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Perspectives

Live Social Streaming: The New Front for Media Piracy Battles

In case you were wondering if the pace of digital media was about to slow down, the answer is a resounding no. A mere six weeks after the introduction of social media streaming platforms Periscope and Meerkat entered the market, the legal battles have begun. According to a National Journal article No, You May Not Periscope Mayweather-Pacquiao, HBO has already sent takedown notices to Periscope when it found users streaming episodes of Game of Thrones.

While there have been many streaming piracy suits to date–from Napster to YouTube—the potential for anyone with a phone to stream live, super-premium media events creates a fresh level of hell for media executives who invest in these must-see, highly exclusive events. According the National Journal piece, both HBO and Showtime have preemptively filed suit against two websites that they accuse of intending to stream the feed of the Pay-Per-View (PPV) Mayweather-Pacquiao fight for free. And it’s just good business that these two have been quick to take action, given that PPV providers are selling Saturday night’s fight for between $89-$100. In fact, this fight is expected to set new revenue records for PPV.

While live social streaming adds a new—and daunting—twist to the risk posed to media exclusivity that social media poses, media companies have not yet come to terms with social media tools like Twitter. On April 30th, The N.F.L. secured agreements from CBS, Fox, ESPN and NBC that reporters wouldn’t share draft picks on their social media accounts.

The N.F.L. statement notes:

“We believe that keeping this information embargoed to the extent possible clearly enhances the viewer experience for the Draft.  The result is a better presentation for the 32 million viewers who watched Round 1 in 2014 and the 45.7 million who watched across all three days.”

Spoilers aside, those millions of viewers account for commensurate revenue. There is also the issue that DMCA takedown requests are fine for archived videos (such as the Game of Thrones example), but it remains to be seen how this will affect transient live streamed content and real-time mentions of events whose primary value is in the live broadcast (such as sporting events). Pre-emptive legal action, or gentlemen’s agreements may offset some of the risk; the reality is that any audience member can simply raise their phone and tatter the velvet-rope exclusivity of live events.

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives | Revenue

Programmatic: Both the Villain and the Hero

Nothing makes a narrative more compelling than a villain: evil that must be overcome so the hero can prevail. Maybe that’s why every few years a new nefarious buzzword arises that both energizes the digital media industry and rattles the cages of the establishment. But the business of digital media is just not as tidy as a formulaic series. The real problems are complex. And the bad actors aren’t parading their final 15 minutes of fame on Dancing with the Stars, they are lurking in the shadows, profiting from marketers’ best intentions and the great content created by others. While the story of programmatic is barely a few years old, the plot lines are deep and we’re clearly still early in the first season.

It wasn’t too long ago that programmatic was referred to as the latest chapter in digital media’s “race to the bottom.” The word was associated with everything bad in the digital advertising supply chain because it started off as a murky pool of third parties offering marketers an easy way to reach massive (if dubious) audiences and for publishers to offload “remnant” inventory at bargain basement prices. Unsold inventory from great brands mixed with a whole lot of garbage—the old ad network model. This (thankfully brief) period in the story of programmatic did little for anyone besides intermediaries—though it did help draw attention to the fact that digital advertising processes were ripe for change.

The reality is that programmatic emerged as a response to the complexity of the digital ad buy and has evolved into a way to automate as much as possible, making digital media easier for marketers to buy and potentially more profitable for publishers. Our research shows that forward thinking media companies have wisely jumped into the programmatic fray in order to address marketers’ desire for efficiency while also leveraging their first party audience data to deliver highly targeted, efficient and impactful campaigns.

Yes,  a whole lot of programmatic inventory is still remnant but that is starting to change as more premium inventory becomes available for programmatic buys. In fact, a growing number of our members are starting to see programmatic guaranteed and preferred deals that rival direct deals in terms of CPMs. The big difference is that the programmatic deals—those that have pre-agreed prices and guaranteed high-quality inventory—offer automation of the back-end processes.

As representatives for the digital content brands that marketers trust, it is our responsibility to shine a light on any “trust parasites” in programmatic and to work with advertising and agency partners to maximize their confidence in the value they will receive when they put money into programmatic. The rise of programmatic direct and private marketplaces offer an example of how this is taking shape. And right now, buying direct from a trusted premium publisher is the best way to execute a programmatic campaign without risk.

