Category Archives: digital media

December 2, 2014 · 11:20 am

An Extra Serving Of Data

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. While you were cooking or trying to fight the traffic and weather to get to Aunt Sally’s, Twitter was busy deciding to help themselves to your data. I kid you not. This was how they put it:

twitter fail image

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To help build a more personal Twitter experience for you, we are collecting and occasionally updating the list of apps installed on your mobile device so we can deliver tailored content that you might be interested in. If you’re not interested in a tailored experience you can adjust your preferences at any time (read below). Additionally, if you have previously opted out of interest-based ads by turning on “Limit Ad Tracking” on your iOS device or by adjusting your Android device settings to “Opt out of interest-based ads,” we will not collect your apps unless you adjust your device settings.

Generally, Twitter has been pretty good about explaining how they invade your privacy.  When you think about it you probably realize that Twitter analyzes your tweets, retweets, location, and the people you follow to figure out which “Promoted Tweets” (a.k.a. ads) to show you.  Hopefully you know that all those little “tweet this” buttons around the web gather information about you as well.  OK, maybe it’s not exactly personally identifiable information, but I think we all know it’s not critically important for ad targeting to have your name.  Knowing that you are you (a unique identifier) across devices and services means someone knows a hell of a lot more about you than you might want them to know.  Adding one more bit of data – your name – is not difficult.

For example.  Do you want Twitter knowing you installed a dating app?  Do you want them serving ads on your timeline based on the dating app?  How about ads on your phone or computer outside of the Twitter environment?  It’s coming.  Just as Facebook, which gathers the same data (oh, you didn’t know?) is getting to the same place.

To Twitter’s credit, the page I linked above explains how to opt out of this data theft.  But why not make it opt-in?  I realize that a personalized web and mobile ad experience can be better for some folks and delivers much better results for the marketer, but someone needs to take a step back before they help themselves to another serving of my personal data.  It makes me sad and uncomfortable that we’re still having this discussion.  You?

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November 13, 2014 · 12:33 pm

We’re Feeling Insecure

The Pew folks are at it again. They just released a study called “Public Perceptions of Privacy and Security in the Post-Snowden Era” and it’s a doozy. Let’s not bury the lede:

Perhaps most striking is Americans’ lack of confidence that they have control over their personal information. That pervasive concern applies to everyday communications channels and to the collectors of their information—both in the government and in corporations.

Big Brother indeed, although Orwell probably didn’t think about it in terms of corporations doing much of the surveillance.  The study makes clear that consumers are skeptical about some of the benefits of personal data sharing, but are willing to make tradeoffs in certain circumstances when their sharing of information provides access to free services. 55% “agree” or “strongly agree” with the statement: “I am willing to share some information about myself with companies in order to use online services for free.” And we know they’re watching:

Across the board, there is a universal lack of confidence among adults in the security of everyday communications channels—particularly when it comes to the use of online tools. Across six different methods of mediated communication, there is not one mode through which a majority of the American public feels “very secure” when sharing private information with another trusted person or organization.

Sad, isn’t it?  More importantly, there seems to be a growing sentiment among consumers to dial back the amount of information they’re making available.  I’ve written before about ad and cookie blocking.  How can the legitimate interests some businesses have for this information – to me that means to make the consumer’s experience better – be served while protecting the consumer’s privacy?  Clearly all of us engaged in data-gathering need to begin to act more responsibly or risk being cut off from the source.  As the report says:

At the same time that Americans express these broad sensitivities toward various kinds of information, they are actively engaged in negotiating the benefits and risks of sharing this data in their daily interactions with friends, family, co-workers, businesses and government.

This is a wake up call.  Are you answering?

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November 3, 2014 · 1:52 pm

The 40% Chance Of Fraud

If there was a 40% chance that when you bought something you weren’t going to get what you thought you were buying, would you take that risk? I wouldn’t, but apparently many advertisers and/or their agencies do so every day. Ghostery, which is a browser extension I use and would heartily endorse, says its research shows 40% of all URLs in automated ad auctions are masked. What is URL masking? As a recent Ad Age article defined it:

URL masking is often used to trick advertisers into running ads on sites with illicit or stolen content, which tend to generate lots of traffic but little ad revenue. URL masking is also used to fool buyers into thinking they’re buying premium inventory when they are instead getting low quality placements.

Ouch.  Then again, this is just one of the issues that have arisen as programmatic ad buying becomes more prevalent.  As a former TV sales guy, I just don’t get it.  Oh sure – the costs of machines that are supervised by a couple of people is far less than the cost of the number of people required to do the equivalent work.  But look what happens when it’s just machines.

Ask anyone connected with the programmatic ad business what the top three issues are and they should answer:

  1. Fraud
  2. Fraud
  3. Fraud

Traffic generated by bots, ads that are run underneath pages to generate impressions when no one is seeing them, fake sites which spoof domain names that clear buyers’ whitelists because they look like they belong to reputable publishers.   That’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Another big issue is how little of what the buyers are paying actually reaches publishers – middleman upon middleman taking their cut drives revenues to the content creators down.

Putting aside the need for transparency, I’m not a Luddite.  I know programmatic ad buying is an advantageous, time and cost-effective process.  But the machines can’t do everything.  In fact, someone has to understand the business well enough (and all of those bad actors who would seek to steal from it) to program the algorithms.  Someone needs to bring the 40% chance down to 0%.  Someone else has to come up with the next brilliant, breakthrough idea.  It won’t be a machine.

You?

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