Bancroft Family: Don’t Let Your Legacy–and Your Heirs– Be the Undermining of U.S. Journalism

We know money is important–and Mr. Murdoch has put a lot of it on the table. We also know that such funds will make the lives of the family and their future generations even more comfortable. But we call on the family to consider its historic role here. It has helped shepherd a publication with a important journalistic culture–one where many of their employees have embraced a mission essential to our democracy. We need serious-minded journalists more than ever–and Dow Jones has many. The Wall Street Journal can play a leading role over the next decade helping the U.S. address so many crucial issues related to the fate of the Republic, such as the environment, health care, public & private accountability. Mr. Murdoch has shown that independent and serious-minded journalism isn’t what he’s about. All you have to do is turn on Fox News. Is that the legacy you wish to leave?

I hope you confound the cynics who believe that everyone is for sale in our society, and make a statement that concern about democracy is more important.

excerpt from a Q and A on online ad exchanges:

“8. How can advertisers target their ads?
The DoubleClick Advertising Exchange service has one of the most
sophisticated and broad set of targeting options available. The exchange
supports standard online targeting elements including time of day, day of
week, user location, et cetera. In addition, buyers can target using
DoubleClick’s proprietary solutions including a three-tier content
categorization, site genre and site maturity. Buyers can target
participating sites by name or, alternately by using IDs, target sites
that are participating anonymously. The exchange also allows buyers to
leverage their own data by targeting based on their own user information.

9. What differentiates your ad exchange from other ad exchanges?

* Seamless integration: DoubleClick Advertising Exchange is tightly
integrated with DoubleClick’s existing DART ad management platform,
enabling yield maximization across sales channels for sellers, as well
as shared creatives, advertisers, Spotlight Tags and audience
targeting for buyers…

12. Can your ad exchange service be integrated with other ad management
platforms?
DoubleClick Advertising Exchange is tightly integrated with DoubleClick’s
existing solutions. Integration with DoubleClick’s ad management platforms
— including DART® for Publishers and DART® Enterprise — enables it to
deliver unique benefits such as dynamic allocation, which helps publishers
automatically determine how to generate the highest return for every
impression. In addition, DoubleClick Advertising Exchange is integrated
with DART® for Advertisers, allowing for shared campaign management
elements including creative, advertisers, user-lists and spotlight
tracking tags.”

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excerpt: “Google continues to garner a much larger percentage of media
spend than its percentage of searches, and thanks to a recent algorithm tweak,
now extracts greater revenue per search than any engine. (Specifically, to
reduce spam in its listings, Google made a significant change in June
regarding landing page relevancy.)

“Google’s second quarter algorithm change continued to propel its
leadership in monetizing search for large brand marketers, surpassing
Microsoft, who has historically been able to monetize search very well,
albeit with fewer eyeballs,” explained Roger Barnette, president of
SearchIgnite.

In June, Google received 76% of media spend but only 60% of searches
across its network. During the same time period, Yahoo earned just 18.3%
of media spend while receiving 34% of searches across its network.”

from: “Search Spending Flat, With Google Disproportionate.” Gavin O’Malley, Jul 18, 2007. Mediapost.

What Google should have said about “Why we’re buying Doubleclick”

Why can’t Google admit to its real reasons for acquiring Doubleclick? It’s not truly candid recent post (by Group Product Manager Alex Kimmier) dodges the key issues. If Google can’t be more honest—and at least admit to real public policy concerns—it’s a strategic blunder (let alone an example of a corporate culture where candor isn’t truly valued). So first, this “official” Google blog should have admitted that there are real privacy concerns with the merger. When you merge the number one online ad search firm (Google) with a leading provider of cookies for display advertising (Doubleclick), in a medium where revenue generation is all based on the collection and targeted use of personal information, the deal rings five-alarm privacy alarm bells. It’s unbelievable—and frankly disquieting—that Google can’t admit this is an serious issue with its proposed $3.1 b takeover of Doubleclick.

Google is also being disingenuous when it discusses the online ad business. For example, in the post it lumps itself together with Yahoo! and MSN when discussing the 40% market share search ads have in the overall online ad market. But the official blog should admit that it’s far and above the dominant force in the search market, both in the U.S. and abroad (with a 64% market share in US search, leaving Yahoo and MSN trailing at 22% and 9% respectively.) It should acknowledge that the one part of the online ad market they don’t yet dominate is display advertising. Through it’s acquisition of Doubleclick, Google will be able to quickly expand its dominance to the rest of the market. It’s not about, as its blog suggests, creating a more “open” platform that can “improve online advertising for consumers, advertisers and publishers.” It’s about tapping into Doubleclick’s blue-blooded client list of Fortune-type companies so Google can better digest that vital part of the online ad market.

But beyond online ad consolidation, we wish to return to privacy and targeting. No matter how useful Google is helping to identify key sources of information, it’s not in the best interests of a democracy to permit a private gatekeeper of so much (continually updated) personal data. Google’s business is advertising: it will do what it must to collect information about each of us so it can personally target us wherever we are. Online advertising is a very powerful medium, utilizing technologies designed to affect our behaviors [pdf] in a variety of ways (including so-called immersive targeting). Google’s expansion—and its apparent inability to acknowledge key civil society concerns—should be part of the media reform debate.

