Digital Marketing of Toys to Children Reflects Seamless Merging of Online & Online, inc. Play

Here’s a telling comment via a senior Disney executive:

“Disney says it sees online as a vital part of its strategy to turn its very well-known brand name into greater market share by making itself more relevant than ever to both children and parents…”That’s why [says Edward Catchpole, senior European VP for toys, Disney] all the sites we operate for our brands are not extensions, they’re seamless integrations, part of owning that toy, part of the play pattern. A young girl will run around pretending to be a fairy, then play with a toy and then go online and immerse themselves in a virtual world at one of our communities, like Pixie Hollow or Club Penguin. We also have a social network based around [Disney/Pixar movie] Cars in the US, which tends to be used more by boys,” Catchpole adds.”

source:  Vertical Focus: Toy retailing.  Sean Hargrave.  New Media Age [UK].  November 27, 2008 [sub required]

Is the White House Collecting Data on the Public via YouTube?

According to CNET, the White House has again changed its privacy policy regarding persistent cookies and online videos.  Now all video providers, it appears–not just YouTube–has received a formal exemption of the federal prohibition on persistent cookies.

But beyond the cookie issue–which shouldn’t be placed at all when the public watches a government video–are questions regarding statistical and tracking data.  Is Google/YouTube providing the White House with any analytics and user information [such as through YouTube Insight]?  For example, YouTube allows “brand channels” to know “the gender and age” of viewers; “identify the ways…users find your videos;” “Hot spots viewing information, which identifies viewing trends  for each moment in a video.” YouTube also permits brand channel video providers to track users via a “one 1px by 1px third-party tracking tag, which lets the channel owners use view-through tracking to better understand a user’s behavior after the user leaves the channel page.”

We assume the White House will answer such questions (such as whether they receive brand channel-like services), respond favorably to the FOIA request from Chris Soghoian, and ensure that the site reflects the highest possible consumer privacy standards.

Google’s “Biometric” Research: Ads on YouTube Give “Halo Effect” to Brands

Google suited up people with special biometric monitoring equipment to test how well YouTube ads affect them.  According to New Media Age [excerpt]: “YouTube users are 1.5 times more attentive and engaged in advertising than TV viewers, according to research conducted in partnership with General Motors Europe, Motorola, media agency MindShare and the Online Testing Exchange (OTX).  The research used eye tracking and biometric data to reveal the brand impact of advertising on YouTube. It found recall and attribution for an ad viewed was up to 14% higher than watching the same ad on TV. Viewing a silent ad on YouTube in addition to a normal TV ad also improved ad recall and attribution.

Ads on YouTube can impact the perceptions of elusive audiences like young men and infrequent TV viewers. They also have a halo effect and increase brand perceptions such as innovative, cool, dynamic and unconventional.”

Google measured such metrics as heart rate, physical movement, respiration rate, and skin conductance.

NMA: Ads on YouTube have higher impact than on TV.  Danielle Long.  NMA. December 18, 2008 [sub. required]

Annals of Mobile Marketing: Acxiom

The database marketing firm Acxiom’s mobile marketing product promises marketers they will be able to deliver [excerpt]  “mobile content to the right user based on time, context, location, and user preferences–all in real-time…

Targeting–one to one messaging that can leverage multiple data sources, including: location, customer data, Acxiom’s world-class data and behavioral analytics.”
source:  Acxiom/Mobile Marketing.

Commercial Domestic Surveillance: The new White House Website, YouTube & Privacy

In a post for CNET yesterday, privacy expert Chris Soghoian revealed that President Obama’s White House “has quietly exempted YouTube from strict rules relating to the use of cookies on federal agency Web sites.”   Federal rules prohibit the use of what are called “persistent cookies,” that can track an online users activities and behavior.  Soghoian cites the new White House privacy policy that states, “A waiver has been issued by the White House Counsel’s office to allow for the use of this persistent cookie.”  Google’s YouTube received this exemption, notes the White House site, “to help maintain the integrity of video statistics.”

