It hasn’t even been a month since Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a German blog that growth, not monetization, was the priority for the social networking site. In fact, he even went so far as to say that he didn’t see a revenue plan coming into play for three more years.
But now, as TechCrunch digs […]
The prevailing theory is that this time the bubble that burst was that in the housing market. But the wreckage in the last three months has been just as bad in tech as when the dotcom bubble burst eight years ago. Or worse, for blue chip tech stocks.
Let’s go to the numbers.
Last time around, the […]
by Scott Buresh
Even with the cookie-type behavioral advertising technology, there was a way for users to prevent these ads from targeting them. They could set their machines not to accept any cookies at all by setting their browser security setting to high. This solved the privacy issue, although many websites would (intentionally or not) render improperly with this setting on.
In recent news on the behavioral advertising technology front, Microsoft announced that its newest Internet Explorer, version 8, would have a mode called “InPrivate Blocking” that would prevent cookies from being placed on any machine. At first glance, it would seem that either:
A. Microsoft is genuinely concerned about online privacy, to the point that the company would allow users to block ads that come from the Microsoft network as well, or
B. Microsoft realized that the paltry share of the ad serving market that it currently controls is not as important as inflicting serious damage to Google, which owns a much more significant slice of the online advertising pie (in actuality, at this point, Google’s “slice” looks more like Pac-Man, but I digress).
Whatever happens with this flavor of behavioral advertising, there was recently a new type of advertising technology that raised some serious eyebrows, and this one could have been the most nefarious of all.
This latest behavioral advertising technology, brought to the surface by a company called NebuAd, is aimed at tracking user behavior at the ISP level. In other words, there ain’t really a whole lot you can do about it. You need your ISP to get online, so your ISP has access to the information that you are accessing when you are online. They don’t need no stinkin’ cookies, so you can erase them to your heart’s content and they’ll happily keep tracking along.
For the unscrupulous ISP, this is a no-brainer. You allow NebuAd to install its platform at your service hub and then you split the profits. And this is exactly what some of the smaller firms did in several “trials” of the behavioral advertising technology in the U.S.
Of course, there is a caveat - even a firm with cash flow problems and without an iota of ethics would probably want to create an opt-out system before unleashing this behavioral advertising technology platform on its users (you know, the people that already pay them and probably assume privacy). However, there’s something very interesting about how these behavioral advertising trials were done - in just about every case, the ISP seemed interested in keeping the opt-out information as obscure as possible from its users. According to Anick Jesdanun from the AP:[1]
1. CenturyTel Inc. rolled out the platform to 20,000 of its subscribers. To inform them of the new advertising technology, the company sent an email letting these subscribers know only that the privacy policy had been updated and had added a paragraph about NebuAd to the privacy policy. 85 out of 20,000 opted out.
2. Embarq Corp. rolled out the platform to 26,000 of its paid subscribers. Embarq didn’t bother sending any emails to its subscribers; the company merely put a general notice within its privacy notice online. A whopping total of 15 out of the 26,000 people opted out.
3. WideOpenWest (or WOW) rolled out the NebuAd platform on 330,000 customers. The only notification before the fact was a posting on the company’s website, along with a reminder in billing statements to review privacy policies online. They did email the 330,000 customers to tell them about the advertising technology trial - after it had concluded. 3,355 people opted out, but that figure may be inflated, because they aren’t sure how many came from a single customer. WOW indeed.
4. Bresnan Communications, LLC, tried the platform on 6,000 of its customers. Unlike the other three providers above, the company did send an email directly to its users about the trial itself (although I have no idea how it was presented and whether the info was buried in a footer somewhere) and posted notices on its website. 18 people opted out.
There were two other participants in the trial - Cable One, Inc. and Knology, Inc. For the purposes of my numbers below, I’ve left them out - not because they don’t support the general theory, but because they don’t fit the parameters. Knology won’t reveal how many customers were involved and how many opted out, although the company did post a notice on its website. Cable One, Inc. ran the test on 14,000 customers, but did not give them the chance to opt out.
To sum this up, the total number of “participants” of the four providers for which we have sufficient data was 382,000, and the number that opted out was 3,473 (which may be inflated due to the WOW factor, but let’s leave that alone). The total percentage of opt-outs was less than one percent. I don’t know about you, but I’m guessing that the number of opt-outs would have been much higher if each of these providers had sent a piece of direct mail for the sole purpose of informing the subscribers that this type of behavioral advertising technology tracking method was going to take place and that they needed to opt out at such-and-such address. Better yet, they needed to opt-in at such-and-such address (but I’m guessing that would doom the trial from the beginning).
