The fallout from the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) litigation against smart TV manufacturer Vizio for “unfair and deceptive data-collection” practices didn’t end with its $2.2 million settlement in February. Separately, Vizio is also embroiled in a class-action lawsuit that industry insiders predict is far from over. These allegations stem from claims the smart TV manufacturer […]
This post is not sponsored. Thirty-seven percent of publishers fail to properly label their sponsored content to comply with the FTC enforcement policy issued in December 2015, according to MediaRadar. The ad sales intelligence firm scanned sponsored content ads from 12,000 brands over the course of 2016. The numbers may look bad, but they actually […]
The other shoe has dropped: Newly minted Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai on Friday moved to block the implementation of the ISP privacy rules passed under former Commissioner Tom Wheeler. Pai was acting on a request by trade groups to stay the rule rollout, which was scheduled to take effect March 2. “All […]
The ad tech ecosystem keeps Jessica Rich up at night. “The current models just aren’t working,” said Rich, who until recently sat on the front lines of advertising regulation and enforcement as director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Rich resigned her post last week after a 26-year career at the commission […]
There’s a new top cop on the advertising regulation beat. Attorney Thomas Pahl will fill Jessica Rich’s shoes as acting director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Acting FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen named Pahl to his new post on Wednesday, the day after it was announced Rich would be stepping down. Pahl […]
The sea change at the Federal Trade Commission continues. On Tuesday, Jessica Rich, the FTC’s director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, exited the commission after 26 years of service. Rich led the bureau since 2013, when she was appointed by then-FTC Chair Edith Ramirez. The announcement comes on the heels of Ramirez’s planned departure […]
Digital captured 72 cents of every new ad dollar in 2016, compared with TV’s 21 cents, according to GroupM’s Interaction report. In 2017, the report estimated, the ratio will be 77:17. But as digital becomes ubiquitous, so do concerns around data and compliance in a totally connected world. 2016 “was an alarming year for the […]
Television viewing data is sensitive. And because consumers don’t expect such data to be collected, smart-TV manufacturer Vizio was penalized for doing so without an opt-in. Vizio paid the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) $2.2 million to settle charges over its data collection practices on Monday. The settlement requires that Vizio delete its old data and […]
Maureen Ohlhausen is taking the reins as acting chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Ohlhausen has been vocal about the need for less regulation and fewer restrictions around data collection, which dovetails with the digital ad industry’s point of view on the matter. Ohlhausen, who’s been been with the FTC since 1997 and has served […]
The Federal Trade Commission’s cross-device report has few practical recommendations on what consumers can do to navigate the tangled web of cross-device privacy controls – or the lack thereof. Although the staff report, issued Monday, is a notable public statement on the space, it cleaves to the commission’s historical party line on tracking. [Read the full […]
As of Monday, the Federal Communications Commission has a new chairman: Republican Ajit Pai. Pai replaces Democrat Tom Wheeler, who stepped down on Jan. 20, inauguration day. The newly appointed chairman is far from supportive of most of his predecessor’s policies, including the recently passed broadband privacy regs and net neutrality. Pai famously stated in […]
The agenda at this year’s PrivacyCon read like the Federal Trade Commission’s to-do list. Nearly 20 researchers from around the country converged on Washington, DC, Friday to dig into the privacy implications of the Internet of Things and big data, mobile privacy, consumer privacy expectations, online behavioral advertising, information security, the dangers of cross-app tracking […]
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 […]
In Connected TV Ad Land, proving performance is the priority for video advertisers. To drive more demonstrable reach and results, publishers are trying to expand their reach while wringing more data and AI features into their offerings.
Nowadays, programmatic vendors, and SSPs in particular, are carving new paths of differentiation based on their type of adoption of cloud infrastructure.
As performance takes center-stage in more advertising discussions, demands to solve fragmentation and cruddy measurement are reaching a fever pitch.
A word of caution to digital advertising companies, as they go all in on AI algorithms: They need to build these solutions with ownership, governance and accountability from the start – or AI could sink them with a single mistake.
To squeeze the most juice out of their live sports campaigns, many marketers are adopting programmatic buying and marketing mix modeling, both of which are also drawing more advertisers to the digital live sports cornucopia.
Roblox is making its under-13 audience available to advertisers for the first time. And it named youth-focused ad marketplace SuperAwesome as its exclusive advertising partner for under-13 users.
