Data Privacy

This is the first installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. Nazanin Jazayeri is a translator. As director of advanced analytics at Mindshare, she’s part of a team that bridges product developers, media planners and buyers by interpreting the massive streams of data that […]

The FCC may be softening its stance around its highly contested proposal to let all set-top boxes freely access cable content. Set-top box and OTT device manufacturers love the idea because they’d be able to tap into all sorts of heavily gated cable content. Multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) don’t, since it would undermine their […]

MasterCard is partnering with location data company PlaceIQ to help retailers and merchants connect what people buy to where people go. The relationship, unveiled Wednesday, “paints a much richer picture than location or transaction insights can provide by themselves,” said Shubhra Srivastava, VP of media solutions at MasterCard. “Location data complements transaction-based insights and provides […]

Chinese electronics brand LeEco’s $2 billion acquisition of American smart TV manufacturer Vizio on Tuesday divorced its TV software and hardware operations from its data business. Although LeEco billed the deal as a move to drive more retail distribution opportunities for its electronics in the US, AdExchanger sources suggest the separation may be due to […]

WPP’s GroupM upended the industry’s mutual viewability standard back in 2014, when it promised to buy only 100% in-view ads for clients. Now it’s created an executive position to enforce that standard in all of its markets as well as to shield clients from a slew of other brand safety issues presented by digital advertising. […]

The European Union’s antitrust commission on Thursday added two formal charges to Google’s ever-growing pile of regulatory burdens. The first charge substantiates a previous objection claiming Google favors its own comparison shopping service in search results. “It means consumers may not see the most relevant results to their search queries,” wrote European Commissioner for Competition […]

Early Wednesday morning, a week after the initial US launch of Pokémon Go, a small milling crowd formed outside Barney Greengrass, an iconic Upper West Side Jewish deli and a “PokéStop” – a real-world location anchored in the augmented reality game interface. It’s not unusual for queues to form for bagels and smoked fish, but […]

Augmented reality seems to have hit its mainstream stride with the runaway popularity of Pokémon Go, and users are having a blast – but location-based marketers are also getting pretty stoked. “This is like the best high-profile marketing campaign for location intelligence that anyone could ask for,” said Foursquare president Steven Rosenblatt. For those living under […]

Congress is starting to pay attention to ad fraud – and it’s looking to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for answers. To be precise, Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) drafted a letter to the FTC on Monday calling for the commission to take a closer look at the negative economic impact of digital […]

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) on Tuesday issued an impassioned rejection of the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) proposed change to online privacy and data security regulations. Wednesday is the final day of the public comment period before the FCC deliberates on the policy, which would force marketers to ask for permission to track consumers’ […]

InMobi was the first mobile ad network to get whipped by the Federal Trade Commission under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) for tracking geolocation without parental consent – and it’s not going to be the last. “What happened here is a wake-up call for regulators,” said Allison Fitzpatrick, a partner in the advertising, […]

Facebook, which recently took the wraps off a tool that lets advertisers link location-aware ads to store visits, may have more than 1.5 billion users, but scale isn’t the only prerequisite for cracking offline attribution. “My question for Facebook would be: Do they know the spatial outlines of every McDonald’s in America?” said Duncan McCall, […]

P&G’s programmatic buying platform AudienceScience has a new CEO. Company Chairman Bill Gossman will assume the role, effective immediately, and former head Mike Peralta will become chief strategy officer. AudienceScience also made two other executive hires: David De Simone, who will serve as COO, and Patrick Reilly, its VP of enterprise sales. “We’ve gotten to […]

Creating real-time content is a challenge for any brand – but for brands operating in highly regulated industries, it’s a potential compliance risk. There isn’t a federal regulator out there that doesn’t have rules around misleading, deceptive or unfair practices, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. And […]

If the comments submitted to the Federal Communications Commission in response to its broadband privacy proposal are any indication, consumers feel a deep mistrust of the online ad industry. As Rick from Arizona declared: “There’s already too much theft of my personal information from internet advertising, etc. and it must be STOPPED.” The public comment […]