Google Has Lobbyists in "at least" 10 European capitals

[we are now back from vacation. Expect a larger post soon].

excerpt: “In a preemptive move, Google in 2005 opened an office in Washington, and in March 2006, it hired lobbying firms. It recently also has recruited lobbyists in at least 10 European capitals. A company blog recently was launched devoted exclusively to public policy issues.”

from: If Trust Is Lost, Google Will Crumble. Oxford Analytica 07.04.07.

FTC and Hill: Remember Doubleclick Acquiring Klipmart Last Year!

One of our messages to policymakers is that there has already been significant consolidation in the online targeted ad market. Once Google swallows Doubleclick, what little hope for any meaningful competition will disappear. So we think it’s useful to remind regulators about Doubleclick’s take-over—just last year–of online ad firm Klipmart. As clickz reported in June 2006:

DoubleClick has acquired video ad specialist Klipmart, and will combine the company’s technology and services with its own DART Motif rich media platform.

The deal, for which terms were not disclosed, brings DoubleClick a step closer to legitimacy as an end-to-end solution for rich media advertising, particularly since Klipmart ranks among the more sophisticated providers of video production services, an area where Motif is historically weak.

Meanwhile, Klipmart should benefit from DoubleClick’s democratic appeal to marketers, who for budgetary reasons may previously have shied away from the video vendor’s reputation for high-end deployments.

With the acquisition, DoubleClick now employs 100 in rich media. In its announcement, the company said it will soon launch an “Innovation Lab” focused on taking video to multiple digital platforms…

Klipmart is known for creating smooth user experiences for in-stream and in-page video ads, and for providing good customer service to agencies and advertisers. The company pioneered full-screen expansion of video ads, and publishes all video in multiple codecs to maximize the addressable audience.

“Klipmart has a superb reputation of creative video innovation and service,” said David Rosenblatt, CEO of DoubleClick, in a statement. “Combining these strengths with DoubleClick’s industry leadership, insight and global ad management platform will truly accelerate industry innovation in digital video and emerging advertising formats.”

Google Buys More Lobbyists and Influence

excerpt from Washington Post: “…Google went on a hiring spree and now has 12 lobbyists and lobbying-related professionals on staff here — more than double the size of the standard corporate lobbying office — and is continuing to add people. Its in-house talent includes such veteran government insiders as communications director Robert Boorstin, a speechwriter and foreign policy adviser in the Clinton White House, and Jamie Brown, a White House lobbyist under President Bush.

Google has also hired some heavyweight outside help to lobby, including the Podesta Group, led by Democrat Anthony T. Podesta, and the law firm King & Spalding, led by former Republican senators Daniel R. Coats (Ind.) and Connie Mack (Fla.). To help steer through regulatory approvals in its proposed acquisition of DoubleClick, an online advertising company, Google recently retained the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.”

from: “Learning from Microsoft’s Error, Microsoft Builds a Lobbying Engine. Jeffrey H. Birnbaum. June 20, 2007

PS: And that’s before Johanna Shelton, former aide to Rep. John Dingell and FCC Commissioner Adelstein, starts working for Google on Monday!

Online Marketing & Advertising– “the core of creating online demand.”

Excerpt from: Editorial: The Internet Revolution

“…Beyond all this is a basic truth—online marketing and advertising have moved from the periphery to the core of creating brand demand. It is also now at the core of the research industry and at the core of how business gets done today.”

Joseph T. Plummer. Journal of Advertising Research. June 2007

From SEC S-1. June 12, 2007 (excerpt):
“The interactive nature of digital media on the Internet enables businesses to access a wealth of user information that was virtually unavailable through offline audience measurement and marketing intelligence techniques. Digital media provide businesses with the opportunity to measure detailed user activity, such as how users interact with Web page content; to assess how users respond to online marketing, such as which online ads users click on to pursue a transaction; and to analyze how audiences and user behavior compare across various Web sites. This type of detailed user data can be combined with demographic, attitudinal and transactional information to develop a deeper understanding of user behavior, attributes and preferences… Our products and solutions offer our customers deep insights into consumer behavior, including objective, detailed information regarding usage of their online properties and those of their competitors, coupled with information on consumer demographic characteristics, attitudes, lifestyles and offline behavior.

Our digital marketing intelligence platform is comprised of proprietary databases and a computational infrastructure that measures, analyzes and reports on digital activity. The foundation of our platform is data collected from our comScore panel of more than two million Internet users worldwide who have granted us explicit permission to confidentially measure their Internet usage patterns, online and certain offline buying behavior and other activities. By applying advanced statistical methodologies to our panel data, we project consumers’ online behavior for the total online population and a wide variety of user categories…

Unlike offline media such as television and radio, which generally only allow for the passive measurement of relative audience size, digital media enable businesses to actively understand the link between digital content, advertising and user behavior.”

PS:  The S-1 also notes that “[O]ur database infrastructure currently captures approximately 182 million Web pages and 4.5 billion URL records each week from our global Internet panel, resulting in over 28 terabytes of data collected by our platform each month.”