Villain’s and heroes aren’t what we need to focus on in the story of digital media. However we do need to recognize that there’s a lot at stake here if all of the players don’t work together to educate the market, given the predictions that programmatic will dominate digital advertising within a few years. If you are one of the few still debating whether or not to embrace programmatic: Stop now. Automating the bidding, buying, securing and execution of an ad campaign in real-time using machines rather than paper and humans is a no-brainer.

If you put on your marketer cap, it’s fairly obvious.  Do you want your ads to be viewable meaning actually show up in the active window? Absolutely.  Do you want your ads to be in front of humans rather than bots? Um, of course. Do you want your ads to run in a clean, well-lit brand-safe environment? Yes, please. Do you want all of the above as easily as possible? Bring it on.

With every change, every challenge comes an opportunity to step up and “save the day.” And there are few better examples of the opportunity for digital innovation than programmatic. Get on board and let’s drive this narrative forward.

 

Image credit: kosmolaut.

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Perspectives

DCN’s Recommended Reading: Week of April 30, 2015

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Advertising | DCN-Research | Research

Practical Tips for a Programmatic Future

Digital Content Next (DCN) released insights into the future of programmatic advertising based on in-depth interviews with executives at 10 digital content companies from DCN’s membership including Vox, The Weather Company, Business Insider and CBS Interactive. “Practical Tips for a Programmatic Future” offers a behind-the-scenes peek at these organizations and details how they have prepared for a future with an expected continued rise in programmatic spend. DCN’s key takeaway—that programmatic is not a channel but a broad set of automation and efficiency tactics that can be employed across a range of inventory—is one of the valuable insights from the white paper.

Vendor partnerships are important

  • Integration with constantly-evolving players in the ad tech stack is what makes building ad technology in-house prohibitive; all interview participants said they are not pursuing internal solutions and will instead rely on vendors.

Learn and grow with the buy side

  • Most executives interviewed stressed the need to proactively talk to clients about their programmatic capabilities, as they are often unaware of them or how they can benefit their marketing campaigns.

Enable and incentivize your sales team to embrace programmatic

  • Automation will not diminish the importance of sales relationships. Half of those interviewed said they are starting to see large buys that include some programmatic component; therefore, it is important to educate and enable account executives to have conversations about programmatic with clients.

Designate programmatic expert(s) on your team

  • Digital content companies interviewed have created new roles for programmatic specialists. Broadly there are two types of functions that programmatic specialists will have to perform: (1) supporting the direct sales team; and (2) managing vendor and platform relationships.

Leverage first-party data and other organizational resources

  • Programmatic specialists will need to work closely with engineering, analytics and data science teams to build out data capabilities and products.

To view the White Paper, click here.

To view the Press Release with a longer summary, click here.

Innovation | Perspectives

Forbes’ New BrandVoice Pulse Pages Paint a Pretty Picture for Content Marketing

The web is becoming an increasingly visual place. From Pinterest to selfies and animated Gifs to infographics, consumers are gobbling up digital imagery at an insatiable rate. This holds true whether the digital content is delivered via social media platforms or by a brand, business or media website. And given that visual and interactive content experiences aren’t just pretty pictures  but have been shown to increase engagement, it appears to be worth the investment, something that Forbes is counting on with the launch of its new Pulse product.

When Forbes Media launched BrandVoice more than four years ago, “We had the core philosophy that all content is equal—that journalists had interesting things to say and that marketers have interesting things to say,” says chief product officer Lewis Dvorkin. And since then, Dvorkin’s provided the publications’ editorial staff, outside contributors, and brand partners alike with robust tools to tell their stories.

“As the web becomes more visual, marketers seek to create much more immersive experiences in brand safe environments.” He’s seen that while consumers still enjoy text-based pages, they find immersive and interactive experiences highly engaging. The BrandVoice team built Pulse to be highly flexible in order to enable marketers to create unique experiences in a credible environment.

Over the past nine months or so, Dvorkin says Forbes has been rolling out upgrades to its article, individual, and sponsored editorial pages using a “methodical, consistent approach.” This latest iteration, which debuts with BrandVoice client Toyota, will soon be made available to the editorial side of the house as well.

Toyota’s Pulse incorporates video, trivia questions and data visualization in a highly-visual endless scroll page. Dvorkin emphasized the speed and relative ease with which this campaign came to fruition: It took about six to eight weeks, only a fraction of which was production time and involved a relatively small team, given the complexity of the end result, says Dvorkin. “There were definitely designers and others involved, but this is not something where we had to hire dozens of staff to get it done.” And given that this was the debut project for Pulse, Dvorkin is confident that the process will quickly become even more streamlined.

