Data Privacy

When it comes to cross-device tracking, privacy policies are not up to snuff – and the Federal Trade Commission is digging in. In a paper penned by the FTC Office of Technology Research and Investigation (OTech for short), it was revealed that the majority of Alexa’s 100 most popular websites have policies that reserve the right […]

Advertising trade groups are seizing the political moment in a bid to dismantle the Federal Communications Commission’s recently passed broadband consumer privacy laws. With the commission on the cusp of a Republican majority – Chairman Tom Wheeler has said he’ll step down on inauguration day – the writing could be on the wall for the FCC’s […]

This is the latest installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. Read previous interviews with talent from Mindshare, Mediavest | Spark, Razorfish, Essence, INNOCEAN and Clear Channel Outdoor. Former Brightroll and Amazon exec Craig Whitmer recently joined location data company Placed as VP of programmatic. Placed “measures what people do […]

Turn is settling with the Federal Trade Commission for its part in the Verizon zombie cookie debacle. It’s been nearly two years since it was first revealed that the demand-side platform was using Verizon’s unique identifier header (UIDH) for tracking purposes even if a user had opted out of being tracked. On Tuesday, the FTC […]

When Maneesha Mithal first joined the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection in 1999 – eight years before the first iPhone came out – the big issues of the day were how to regulate ecommerce and handle spam. The threat vectors have changed. The FTC’s top three priorities in 2017 will be Internet of Things […]

As expected, Tom Wheeler will leave his post as FCC chairman on inauguration day and his legacy looks shaky. Likely on the chopping block in a Republican-majority FCC are the commission’s recently ratified ISP privacy rules and a reclassification of broadband providers as common carriers, seen by many as an encroachment on the Federal Trade […]

Adobe made a big upgrade to its multidevice ad-delivery system Adobe Primetime on Wednesday. The platform, TV Media Management, improves the way Primetime users package and price TV audiences and content. “TV Media Management allows you to see where there may be contention for impressions if certain TV deals close and the best place to […]

As the clock ticks down to President-elect Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, the future of regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission is uncertain. But one thing is clear: Enforcement will continue. “The overwhelming majority of the work we do is bipartisan,” Travis LeBlanc, the FCC’s enforcement bureau chief, said last week at an International Association […]

The internet of things will be a top enforcement priority for the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission in 2017 – especially in the wake of the recent distributed-denial-of-service attacks against Dyn. Dyn, which provides online infrastructure and domain services, was the victim of a DDOS onslaught that temporarily shut down major websites like Spotify, […]

The Federal Trade Commission is watching smart TVs. An FTC workshop on Wednesday in Washington, DC, laid out consumer privacy concerns around smart-TV tracking and sought to clarify how the ad industry is using the data that’s being collected. “Consumers expect some level of data collection when they use their computer,” said Jessica Rich, director […]

Lauren Nemeth, former head of sales for AppNexus, has joined Turn as chief revenue officer. She arrives from a stint at Pinterest-owned mobile search engine URX, and will oversee sales, client services and consulting. Prior to her role at AppNexus, she helped build Google’s programmatic business alongside Bruce Falck, Turn’s CEO. “We’re selling a complicated, […]

This is the fifth installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. Read previous interviews with Nazanin Jazayeri, Andrew Klein, Ella Chinitz and Freddie Liversidge. Before Shamsa Jafri joined Los Angeles-based agency Innocean in February, its data and analytics practice was lacking, restricted to activities like report polling and data […]

The Verizon/AOL vision is starting to take shape, and it looks a whole lot like Facebook Custom Audiences. But there’s a FCC-shaped question mark looming over the endeavor. The Federal Communications Commission passed sweeping online privacy regulations in October that will require internet service providers to obtain an affirmative opt-in consent before using a customer’s […]

MediaMath is talking up its data management capabilities. The company has rolled out a tool called Adaptive Segments, which lets a marketer gauge the performance of an audience and media placement before an ad runs. The enhancement come on the heels of Salesforce’s $700 million agreement to buy data management platform Krux, an indication that […]

