Data Privacy

It’s been over a year since ad tech and video ad distribution company DG acquired semantic data provider Peer39 and folded it into DG’s MediaMind online division. During that time, Peer39-er Alex White has had a front row seat to his company’s integration into DG with his new role as GM of DG’s Data and Trading operations. […]

The Tracking Protection Working Group is meeting this week in Sunnyvale, Calif. in its latest attempt to create a tech spec for the Do Not Track browser feature. Progress has been excruciatingly slow for the group, which operates under the aegis of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Disparate interests have been unable to agree on even […]

With Krux’s initial conception of its publisher data management platform (DMP) nearly complete, CEO Tom Chavez is thinking about what’s next for his 2.5-year-old company.  Chavez says, “We had a broad idea of all the pieces that we wanted to conquer, and within the last year, those puzzle pieces have come together. It spans not […]

Location analytics company Placed is now offering a ranking system for brick-and-mortar retailers, restaurants and other destinations, based on data from its Placed Panels and Placed Affiliate programs. In March 2013, McDonald’s was the top US business based on the number of visitors, while Applebee’s and Sonic Drive-In both saw increases in their rankings compared […]

In the past few years, Bizo CEO Russ Glass says that marketers have gotten smarter about using online data for targeting – and that’s a good thing, since his company’s success revolves around B2B audience segments gleaned from data partnerships with publishers. It’s less about “evangelizing the value of data,” says Glass, as the marketer […]

With a PhD. in econometrics and an analytics and statistical background on the AdAdvisor side of the Neustar “house,” VP of Research & Analytics Ken Inman has good reason to be laser-focused on building consumer predictive models. Inman oversees the development of targeted marketing applications, using data and information to help address challenges in customer […]

The Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) will make a formal case this week that Do Not Track should be set to “off” by default. Members of the group charged with creating the DNT browser spec heard details of the ad industry’s proposal during a Monday call meant to prepare for next week’s face-to-face meeting in Sunnyvale, […]

Using customer data to personalize or optimize individuals’ website experiences can increase conversion and customer satisfaction, yet a majority of digital marketing professionals do not prioritize it, according to two recent studies from Adobe and Econsultancy. As marketers leverage more digital tools, turning to real-time behavioral and existing customer data helps segment website visitors and […]

In a hearing held by the Senate Commerce Committee, Chairman John “Jay” Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) accused the ad industry of dragging its feet on the creation of specs for a Do Not Track browser option. “A commitment was made to honor Do Not Track requests from consumers that has not yet been followed through,” Rockefeller said […]

It’s been almost a year since Microsoft first pledged to default-enable Do Not Track in Internet Explorer 10, setting off an urgent debate about the future of third-party ad tracking which continues to this day. The company has endured attacks both withering (“paternalistic,” said Evidon) and mild (“absolutely not helpful,” offered IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg), […]

After Foursquare and its CEO Dennis Crowley struggled for several months to cobble together this week’s whopping $41 million funding round, the social check-in service is still getting heat over whether it will be able to draw revenue and maintain its high $800 million valuation. While emails to Foursquare went unanswered about how it might […]

Last week X+1 secured a new $17 million debt facility with Ares Capital, a cash reservoir the demand-side platform plans to tap for two acquisitions this quarter (one social, one mobile). A global expansion will follow in the second half of the year, including a possible outpost in Brazil, according to CEO John Nardone. By […]

“Data Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Jay Friedman, COO at Goodway Group. Have you seen recent articles about the Firefox cookie-blocking privacy debate? I don’t blame those of us in the digital media community for going […]

Mozilla’s move to stop third-party cookie tracking in the latest version of its Firefox browser – echoing Apple’s Safari browser attributes – has attracted wide attention across the advertising industry.   And no wonder – Mozilla’s Firefox has about a 23% share among consumers in the browser market. AdExchanger reached out to a selection of […]

Jon Leibowitz, the Federal Trade Commission Chairman who aggressively pushed for more checks on the digital ad sector, will step down this month. Leibowitz was assiduous in his pursuit of what he saw as overstepping by companies engaged in consumer data collection. His language could be inflammatory, as when he said in 2009 that “a […]