ForbesQuizFrom a content perspective, the Toyota campaign centers around a range of ideas that skeptics said would never come to pass–such computers in every home and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles–but that have evolved into successful innovation. Forbes Media has encountered a good deal of skepticism itself as it innovated on the business of media over the years, first with its contributor model and then with BrandVoice. In answer to the skeptics, Dvorkin points responds simply by pointing to the company’s continued growth. He also notes that the marketplace has become increasingly accepting of quality branded content.

Looking back at the growth of digital publishing over the past 10 years, Dvorkin says “it was very clear to me that, just as a journalist or expert could reach a digital audience without a brand, so could a marketer publish content digitally without a publisher.” Yet there remains a steady desire on the part of marketers to place their brands in a credible environment, particularly as consumers struggle to navigate the “vast sea of content.” Dvorkin notes he’s seen the maturing of a “new generation out there that’s wise to the ways of the web.” Give them good information and a positive experience, and he’s confident that they’ll be back for more.

 

Perspectives | Research | Revenue

comScore Versus the Bots: New Booklet Tackles Non-Human Traffic

As the digital ad spend rises, so does the amount of non-human traffic online. That is no surprise to Brian Pugh, comScore’s SVP of Audience, who has been tracking the issue for about 15 years. In those early days, says Pugh, no one wanted to talk about it; non-human traffic was one of the internet’s dirty little secrets. The bad news is that has grown a lot since then. The good news is that today people are discussing it openly and solutions are emerging to address the problem.

To fuel on-going discussion around these issues comScore recently released a booklet on Non-Human Traffic, which provides a clear overview of the issue as well as how a failure to address the problem causes inaccurate audience measurement, which negatively impacts the entire value chain. “Over the last 18 months, the issue has been talked about much more openly,” says Pugh, “because brands are becoming more sophisticated and aware.” And while viewability has been in the spotlight for a while, Pugh sees issues of fraud moving to the fore “because before you can judge if an ad is really viewable, you need to know if the viewer is human.”

comScore has been working to address the issue of fraud since the launch of its Media Metrix product in 2001, and the company’s acquisition of MdotLabs last summer signaled a significant push to weed out fraudulent traffic in order to accurately measure and report on audiences. MdotLabs co-founder Timur Yarnall joined comScore as SVP and anti-fraud evangelist, to help educate the industry and marketers, many of whom still think viewability is all they have to worry about.

The reality is that non-human traffic undermines the integrity of every performance and effectiveness metric. And this is not just a buy-side issue, at least in part because the growth of the digital advertising industry must be predicated on trust. Yarnall points to comScore’s recent launch of Industry Trust as another effort to increase transparency around problems in digital advertising, but also “to highlight the good things happening in the industry and not just provide fodder for the next shocking story.”

PercentNHTcomScoreIndustry Trust is intended to enable trustworthy programmatic transactions by providing a rating of ad inventory quality. Pugh says that the popularity of programmatic ad buying has further escalated fraud with bad actors delivering non-premium inventory by “claiming to be another site.” Low-quality sites impersonating a high quality publisher in order to steal ad sales is known as Domain Laundering and is one of the issues covered in the new comScore booklet. “This sort of thing is much too easy right now,” according to Pugh, who believes that more transparency and accountability are essential to strengthen the ecosystem. “Content is still king,” says Pugh. “The best audiences are going to be around great content so of course there are going to be fraudsters out there trying to impersonate the best publishers.”

The Non-Human Traffic booklet doesn’t touch upon the issue of third-party traffic sourcing, an area of much concern to publishers that was raised in the ANA White Ops report “The Bot Baseline: Fraud in Digital Advertising, which found that sourced traffic display inventory was almost five times more likely to be fraudulent.  While Pugh says he has seen cases of publishers trying to hide that sort of traffic in the past, these days they are becoming increasingly aware of the negative effects and are working hard to ensure that third-party traffic comes from reputable sources, thanks in part to vocal industry leaders such as AdWeek’s Mike Shields. Ultimately, he encourages publishers to continue to place a premium on building quality audiences, “If you are a publisher, you have to get traffic to your site. No, all sourced traffic isn’t bad, but the old saying you get what you pay for applies here.”

While both Yarnall and Pugh note that scammers continue to change their tactics in order to counteract the anti-fraud measures put in place by publishers, they also highlight the creativity coming from the media, marketing and measurement side of the equation in addressing these issues.  What’s key to staying ahead of what’s sure to be an on-going issue is the sharing of information and continued efforts by leaders in the industry to shine a light on the problems as well as the victories in combatting fraud and non-human traffic. And while fraud will never be entirely eliminated, Yarnall’s goal is to make it much harder and more expensive for fraudsters to exist.

