ANA Opposes Census Change; Apple Vs. Facebook Intensifies

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The Census Incenses

The ANA published a survey of advertisers who oppose a potential change to the US census that would undercut marketing spend and measurement. The Trump administration wants to include a question about citizenship in the 2020 census, which advertisers worry will deter non-citizens from participating, MediaPost reports. Marketers and media measurement companies rely on the census as a source of truth about where to find certain audiences and how to weight their audience models to represent a national average. If a meaningful number of immigrants refuse to reply to the census out of concern for exposing themselves or family members to reprisal from the administration, the census will overindex toward white people and non-urban areas. “It would vastly affect our view of the size of the multicultural market, and ultimately is likely to pull dollars away from multicultural marketing and marketing overall,” one ANA member said. More.

A Contacts Sport

A rivalry is brewing between Apple and Facebook, and that tension may be shifting from barbed comments between CEOs into meaningful action. Apple changed its App Store policy this week to crack down on apps that harvest data from its users’ address books. But the policy also bans apps that “collect information about which other apps are installed on a user’s device for the purposes of analytics or advertising/marketing.” Bloomberg reports the new rule may be a response to Facebook’s Onavo Protect service. Onavo, acquired by Facebook in 2013, is ostensibly a security app to monitor internet connection services but has become a little data scalpel for the social media giant to see what apps are on user devices and are stealing Facebook’s share of attention. More.

Center Of Attention

Google, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram have already been hit with 19 cross-border data protection complaints since the EU’s GDPR took effect last month, Bloomberg reports. Top EU privacy enforner Angelina Jelinek said the EU regulatory body is already looking into the complaints to determine whether the companies are complying with GDPR. But don’t expect either company to be slapped with a huge fine immediately. “The important message is that our first task is not to fine the companies, but to look if they are compliant,” she said. But if they “don’t match the provisions of the regulation, they could be fined,” she added. More.

Fly, Birdie, Fly

Wall Street loves Twitter – at least for now. The company’s stock price closed Wednesday at $43.49, up 155% from last year. One reason for Wall Street’s optimism is that Twitter had its first-ever profitable quarter this year (following a series of cuts last year), Recode reports. Twitter is also finally growing the number of people who use the service every day. And rather than trying to rapidly expand into every business possible, Twitter is doubling down on fixing the fundamentals of how its product works, like showing people tweets they actually want to see and cleaning up abuse on the platform. “Execution is improving,” said Rob Sanderson, an analyst at MKM Partners. “They were [previously] stretching their arms pretty wide and not really intensely focused on that core.” More.

But Wait, There’s More!