Tags containing: "DNT"

Trust, transparency and the New York Yankees

May 12, 2016 Chris Pedigo, SVP Government Affairs – DCN

According a recent report in the New York Times, the majority of new online advertising revenue—85%—will go to two companies: Google and Facebook. While these companies have consumer-facing services, the reason they dominate the digital advertising ecosystem is because of the technology and algorithms they employ as third parties. Third parties collect data about consumers yet have no direct relationship with them. In addition, those people usually have no idea that their data is being collected.

When you consider that direct response ads represent nearly two thirds of digital advertising and these companies only get paid when consumers click on ads it’s no wonder we see the digital experience dominated by annoying, intrusive, and crappy ads.

And how are consumers reacting to this situation? As TRUSTe has noted, clearing cookies is still the primary method employed by consumers to protect their privacy. However, clearing cookies has detrimental effects to the user experience such as requiring consumers to log in every time they revisit a site which then makes the stalking, creepy ads come back even more. Yet they still clear cookies because it’s one of the main tools they know about to prevent being tracked. In this dysfunctional dynamic, big data is being used to drive down costs of serving targeted ads rather than drive up relevance to the consumer.

A few years ago, consumers started activating their Do Not Track (DNT) signals in an effort to express a choice, even though there was no industry standard yet. As Doc Searls plotted out, the number of DNT signals declined at the same time that the number of consumers with ad blockers started climbing. It’s not a coincidence – consumers have been looking for easy ways to express choice. If this continues, publishers won’t be able to fund quality content like this piece about the early season slide of the Yankees.

It’s interesting that our members are having some success asking consumers to turn off their ad blockers in order to access the content they love. The conversation goes something like this:

Website owner: Hi loyal reader, would you pretty please turn off your ad blocker or whitelist this site? We need advertising revenue to pay for quality journalism.

About 40% of consumers: Sure! I love you guys.

The remaining 60% of consumers: Meh. I’m gonna go look elsewhere for that story about Trump. I really, really hate those annoying ads on those other crappy sites I visit.

My take on this is that consumers understand premium experiences and are willing to view advertising in exchange. But, the value proposition gets out of whack when there’s no transparency for the consumer and the experience is poor.

Meanwhile, advertisers aren’t happy either. As the ANA pointed out, $7.2 billion was lost to fraud last year. They’ve been paying for ads that aren’t even viewable. There are also huge concerns about the inability to fully document where all of their digital advertising dollars are going. In short, there’s a lack of transparency and trust for advertisers. Sound familiar?

So, how does our industry find its footing again? We’ve got to be more clear with consumers about the value proposition and provide them with easy ways to express choice over ubiquitous data collection. By putting consumers first, we also force the issue on ad fraud, viewability and accountability. Every company involved in the digital advertising supply chain would have to justify how it’s adding to the overall value proposition. They would need to “put in more value” than they “take out” – the best way to build trust.

The FCC recently proposed privacy rules for broadband providers that aim to give consumers more control. The problem is that this only applies to ISPs – not all of the other entities that relentlessly track consumers around the web. And, government regulation often becomes outdated very quickly – market solutions or real industry self-regulation are far more able to adapt to new business models and practices. Maybe the FCC proceeding will lead to a new conversation within industry.

With the growing market of Internet of Things, immersive experiences and connected world we live in, the strains on trust between advertisers, consumers and publishers are only going to get worse. We need to find the right balance of providing consumers with transparency and real choices. Consumers are looking for a better experience. Advertisers are demanding fairness. And, I would like to live in a world where I can read all about how badly the Yankees are playing.

Perspectives

Dear Abby: I don’t mind advertising but I do mind tracking. What do I do?

September 8, 2015 DCN

The scene: You are driving along Interstate 87 up to Albany (NY) and pass a billboard on the right side of the road.

In the early days of the Internet, the billboard was a sign on the side of the road: static and there rain or shine. To change the billboard, a crew had to go to the location and with a few tools and time, remove the sign and replace it. The billboard was technically dumb. It had no idea who you were, your car, or your license plate number.

On the Internet today, the billboard is still a sign on the side of the road but this time, the billboard is a bit smarter. Based on the time of day, day of week, or some other signal such as weather, it could rotate. You might see a billboard for Howe Caverns if it is nice weather but it might change to a Wyndham Mountain advertisement if it is snowing. As you pass the billboard in your Jeep Grand Cherokee, the billboard takes note: it records your vehicle model, your speed, and extra signals exhausted by your SUV. On your return trip, the billboard notes you passed it with 48 hours between trips. And maybe, the billboard knows you visited Howe Caverns so instead of wasting an impression to advertise Howe Caverns again, it shows an ad for Wyndham Mountain.

I am using the above examples to outline two complimentary but distinct areas: advertising and tracking.

Advertising does not need tracking and tracking does not need advertising. Often we think of these as together and dependent. They are not.

