website-generated real-time events. StreamBase enables e-Businesses to analyze and react to clickstreams in real-time, which in turn enables the immediate delivery of personalized cross-sell or up-sell offers, or online product merchandising customized to the real-time activity of site visitors. By analyzing current web activity data and correlating this with stored customer history data, personalized offers can be generated that match the Web customer’s current interests and activity.