Now the White House has made a quick change, according to a post written today by Soghoian.  “Obama’s web team rolled out a technical fix that severely limits YouTube’s ability to track most visitors to the White House website,” he writes. “By late Thursday evening, each embedded YouTube video had been replaced with an image of a video player, which a user must click on before the real YouTube player will be loaded. The result of this change is that YouTube is now only able to use cookies to track users who click on the “play” button on an embedded YouTube video — the majority of people who scroll through a page without clicking play will not be tracked.”  But he also describes the new approach as a “band-aid. Those users who do click the play button will be secretly tracked as they navigate the White House website — and if those users have visited YouTube or any other Google run website in the past, the fact that they watched an Obama video will be added to the existing massive pile of data the company has compiled on each web surfer.”

But for those White House web site visitors who do click on the YouTube videos, they will likely become part of the data analysis which could be generated via Google’s YouTube Insight.  That’s a video analytics tool providing “detailed statistics” on video use.  One Google executive offered a commercial example of the tools’ features: “YouTube’s geographical insights could help marketers determine ad effectiveness and campaign optimization. For instance, he said, different versions of a movie trailer might perform better in different regions.”  Other YouTube analytical data available  includes a “demographics tab that displays view count information broken down by age group (such as ages 18-24), gender, or a combination of the two, to help you get a better understanding of the makeup of your YouTube audience. We show you general information about your viewers in anonymous and aggregate form, based on the birth date and gender information that users share with us when they create YouTube accounts.”  (Google says “individual users can’t be personally identified.”  But the company has embraced a narrow definition of what privacy protections users should expect, the so-called APEC standard).

Persistent cookies, explains U.S. Military Academy computer science professor Greg Conti, “can exist for many years…repeatedly identifying the user to the issuing web site…persistent cookies are specifically designed to uniquely identify users on return visits to web sites…In terms of anonymity, this is bad.  Advertisers have found innovative ways to exploit cookies to track users as they visit web sites that contain ads or other content.”  [source is Professor Conti’s terrific book, Googling Security:  How Much Does Google Know About You?  Addison-Wesley.  2009.  Page 73]

Of course, Google/YouTube’s cookie placed via a White House visit sets the stage for the company to further track and analyze citizens/ users.  Given YouTube’s ever-growing expansion as a commercial video advertising service, its ability to harness the White House data cookie will undoubtedly prove useful for the company.

The revised White House privacy policy does offer users a way to view the videos “without the use of persistent cookies” through the extra step of clicking the “link to download the video file… provided just below the video.” But we think opt-out is the incorrect approach.

The Obama White House should set the standard for protecting privacy in the digital era.  They should maintain the prohibition on persistent tracking cookies.  Nor should they permit any commercial operator, including Google’s YouTube, to engage in federally-sanctioned data collection.  We know the new Obama Administration has many important issues to address.  But they also need to develop a sophisticated critique of the online advertising industry, ensuring privacy and consumer protection.  The Obama Administration should be able to articulate a balanced perspective– that can take advantage and foster the democratic potential of digital media, while also meaningfully addressing the harms.

Google’s Mobile Targeting: Encourage More Searches, Location Targeting

Not enough is known about Google’s mobile plans.  Here’s an excerpt from New Media Age [UK] magazine from May 2008:

“Google is tweaking its mobile offering to encourage people to perform more searches. It has also increased the options available to advertisers by launching mobile image ads. These are keyword-targeted, priced on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, and must link to a mobile web page. Google will only show one image ad per page, and lets publishers choose to show text ads, image ads or a mix.

Christian Hernandez Gallardo, head of distribution partnerships for Google, says there’s increased demand from publishers…He expects that advertising will be a key component to raising awareness and says many big content providers are already reaping the benefits of this approach. “They’re buying a lot of keywords and ads on Google to drive traffic.”

Another key ingredient for Google is location, which could lead to a further inventory opportunity on which advertisers could bid for prime position. “If you search for ‘pizza London’, we’ll capture that as your location and use it as a weight to your searches,” Gallardo says.”

source:  Search Pattern.  Peggy Anne Salz.  NMA Magazine.  May 8, 2008

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.”

Congressional Internet Caucus–Brought to You by Google, Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, CTIA and More!

We hope the era of government reform that should be a hallmark of the incoming Obama Administration and the new Congress will include reforming the Congressional Internet Caucus.