Innovation | Perspectives

Publishers Explore the Potential for Apple Watch Apps

Apple’s slow reveal for the new wearable Watch has given publishers some time to think about how it might fit into their plans. Digital content makers are already dealing with a dizzying array of distribution options on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, Periscope — and now the Watch!

Developers have submitted more than 1,000 apps for Apple’s approval ahead of the company’s upcoming official release date on April 24 (though most people won’t get them until much later). But the question of whether people might actually use the Apple Watch — and whether publishers should pour resources into creating their own apps — has to do with how users first understand and use the Watch in the first place.

In the case of news apps, for example, the Apple Watch would encourage a sort of “glance journalism.” The New York Times is coming out with an app for the Apple Watch that would feature one-sentence stories. It’s neither a tweet, a headline nor a condensed version of an article appearing on other Times’ platforms, but “a new form of storytelling to help readers catch up in seconds,” as a Times representative put it. The length of this one-sentence story won’t be contained in the number of characters but in the amount of space it would take up on the Apple Watch screen. NPR and CNN have also reportedly developed apps to make the watch a “wearable news source,” as Nick Gallagher wrote in the American Journalism Review.

Personalized Experiences
In other words, even if few publishers have yet to actually use the Apple Watch, they’re foreseeing a utility with it. CNN’s Apple Watch app is also aimed at creating a more personalized experience for its user by sending push notifications, though its developers admit they have to be careful with it because of the low tolerance for these alerts on wearable devices. The Economist, meanwhile, doesn’t plan to focus on text and push notifications, which most publishers are doing, but will use the app as a remote control device to control its audio edition on the iPhone. It also doesn’t plan to include advertising on its app. Economist deputy editor Tom Standage said, however, that its strategy might change over time and will ultimately depend on the usage patterns of its users, which still remain a mystery.

Another publisher, NBC’s Breaking News, has developed an app that will offer alerts as well as a “tip” button that users could use to send information back to Breaking News about news happening around them. Breaking News co-founder Cory Bergman told The Verge that they expect new users to tap on this tip button “just for fun,” but that “over time we’re expecting more signal than noise.”

Ups and Downs
It’s still hard to say whether Apple Watch will remain exclusive to the very wealthy and geeky. Some analysts believe Apple could help boost an entirely new category of devices. Others are lamenting its shortcomings even before it’s officially come to market.

One problem is that not everyone gets to develop “native apps” that run much better than third-party apps. The latter have a tendency to load and perform slowly, making it much more difficult for newer companies to break out on the Apple Watch — for now.

The bottom line is that the Apple Watch is “first and foremost, an iPhone accessory,” as Scott Stein wrote in CNET. The scope for what apps, including third party apps, can do in the future will no doubt increase once the Watch firmly plants its footprint on the market and more users start testing it. But it’s safe to say that until the Watch becomes less of an iPhone accessory and more of its own independent device, it’s best for publishers to approach this new device with a grain of salt, and first learn more how to integrate it into future efforts.

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Advertising | Perspectives

Viewability 100% Guaranteed from Nativo and Moat

Viewability concerns have sparked a flurry of discussion, particularly around what should qualify as a viewable ad impression. The current standard, as established by the Media Ratings Council (MRC) last year, is for 50% of the ad to be in-view for at least one second. Not surprisingly, many marketers are calling for 100% viewability, despite the MRC’s expressed opinion that this is not yet feasible. Well, maybe not feasible for everyone, but some organizations are already striving to deliver.

Native advertising technology company Nativo has just teamed up with SaaS analytics and intelligence firm Moat to guarantee 100% viewability on native advertising for brand advertisers. According to Chris Rooke, Nativo’s SVP of Strategy and Operations, viewability has always been one of Nativo’s unique differentiators and this partnership is in keeping with that value proposition. Rooke says the company has traded media on a viewable CPM (vCPM) basis for years and built its technology stack to support both vCPM and CPM charge metrics from the start, which allows publishers to transact on whatever definition of viewability the client dictates.

The Moat partnership, he says, “represents the next step in this evolution by allowing third party verification. This closes the loop and ensures that equitable value can be realized by all stakeholders.” While Nativo’s standard offering aligns with the current MRC standard, the company can provide 100% viewability guarantee, verified by Moat, for a premium.