The Saturday before Christmas came in as a top three December shopping day for many retailers, including Best Buy, Toys ‘R’ Us, and Walmart. Below we present final holiday 2012 data from location analytics company Placed, which analyzes in-store visits of consumers who have opted-in to a mobile location measuring app. Placed’s location-based network does […]

With print revenues falling faster and online ad dollars failing to fill the void, publishers have increasingly turned to paywalls. As a Guardian UK piece noted this week, 11 of the top 20 U.S. newspapers are either currently asking users for cash to access content, or are about to embark on it. Enliken, a company […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Matthew Keylock, SVP, Media Partnerships at dunnhumby.  Within an industry rapidly becoming obsessed with unstructured data, are we losing our focus? Unstructured data, data from customer emails, social media, video, and […]

Consumers aren’t as worried about privacy issues and have started to embrace companies targeting them with ads and offers when those messages are relevant, according to Accenture Interactive. In fact, consumers now turn to mobile and personalized targeted offers and marketing elements while shopping and researching purchases. After surveying 2,000 customers in the U.S. and […]

The Data Management Platform is a widely used and often misunderstood product category — adopted in varying measures by publishers, agencies, and third party data brokers. To get more depth on what a DMP should be and whether marketers are realizing the category’s potential, we asked three agency execs this question: “Where is the real […]

When ad industry discussions turn to data, it’s usually about how to target ads, not create them. But Douglas Van Praet, EVP/group planning director at Deutsch LA, speaking at Wednesday’s ANA Creativity conference, offered up some ideas of how science can influence the artistic side of advertising. Following a presentation Van Praet did with Justin […]

Yesterday we covered a Federal Trade Commission settlement with Epic Media Group over allegations of “history sniffing,” and pointed out that the company had many things in common with a new ad company called Kinetic Social. Those similarities include employees, executives, and website copy. Today Kinetic reached out to AdExchanger to address its supposed connection […]

The Federal Trade Commission has settled “history sniffing” allegations with defunct online ad network Epic Marketplace Inc., whose parent company was Epic Media Group LLC. The agreement bans Epic from using the practice and requires it to destroy all data collected by that means. The FTC’s announcement makes no mention of Kinetic Social, a company […]

Media intelligence platform Aggregate Knowledge (AK) recently recently partnered with IBM to plug the AK platform into the IBM Digital Data Exchange. See the release. CEO Dave Jakubowski sees an overarching theme of “interoperability” in the deal as he says IBM marketer clients will be able to unlock what is going on with their website […]

“Data Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Omar Tawakol, CEO of BlueKai.  Pricing a shared asset like data can be counterintuitive. Data is a non-rival good, like a toll road.  Even though people expect to pay for and […]

The two leading presidential campaigns are exposing website visitor data to third parties via URL and page title information, according to Jonathan Mayer, a privacy advocate and Stanford graduate student. Mayer examined the information made available on the two candidates’ campaign websites, and found “both leak.” What’s more, he says the information visible to third parties […]

Having grown an ad network business in two years to a nearly $30 million run rate in 2011, most ad technology executives would have been satisfied.  But, CEO Andy Monfried saw another future for his company, Lotame, and decided to focus on being a data management platform (DMP) only for publishers and marketers to manage data. […]

There was a time when the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) was the only self-regulatory game in town. Formed in 1999 to enforce self-imposed rules for online advertising, its visibility has been at a low ebb since heightened attention from the FTC and Congress sparked a new umbrella group, the Digital Advertising Alliance. The NAI is […]

Business and consumer privacy interests are flinging letters at the Federal Trade Commission, decrying what they see as shortcomings in the Worldwide Web Consortum’s (W3C) process for setting the browser tech specs for Do-Not-Track.  In recent weeks the agency has received a letter from Republican lawmakers criticizing the standards making process and the FTC’s role […]

“The Sell-Sider” is a column written by the sell-side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jim Spanfeller, CEO, Spanfeller Media Group, a new age media company. Today’s media buyers and sellers are playing on a whole new field, where preying on consumer behavior is the norm and big data is the apparent […]