For ad tech vendors, chances for exit are still slim and getting slimmer, according to a panel of investors at ad:tech New York at the Javits Center on Thursday. Warren Lee, a partner at venture capital firm Canaan Investors, an early investor in DoubleClick and Tremor Video, put it bluntly: Those who want to succeed […]

Convenience store chain QuickChek is placing location at the center of its digital strategy. It wants to prove that digital spend leads to foot traffic, said Eric Rush, digital marketing manager at QuickChek, which operates 140 retail locations across New Jersey and New York state. QuickChek only started to seriously invest in digital channels roughly […]

All the notice in the world doesn’t mean anything if the consumer doesn’t see it. It’s not yet apparent what the Federal Communications Commission’s recently passed privacy regulations will look like in practice. Internet service providers (ISPs) could potentially phone in their compliance to the newly imposed strictures with an updated user agreement or cleverly […]

Tailoring individual messages to someone based on past behavior is easier said than done, since media and creative usually operate independently. Spongecell wants to fix some of the issues stymying dynamic creative optimization (DCO) at scale in the programmatic space, and has raised a $10.5 million growth round in combined debt and equity financing from […]

This is the fourth installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. Read previous interviews with Nazanin Jazayeri, Andrew Klein and Ella Chinitz. When Freddie Liversidge joined Essence in 2013, the agency’s programmatic practice he was tasked with building out had just three people. Now it has […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed a stringent set of online privacy regulations on Thursday. The law, expected to go into effect next year, expands the FCC’s mandate over internet service providers (ISPs), which will soon have to obtain individual consent to use data drawn from a subscriber’s activity, such as web browsing, app usage […]

IPG plans to boost investments in data analytics and coordinate its database across all its agencies, CEO Michael Roth said Friday during the holding company’s Q3 earnings call. Read the release. “That will be a key focus for us in 2017 – to make sure all the agencies at IPG have a consistent offering in […]

When SAP first dove into ad tech, it was under the guise of a standalone incubator – an “intrapreneurship,” as the company calls it – called SAP Exchange Media (XM). The launch raised questions about where ad tech fit within SAP’s broader stack. SAP’s commerce and marketing prowess has historically fallen under the SAP Hybris portfolio […]

Now that Salesforce has agreed to buy Krux for an estimated $700 million, which standalone data management platforms are left? And is there still a market for independent DMPs, given the trend toward integrated marketing tech stacks and the high cost of maintaining data infrastructure? To answer those questions, it’s important first to define terms, […]

Investors are bullish on location. “We think there is a lot of promise in location,” said Anders Richardson, managing director of Palisades Growth and an xAd board member, speaking at an xAd event in New York City on Thursday. “It’s amazing to me what it allows marketers to do.” In other words, providing a conduit […]

Salesforce wants to “democratize” the development of artificial intelligence (AI) applications. That is, making AI available to as many business users as possible. Consequently, it’s baked an AI system called Einstein into the Salesforce platform – such that its capabilities are available across its various clouds, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud. “AI […]

“We generally may share information we collect on the site with certain service providers, some of whom may use the information for their own purposes as necessary.” That’s a nearly verbatim quote from a real privacy policy. (Emphases added.) “Vagueness impacts the consumer’s understanding of risk and their willingness to share information,” said Fordham University […]

This is the third installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. Read previous interviews with Nazanin Jazayeri and Andrew Klein. Data is a vehicle for great storytelling, according to Ella Chinitz, group vice president of data science at Razorfish. “[It’s about] deriving insights out of […]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sponsored content disclosures on the mind. A complete lack of disclosure led to an FTC settlement with Lord & Taylor in March after the brand enlisted bloggers to post images to Instagram promoting one of its dresses. As FTC senior attorney Robin Spector told AdExchanger at the time, “What we are […]

In the past two weeks, the European Union has further expanded the scope of its regulatory powers and revealed more zealous plans to influence competition between digital properties. In late August, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) released net neutrality guidelines, which become law in 2018, that forbid practices like “fast lanes” […]

This is the second installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. Read the first PII interview with Nazanin Jazayeri. As associate director of social experience and custom product at Publicis’ Mediavest | Spark, Andrew Klein loves discovering new technologies and platforms. That wasn’t how […]