Not surprisingly, Jonah Goodhart, CEO and co-founder of Moat says that he hasn’t come across an ad buyer yet who “who believes they should be buying ads that are not there.” He points out that viewability is not format- or platform-specific and that it is clearly “reasonable that marketers want their ads to be seen across all formats and platforms.” The good news for native advertising content, says Goodhart, is that it is one of the most likely formats to be viewable.

Rooke says Nativo opted to partner with Moat because it was an early mover in the area and the first vendor the MRC accredited to accurately track viewability on dynamic in-feed units. The move is intended to be proactive by allowing brand advertisers to track viewability and reconcile against Nativo’s internal data. Nativo has also fully integrated Moat attention analytics into its platform, which Rooke believes “provides massive value to both sides of the supply chain.”

Though Nativo exclusively offers viewability pricing to its clients, the company currently sees only a small percentage of marketers buying the rest of their media on a viewable basis. However Rooke predicts that an increasing number of marketers and agencies will transact on it as more inventory is accessible on a viewable basis and third party verification becomes more broadly reliable.

Goodhart finds that content providers—from native to mobile, to video and even connected TV—are increasingly “pushing for viewability metrics.” He also sees signs that they are looking for other meaningful metrics, such as attention. And on the buy-side, he emphasizes that viewability doesn’t guarantee a successful campaign.

Rooke agrees, saying that “viewable units obviously perform better than non-viewable, but we find that it’s the quality of the promoted brand content and its contextual alignment to the surrounding editorial that ultimately determine how well a client’s initiative will perform.” Goodhart notes that marketers and publishers must continue to drive toward a world where viewability is a given, “that’s where we’ll get into effectiveness and solving for larger goals. Viewability—and humanity—are first,” says Goodhart, “but what comes next is where it will get very interesting.”

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Perspectives

DCN’s Recommended Reading: Week of April 23, 2015

Perspectives

ESPN’s Jason Whitlock Talks Game Plan for The Undefeated

Q: Please describe the origins of the new ESPN-backed site, The Undefeated, which will launch this summer:

A: The origins for the name came the day Maya Angelou died. I was on the Internet reading about Maya and came across her quote: “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated…” The name The Undefeated just struck me as perfect. I think it crystallizes the African-American struggle and the struggle for athletes and really all Americans.

The story of the site’s origins is bit more complicated. I’ve always wanted a site that examined race and culture through the lens of sports. That’s what I’ve been doing with my column for 20 years. When Bill Simmons launched Grantland, I felt it was just a matter of time before someone got the opportunity to combine sports and race. John Skipper and I had drinks in Los Angeles and I got to pitch him on why I should be the guy to do it.

Q: Tell me a bit about the target audience for this project:

A: The target audience is anyone interested in the African-American journey and sports. I believe that’s most of black America and a really high percentage of the rest of America. There’s a reason Roots was such a highly watched miniseries. Our struggle is compelling. I believe it’s the single most fascinating narrative in the history of this great nation. It’s an underdog story of triumph.

What we hope people get from the website is an elevated conversation about our journey and celebration of our journey. Our target audience isn’t being served properly because black media outlets were gutted during integration and have been underfunded since.

Q: Why do you feel that the issues of race and sports needs its own site, rather than being incorporated into existing media coverage? 

A: I think it is being incorporated into the existing media coverage. I think you will find the best of our work on ESPN.com. But I believe the Internet has made niche journalism the way to go. The Internet has trained us to look for specifics, specific things we’re interested in. If you can launch a site built around NFL coverage, surely you can launch a site built around race and sports. You realize race and politics are the two longest debates in the history of America? George Washington never discussed the NFL. He discussed race extensively.

Q: Could you give me an example of a sports story you’ve seen in the past that needed “The Undefeated” to have told it differently:

A: People have been writing about Charles Barkley for 30 years. There have been four books focused on Charles Barkley. The man is an interview machine. Jesse Washington framed Charles Barkley in a totally unique way for us. He explained Barkley’s authenticity in a way that made sense and connected it to Booker T. Washington’s uninterrupted influence on Southern philosophy.

Q: The Undefeated is being called “a black Grantland” by some. How do you feel about this comparison?

A: In an attempt to connect with his audience and be respectful of what he’s built, I said on Bill Simmons podcast that we were doing a “black Grantland.” It was an innocent comment not meant to define the site or what we planned to do. It was an organic comment said with respect. People ran with it because, other than his podcast, I said little else about the site for the next year. The site is going to be an examination of race and culture through the lens of sports. That’s quite different from a site about sports and pop culture.