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Monday that formalized its opposition to the FCC’s proposed set-top box rules. Under the proposed rules, companies such as Google and TiVo who manufacture their own set-top boxes could access content from multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) without having to […]

Cardlytics, which helps advertisers like Starbucks activate audience data from bank partners like Bank of America, Citibank and PNC, is working with Drawbridge to assess how cross-device exposures affect online and in-store purchases. Drawbridge is the first cross-device platform to access Cardlytics Measurement, a tool that gauges metrics like average basket size and the view […]

Because Seeking Alpha attracts a financially savvy audience, financial services advertisers want to be there. But often, those advertisers want to reach even finer slices of Seeking Alpha’s audience. One of the most coveted demos on the site is financial advisers, who make decisions about vast amounts of other people’s money. Seeking Alpha needed a […]

Companies like Google and Facebook arguably have access to far more consumer data than Internet service providers. So why does the Federal Communications Commission call out the broadband guys in its privacy proposal? The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law addressed that question at a hearing on Wednesday. The meeting was to discuss […]

Ecommerce and marketing are converging and, as a result, e-tailers are uniting their supply chain, CRM and marketing stacks. Qubit, a startup founded by a bunch of former Google employees, is tackling that technology intersection. Following a $40 million Series C round in February from Goldman Sachs and the venture arms of SAP and Salesforce, […]

Transparency could be a way for brands to differentiate. Because building trust with consumers is about more than telling them why your brand is great and expecting them to just believe it. “Trust is earned in drops, but lost by the bucketful,” said Forrester principal analyst Fatemeh Khatibloo at Forrester’s Marketing Forum on Wednesday in […]

Indie data management platform Lotame has remained relatively quiet since the acquisition of cross-device tool AdMobius in 2014. Because Lotame rode out the wave of DMP consolidation between 2013 to 2014 (Oracle acquired BlueKai, Neustar snapped up Aggregate Knowledge and Rocket Fuel bought [x+1]), Lotame CEO Andy Monfried claims his company has one key advantage […]

The promise of location data is one thing. The undeniable issues around scale and inaccuracy that come along with it are another. “No one disputes that the accuracy and quality of physical data is way below average,” said mobile tech vet Chris Cunningham, who on Wednesday took the reins as CRO of beacon and proximity […]

There’s an opportunity around location that extends beyond targeting consumers with ads for mayonnaise or corn flakes when they’re walking down an aisle in a grocery store. “The location data opportunity is still unfolding,” said Tracey Scheppach, EVP of precision video at Publicis Groupe’s Starcom MediaVest. “As agencies start to get smart about things like […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Thursday formally approved its privacy proposal for Internet service providers, despite dissent from several commissioners. “It’s as if we all forgot how the Internet economy actually works today,” said FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, who opposed the proposal aimed at curtailing how telcos and ISPs collect, share and monetize customer […]

Macy’s is getting experimental with location data. “Location data can help us move from cross-device to omnichannel,” said Kimberly Yarnell, VP of digital media at Macy’s, speaking at the Mobile Marketing Association’s mobile location leadership forum on Thursday in New York City. “I like to think about location as being the key to providing context […]

Commissioner Julie Brill will resign her post on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) at the end of this month. On April 1, she will join the Hogan Lovells law firm as a partner and co-director of its privacy and cybersecurity practice. “This is five months earlier than when my commission is actually up, so not […]

All those telcos getting excited about tapping into their data just received a sober piece of news. On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed a new set of rules that could put tough restrictions on how broadband providers use customer data. Data collection has been top-of-mind for telcos as they endeavor to monetize the […]

To reach the diverse purchasers of Hunt’s Tomatoes with the message that would best resonate with them, ConAgra looked to its customer data. ConAgra – which owns the brand –created dozens of messages targeting dozens of consumer segments for a campaign that ran from September through early March. The goal was to move away from […]

That settles it: Verizon Wireless has agreed to pay regulators a $1.35 million fine for failing to be transparent around its use of supercookies. The Federal Communications (FCC) said Monday that it had reached a settlement with the telco following a probe that began in December 2014 after it was first revealed that Verizon was […]