Save Access

How the TV business tracks viewers/users will eventually be part of the privacy debate. So, for the record, here’s a service Tivo provides to the industry: “TiVo’s Power||Watch(TM) ratings service provides advertisers access to second-by-second program and commercial ratings data, with demographic segmentations, for 20,000 households who have volunteered to take part in a “passive” [...]

We live in a world that is being increasingly shaped by the forces of digital advertising. It’s a largely global market after all, and there are very important developments in places such as China, India, and in the United Kingdom that have relevance for online privacy in the U.S. This description of the [...]

The proposed deal where Yahoo turns over to Google a great deal of its search ad function is available via the SEC. Although it’s the redacted version, there’s enough detail to raise questions. Policymakers, consumer advocates, competitors, and the public should be concerned. The document underscores how competition has eroded in the [...]

Look for a moment at an excerpt from a legal tangle between behavioral targeting companies Valueclick and Tacoda (the latter now owned by Time Warner). Valueclick filed suit on July 15 claiming patent infringements, including for one entitled “Method and Apparatus for Determining Behavioral Profile of a User.” Read the “Abstract” and part [...]

Google has been assigned a patent which abstract says is: “[A] computer-implemented method for displaying advertisements to members of a network comprises identifying one or more communities of members, identifying one or more influencers in the one or more communities, and [...]

The two headlines coming from the responses sent to the House Energy and Commerce Committee so far are that trials of deep packet inspection ad tracking/targeting were launched without meaningfully informing subscribers, and that the companies really failed to fully disclose all the data collection and targeting they routinely do. On the second point, a strategy [...]

Late last evening (10:06 p.m. eastern), I received an email from the Google policy blog list announcing they had submitted a letter to House leaders on privacy and online ad issues. (There’s a case study on media management that can be made about late night-Friday releases designed to avoid weekend or even Monday [...]

The spinmeisters who wrote Yahoo!’s letter to House leaders didn’t do a real service for the troubled online company. They weaved and dodged the issue. Yahoo! took a trick from George Orwell by trying to reframe the privacy-threatening interactive data collection & targeting system by calling it “customized advertising.” Yahoo! also tried [...]

Here’s an excerpt from a story released yesterday that was written by Wendy Davis. We are very proud of our leadership role in exposing the threats to consumer privacy from interactive marketing techniques shaping our digital media system. Unlike some other groups, we are independent and don’t–and would never–take corporate money.  [...]

When Google acquired DoubleClick last year, they also took over its search marketing division called Performics. A new study commissioned by Performics focuses on the media behaviors of 10-14 year olds, so-called tweens. The aim of the study is basically to get more online targeted marketing aimed at young people. The senior [...]

This week, the FTC organized a “public roundtable” that is part of a process it calls “FTC at 100: Into Our Second Century.” Through panels and what it calls “self-assessment,” the FTC under its new chairman Bill Kovaciac has asked such questions as: “How well is the FTC fulfilling the destiny that Congress [...]

Over the last few years, the global advertising industry has been working on a new way to measure the impact a marketing message has on individual consumers. “Engagement,” as its called, is an evolving concept–but it raises serious privacy and consumer protection concerns. Online advertisers are especially focused on the concept, as [...]

Watch this online video of Randall Rothenberg speaking before a June Federated Media Publishing event. In Mr. Rothenberg’s worldview, demon critics of advertising (such as myself) are deliberately trying to undermine democratic digital media. This would be absurd, if it wasn’t so sad. Mr. Rothenberg is using scare tactics to [...]

Cable’s triple play is turning into a multi-dimensional effort designed to take advantage of its monopoly positions in cable TV and broadband (with mobile coming down the pike). Data collection and targeted advertising is on its agenda, as it is with phone company ISPs. Right now Comcast and other cable companies are working [...]

Google’s ambitions to deliver for big brands includes paying for the kind of research that demonstrates its power to capture consumers. Google hired market researchers for a “pan-European” effort to “prove search can have a big impact on branding.” According to New Media Age, “[T]he findings…showed coming top of organic listings raised [...]

In its most recent 2007 SEC 10K, Yahoo listed Google as its primary competitor: “We face significant competition from large-scale Internet content, product and service aggregators, principally Google, Microsoft and AOL…. Google’s Internet search service directly competes with us for Affiliate and advertiser arrangements, both of which are key to our business and operating [...]

One of the issues the Center for Digital Democracy has asked the Department of Justice to investigate is the impact of the proposed deal between Google and Yahoo and its impact on the already endangered newspaper business. Both Yahoo and Google provide online search ads or related services for the majority of the country’s [...]

The stories on a judge’s order for Google to turn-over to Viacom data on YouTube users have largely ignored a key issue: why is Google–and almost every other leading broadband video provider tracking and analyzing our online viewing habits. It’s because–like with broadband generally and with television–the goal is to know exactly what we [...]

Just a friendly reminder that the new media world is here–and that it should be the primary focus of public interest communications policy strategies. Via Variety (excerpt): More signs of the Internet apocalypse for TV’s old guard: U.S. Web surfers viewed some 11 billion online videos in April, a gain of 33% from the same [...]

That’s the headline here–“We feel that we have recreated the mass media,” said Kim Malone Scott, director of sales and operations for AdSense in a New York Times article on Google backing a “Calvalcade of Cartoon Comedy” for online. Google is likely using its resources which can track how long users are likely to [...]