Q: Do you have any concerns that your persona will overshadow the larger objectives you have for the site? 

A: We’re going to be defined by the work we produce. Great journalism is never overshadowed by a single individual no matter how handsome.

Q: Describe the team you are creating for The Undefeated:

A: I’m looking for people who want to be journalists more than writers. Writing is fun. Journalism is rewarding. Journalism is about the subject and the issue. Journalists are comfortable in situations where everyone else is uncomfortable. I’m looking for people who don’t want to talk about what they’ve done in the past. I hope I’m hiring hungry people. I hope I’m hiring people with the necessary life experience, self-awareness and integrity to be fair. Journalism promotes fairness.

Q: Do you have any thoughts about the issue of diversity in the media and how we can more accurately portray the many cultures and perspectives that make up our audiences?

A: Require all journalists of any color, sexual orientation or age to be journalists. Require journalists to seek new information, follow the truth wherever it leads. Alex Haley (Roots) and David Simon (The Wire) are responsible for the two greatest narratives ever told about the African-American journey. Haley is black and Simon is white. They’re both great journalists.

Q: What do you hope The Undefeated will achieve?

A: I want the site and the journalists on the site to be part of America’s conversation on race and culture. I want the site to be an impactful leader in that dialogue.

10/5/15: Jason Whitlock, ESPN part ways

Industry-Research | Video

Streaming and Multiscreen Viewing Continue to Rise

Today’s consumers own a variety of streaming video-capable screens and they are using these devices more than they did a year ago according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) report “The Changing TV Experience: Attitudes and Usage Across Multiple Screens,” an in-depth study that explores new ground in the ongoing dramatic shift in consumers’ television viewing habits. The IAB found that US adults surveyed say they spend nearly 5 hrs a day on their computer, slightly more than they spend watching TV. The next most used devices are smartphone (3.6 hrs) and connected TV (2.4 hrs).

The research also found that, particularly among connected TV owners, streaming is on the rise:

  • Three quarters of connected TV/device owners and roughly half of computer, tablet or smartphone owners report streaming online video at least once a month.
  • One-third of connected TV owners stream video to their TV daily. One in four computer owners and one in five smartphone or tablet owners stream video daily.

The IAB finds that now, “multiscreening is the new normal.” Highlights from the IAB’s findings on multiscreen viewing include:

  • 78% of US adults who watch TV use another device while watching TV and the smartphone is the predominant second screen: Two in three smartphone owners multiscreen while watching TV; over half of all computer or tablet owners multiscreen
  • 84% of smartphone multiscreeners do so daily, as do 79% of computer multiscreeners and 65% on tablets.
  • The rise in multitasking is driven by smartphone and tablet owners: Multiscreening activity has increased for 40% of smartphone multiscreeners, 39% who do so on tablets and 28% on computers.

To view the full “The Changing TV Experience: Attitudes and Usage Across Multiple Screens” report, visit www.iab.net/changingtv.

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Perspectives | Policy

Bulk Surveillance Needs to Be Checked and Balanced

Ever since the National Security Agency’s (NSA) aggressive surveillance activities were disclosed, there has been a raging debate about the legality of the programs and whether limits should be placed on the government’s ability to collect data about citizens.

NSA advocates point to the efficacy of these surveillance programs, but it is important to note that these programs come at a cost – a cost to our international standing, a cost to the basic freedom of citizens. From my perspective, I also see a cost to consumer trust.

The NSA collects all kinds of bulk data about how people use the internet and interact with other people and organizations. This broad and pervasive data collection undermines consumer trust in the Internet as people assume that the government is watching everywhere they go on the Internet. Another way that the NSA activities undermine consumer trust is through Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which empowers the NSA to force private companies to divulge records about their consumers. Data that consumers choose to share with a company they know is part of the value proposition that consumers knowingly engage in. But, when the NSA forces a company to disclose this closely-held data, the value proposition, the company’s reputation and the consumer’s trust are all undermined.

In January 2014, the President’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) questioned whether the NSA has sufficient legal authority to operate the telephone records program under Section 215 and that the program “potentially implicates both the First and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution.” As for the efficacy of the program, they noted that, “We have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the U.S. in which the telephone records program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation.”

With Section 215 of the Patriot Act set to expire on June 1, it is vital that Congress carefully re-balance the NSA surveillance programs to account for all the costs to our society. The U.S. system of government has long been constructed around an effective structure of checks and balances, which has preserved our freedom, liberty and safety.

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