For too long, the Caucus agenda has been under the influence of the “Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus.”  This is not an independent group–but one with connections deep into the Silicon Valley and communications business.  Last week’s annual State of the ‘Net Congressional Caucus meeting was funded by “platinum sponsors” Google, Microsoft, and Verizon.  The “gold sponsors” were AT&T,  the Center for Democracy and Technology (which is funded by many of these same corporations), CTIA (The Wireless Association), and VeriSign.  “Notepads” were provided by the Hunton & Williams law firm; “Laynards” were paid for by Juniper Networks.  “Coffee Breaks” paid for by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.  Qwest provided “bags.”  The Venable law firm gave out the “travel coffee mugs.’

As always, the agenda of the meeting was purposefully narrow, to help ensure none of the corporate sponsors would be seriously challenged. Broadband policy is too important an issue to be left in the hands of a few well-funded DC insiders.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Official Definition of Behavioral Targeting

As the debate on privacy, consumer protection, and online marketing is renewed, it may be useful to see how the interactive ad industry classifies its practices.  Here is the definition of behavioral targeting from the IAB’s own glossary of terms.  My bold:
“Behavioral Targeting-
A technique used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns. Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual’s web browsing behavior such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made to select which advertisements to be displayed to that individual. Practitioners believe this helps them deliver their online advertisements to the users who are most likely to be influenced by them.”

Here are a few other terms used by the IAB that illustrate some of the the online ad industry’s data collection and targeting process:

“Click-stream –
1) the electronic path a user takes while navigating from site to site, and from page to page within a site; 2) a comprehensive body of data describing the sequence of activity between a user’s browser and any other Internet resource, such as a Web site or third party ad server.
Heuristic –
a way to measure a user’s unique identity. This measure uses deduction or inference based on a rule or algorithm which is valid for that server. For example, the combination of IP address and user agent can be used to identify a user in some cases. If a server receives a new request from the same client within 30 minutes, it is inferred that a new request comes from the same user and the time since the last page request was spent viewing the last page. Also referred to as an inference.

Profiling –
the practice of tracking information about consumers’ interests by monitoring their movements online. This can be done without using any personal information, but simply by analyzing the content, URL’s, and other information about a user’s browsing path/click-stream.
Unique user –
unique individual or browser which has either accessed a site (see unique visitor) or which has been served unique content and/or ads such as e-mail, newsletters, interstitials and pop-under ads. Unique users can be identified by user registration or cookies. Reported unique users should filter out bots. See iab.net for ad campaign measurement guidelines
Web beacon –
a line of code which is used by a Web site or third party ad server to track a user’s activity, such as a registration or conversion. A Web beacon is often invisible because it is only 1 x 1 pixel in size with no color. Also known as Web bug, 1 by 1 GIF, invisible GIF and tracker GIF.

Mobile Privacy & Marketing Watch: Protecting Hispanics

One of the areas my group and USPIRG asked the Federal Trade Commission to address in our complaint filed this week was mobile marketing to Hispanic-Americans.  An entire marketing infrastructure has evolved to target this important group; many questions remain about what they are being offered and how the mobile marketing has been structured. As Media Post explained yesterday in an article on the Hispanic mobile market: “…because they lag behind the general population for Internet access, many will first go online via their cell phones. In fact, they significantly over-index when consuming mobile content. According to comScore m:metrics, 71% of Hispanics consume content on cell phones compared to the market average of 48%. In addition, Hispanics tend to notice and respond well to ads on cell phones. Nielsen’s recent “Mobile Advertising Report” highlighted that Hispanic data users are more likely to recall seeing ads on mobile phones (41% compared with 30% of non-Hispanics) and more likely to have responded (22% vs. 13%).”

One mobile marketing company that is now also focused on the Hispanic market promises potential advertisers that it “utilizes advanced profiling capabilities that are inherent to the platform’s automated learning engine – meaning that the platform learns from previous customer interactions to automatically and organically build up profiles of users and their individual preferences. Each subsequent campaign is then automatically optimized (no human interaction is required!) in order to deliver the most personalized message possible that is based 100% on the user’s profile.”

We are not opposed to mobile marketing.  But systems of data collection, profiling, and targeting must be transparent, disclosed, and controllable (a real opt-in) by the users.