Facebook's Race Targeting Upsets Some; Criteo's Preliminary Injunction Request Denied

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Above The Law

ProPublica’s Julia Angwin called foul on a Facebook targeting feature that lets marketers exclude audiences by race. By using Facebook’s “ethnic affinities” segments – including African-American, Asian-American and Hispanic groups – a real estate marketer could prevent certain groups from seeing ads, a potential violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Read it. Steve Satterfield, Facebook’s head of public policy, said the platform “prohibit[s] using our targeting options to discriminate,” adding that “most of the leading companies in the online ad space offer multicultural advertising options.” Read that retort.

Order In The Court

Criteo’s request for a preliminary injunction against SteelHouse has been denied. Criteo sued SteelHouse for click fraud in June, leading to a counterclaim against Criteo relating to illegal adware and fraud. A California judge ruled: “The court does not believe the loss of customers for Criteo constitutes the type of irreparable harm, incapable of measurement, needed to justify the extraordinary relief of a preliminary injunction.” More at Business Insider.

AMP

Ad restrictions imposed by Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) have some publishers griping about yield, according to The Wall Street Journal. Because the pages use standardized ad formats, many publishers can’t load up on rich media and pop-up ads. “We’ll need assurances from Google that the AMP pages can accommodate these executions; otherwise, we’ll have to reevaluate whether the economic and product tradeoffs make sense,” said CNN Chief Product Officer Alex Wellen. More at WSJ. On the other hand, early reports indicate significant SEO games for sites publishing via AMP, as Digiday noted last month.

Location Block Plus?

Location tracking lets advertisers better target users across their devices, but guess what? Some users are put off. According to eMarketer, 20% of US iOS device owners are have chosen to “limit ad tracking” while 18% have done so globally. The opt-out phenomenon was sparked by the iOS 10 software update, which included limited ad tracking as an option. As more iPhone users update their OS, opt-outs could grow. More.

But Wait, There’s More!