Advertising
A paid-for placement on some form of media (billboard) by an advertiser or agency (on behalf of advertiser). (my definition)

Tracking
The components where the billboard starts to know it is a Jeep Grand Cherokee, the speed, names of people in car, and the time in between passing the board. Collecting and logging data with or without permission. (my definition)

There is a solid conversation happening right now around ad-blocking. Howard Stern is even talking about the subject. Users are blocking ads (and tracking) and this could lead to a complete break of the Internet economy. Ad agency execs are even blocking ads. I recently wrote about a lot of this here.

I want to dig into this subject a bit more as I believe what users are doing on the Internet might have unintended consequences.

There are three types of users:

Users who want to block ads
Users who want to block tracking
Users who want to block both (ads + tracking)

I am not convinced that blocking of ads (ad-block) on the Internet is a good thing. I am convinced that blocking of tracking on the Internet is a good thing for people who do not want to be tracked.

Ad-blockers have been playing the default role of both: blocking ads and blocking tracking.

I do think there are opportunities for publishers, ad-tech, advertisers, and the ecosystem to take a responsible role for letting users know when they are being tracked.

I am not going to outline every single idea here but I’ll toss one out that we’ve been noodling:

One of the ideas that surfaced from my team was around highlighting the advertisement (or the URL [awesome] bar) with a specific color so the user knows something is happening related to tracking.

Example: If ad + tracking is rendered to user, URL bar turns yellow. If yellow, the user can click and see why.

The user can then click on the advert or URL bar to turn-off or add the site/tracker to a white list. A derivative white list idea was talked about recently by my pal Eric Franchi.

I don’t want to deal with managing every company who is tracking me.

I don’t think most Internet users want to manage each tracking platform: the good ones, the bad ones, and the not-so-bad ones. For users who do want to manage their own list, then they can do so. Similar to how I’ve learned how power-users of Firefox tweak every little thing to optimize their own experience.

I do think that it is rationale for a user to do one (or more of the following):

Subscribe to a curated list. Is there a person (i.e. Doc Searls) or company (i.e. Mozilla, Digital Content Next) to whom you would subscribe to in order to use their trusted list?
Subscribe to a brand. Since brands are the ones advertising, would you sign up to receive that respective brands tracking? If you subscribe to Nike, then you receive whatever Nike chooses to use for their tracking and ad-tech.
Or none. Which is fine too.
Or something else that I’ve not listed here, of course.

The content business is in for a nuclear winter if we don’t find a way to directly and/or indirectly compensate publishers and creators.

Advertising is a natural form of content subsidy but there are other direct methods of subsidy as well such as what the folks at LaterPay, Flattr, and others are doing.

I am biased and want to believe that advertising can still exist online but we need to give users control of how they (not) want to be tracked. You can still show an advertisement to a user who doesn’t want to be tracked: show the ad, with respect. More on respect and trust here.

This post is written by Darren Herman, the VP of Content Services at Mozilla. While not skiing with his family or on cross-country flights to Mountain View (CA), Herman thinks about the future of content and it’s convergence with Madison Avenue. This post, which originally appeared on Medium, is his thinking and not one that is reflective of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @dherman76.

Policy

FCC Wading Into Privacy Matters

July 16, 2015 Chris Pedigo, SVP Government Affairs – DCN

In response to growing consumer concerns, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is beginning to dig deeper into consumer privacy issues. And, as with their first foray into these matters, it appears the FCC will take a measured and thoughtful approach.

In its Open Internet ruling (aka “Net Neutrality”), the FCC decided not to waive the Title II privacy rules. Instead, the FCC announced it would hold a separate proceeding to figure out how the old rules in Title II should be adapted for a broadband world. As the FCC rightly noted, “broadband providers serve as a necessary conduit for information passing between an Internet user and Internet sites or other Internet users, and are in a position to obtain vast amounts of personal and proprietary information about their customers.”

The FCC subsequently held a workshop with industry and consumer representatives to learn more about how consumer data is collected, used and retained by broadband providers. Some workshop participants tried to argue that ISPs don’t have access to any special set of consumer data and that apps and websites would have the same data, but common sense would tell us differently. ISPs have a different relationship with consumers than just about any other actor in the digital ecosystem. Consumers constantly choose which websites to visit and which apps to download, but they cannot avoid or shield their activity from an ISP therefore there are different consumer expectations in regards to their data. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been very vocal about the different expectations that consumers have with respect to 1^st vs 3^rd parties.

Now, as part of this privacy discussion, Consumer Watchdog is asking that the FCC require adherence to a Do Not Track (DNT) standard to protect consumers. While there are real concerns about how a DNT standard would be administered and whether the FCC has regulatory authority to enforce it, the request isn’t unreasonable. Even though very few companies honor it today, an increasing number of consumers are activating their browser’s DNT signal in an attempt to block being tracked by various parties across the web. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) just this week completed a technical and policy standard for how companies should respond to the DNT signal. Interestingly, the standard is not that different from the industry’s self-regulatory opt-out program and could provide a roadmap for the FCC and companies.

It is heartening to see the FCC take a measured and thoughtful approach to learn more about how privacy rules should be implemented for broadband. There is a real opportunity for the FCC to build upon and even strengthen the fine work of the FTC. This important effort will ultimately enhance consumer trust and grow the opportunities for the brands they love.