All testing for behavioral advertising technology at this stage has been halted - it would appear because the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee has decided to look into the matter. Which I guess is fortunate, at least in the short term, for Google, Yahoo, and other big players in the search world. If anyone is going to be force-feeding you behavioral advertising and other targeted ads without your explicit consent, it’s going to be them, not some snot-nosed little start-up.
Recently, the CEO of NebuAd announced his departure, and the company has announced plans to move forward with a more “traditional” advertising technology model (probably similar to the cookie-based platforms we’re already used to worrying about). However, another company in Europe named Phorm has been having success with a similar behavioral advertising technology business model (ISP-based), but EU regulators are starting to jump into the fray.
If I had to guess, I would say that in the future any type of behavioral advertising technology on the ISP level will have to be done on a strict opt-in basis, meaning that the person has taken an action that shows that he agrees with the process. Will there be a company that emerges that is willing to provide free or very cheap broadband to people who are willing to be targeted at the ISP level? Time will tell.
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by Jennifer Laycock
Anyone with a brick and mortar presence who has tried to calculate the true ROI of organic and paid search knows how hard it can be to tie an offline sale with online research. We know shoppers end up conducting multiple searches and visiting multiple sites before they end up buying and that they usually end up buying offline and yet we fail to tie our marketing efforts together with any type of consistency.
That’s what Liana Evans addresses today over at the Key Relevance SEMClubHouse blog.
Today, I was on MSNBC, and I clicked to watch a video segment from the Today show about “23 secret beach retreats”. It was about a 4 minute segment, with Nilou Motamed from Travel + Leisure magazine. I got interested of course, I’m a beach bum at heart. I then went to Travel + Leisure’s website to look for the rest of the list since the Nilou only discussed 4 places with Meredith Vieira, gosh darnit, I wanted to know the 19 others!
Travel + Leisure didn’t have the article anywhere on its front page for me to click, not even giving me a tidbit and then have to pay to see the rest. They didn’t even have an image of their latest magazine’s front page on their site, so that if I wanted to go pick up the magazine because of this article, I would know it’s there - I remembered a brief flash of it in the interview and thought I saw it, but wasn’t sure. Then there’s MSNBC, no link to an actual article on the video.
Thank goodness I’m a bit more technically savvy, and decided to check out the Today Show website. It wasn’t on the main page of the Today Show, so from there I clicked into the Travel section, and found the article, it’s 2 pages on the site, with very little to really go on.
It’s a common problem, one I run across on a regular basis as I try to get more information on a campaign I might like to write about. I see a wonderful commercial or I read about a great promotion, but I simply can’t find any information on it online. It’s inexcusable, especially considering how easy it is to gather your marketing materials together on your web site these days.
If you’ve got a great campaign going on, you need to be doing everything you can to facilitate your fans in making it go viral. If you’re pushing an event or partnering with a charity, make sure news of that partnership is easy to find on your site. Have your new commercials available on your site. Make sure they can be embedded in blogs and sent to friends. If you don’t have that technology, upload them to YouTube and use YouTube’s embed code to feature it on your site.
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The advantages of cloud computing are commonly known: You don’t need upfront infrastructure investment; scaling up is relatively easy and the service provider is likely to be more efficient than your company.
But your friendly neighborhood chief financial officer may not get those arguments. Luckily a recent Forrester Research report provides a translation tool to get […]
Akamai, the leader in content delivery networks–services that speed up video and Web pages on the Internet, posted solid third quarter results, but cut the outlook for the fourth quarter. The economy was cited for the lower guidance but some analysts say that price competition may be more worrisome.
Competitors like Level 3 and Limelight are […]
IBM is suing executive Mark Papermaster, vice president of the company’s blade server development unit, to prevent his move to Apple. In a complaint, Big Blue says Papermaster “is in possession of significant and highly-confidential IBM trade secrets and know-how, as well as highly sensitive information regarding business strategy and long-term opportunities.”
The company says that […]
Google and Yahoo are reportedly close to walking away from their search ad deal after meetings with the Department of Justice.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
The two companies met Thursday with the Justice Department, part of a series of meetings to address the concerns of regulators. While the parties may agree to continue the talks […]
Big egos and a lack of foresight kill lots of companies — both small and large. However, IT leaders can learn from their misguided decisions and glean a some important lessons to keep their IT departments — and ultimately their companies — from suffering the same fate. This episode of Jason Hiner’s Sanity Savers for […]