Data Privacy

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 […]

Call it the holistic grail: the ability to connect advertising, ecommerce activity and in-store buying with a single measurement. No one’s filled that gap yet, but a bunch of companies are taking incremental steps. Earlier this month the location analytics shop Placed added a product for attributing in-store lift to its suite. Then last week […]

It’s been a busy 10 months since AdExchanger published its inaugural Marketer’s Guide to Cross-Device Identity. Since then the market has seen significant developments, including technology evolution, merger activity and shots across the bow from government regulators.   Below, we pick up where we left off with an important update to our overview of the […]

Location data is buzzing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. “Where you go is who you are,” said Daniel Rosen, global director of advertising at Telefónica, speaking at an MWC Mobile Media Summit (MMS) satellite event. “[It’s] hugely powerful.” That’s coming from a carrier with its own mobile exchange, Axonix, an audience buying platform fueled […]

Ad blocking might be marketers’ current headache, but FTC Commissioner Julie Brill believes it’s up to the advertising industry to alleviate that pain. At AdExchanger’s Industry Preview event in New York on Thursday, she called on the audience of vendors, agencies and marketers to create “usable tools” so consumers can deal with their privacy concerns. […]

Brands are experimenting with proximity marketing, but consumers aren’t always willing to give up their location data. As Pew noted in a recent study on privacy and information sharing: “Location data seems especially precious in the age of the smartphone.” Spam, the risk of data breaches, overdone customer profiling and data being collected for one […]

Some people might describe Foursquare’s shift from location-based social network to a purveyor of location data as a pivot. But Steven Rosenblatt, newly appointed president of Foursquare, prefers the term “evolution.” “We’ve been building the world’s largest location intelligence data company for some time,” said Rosenblatt, who came to Foursquare in 2012 after several years […]

The so-called privacy paradox was a big topic of discussion at the Federal Trade Commission’s first PrivacyCon. The event, held Thursday in Washington, DC, brought together around 20 privacy and data researchers who presented their work on consumer privacy and security issues in the commercial sector to an audience of technologists, policymakers and regulators. “There […]

When it comes to cross-device, consumers and ad tech vendors speak very different languages. Consumers use words like “non-court ordered surveillance” and “insidious invasion of privacy,” while vendors and ad industry trade groups refer to “innovation in ad tech,” driving “the Internet economic engine” and delivering a “seamless digital experience.” There’s clearly a disconnect. In […]

Advertisers, ad tech companies and publishers pay heed: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released an enforcement policy Tuesday that outlines which forms of native advertising it deems acceptable and which it deems deceptive. A key thread in the guidelines is that the user needs to know if content is an ad before she clicks and/or consumes content. […]

Standard notice and choice aren’t going to cut it when it comes to the IoT. “As the Internet of Things ecosystem grows and more devices are connected to the Internet, you might not even know that they are,” said Pedro Pavón, Oracle’s senior corporate counsel, speaking at a two-day International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) […]

Some of Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s new products, rolled out Wednesday, seem to mimic the capabilities of a data management platform (DMP) – software historically absent from the stack. Salesforce’s Predictive Scores and Predictive Audiences are designed to help marketers segment and target prospects and known consumers with more speed and granularity. Those two tools fall […]

Chief marketing officers and chief privacy officers have very different ways of looking at the world. “Are there any marketing folks in the room?” asked security professional Aubrey Turner, addressing roughly 50 privacy pros at an International Association of Privacy Professionals conference in Washington, DC, on Tuesday. No hands went up. “Good – because I’m […]

Concoct an unclear or purposefully bewildering privacy policy with a wonky opt-out mechanism and you might have the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) breathing down your neck. “Many companies are providing opt-outs and they need to be careful about what they’re saying and what it means to opt out,” said Maneesha Mithal, associate director for the […]

If policymakers, academics, privacy researchers and technologists have trouble making sense of the cross-device landscape, what chance does the average consumer have? Even the tech-savvy crowd that gathered in Washington, DC, for the cross-device workshop hosted by the Federal Trade Commission on Monday admitted they don’t always have their finger on the pulse, try as […]

Accuracy is a spectrum when it comes to location data. And because there’s no systematic way to discern between different types of location data, including how granular it is or when it was derived, the buy side is confused and reluctant to spend. “When we ask clients what the stumbling block is for location, they […]

Since the beginning of the year, the Financial Times has been selling time-based ads, where the advertiser pays only for ads that have spent five seconds in view. It charges based on cost per hour (CPH). The Times decided to charge for an ad after five seconds because data from its viewability provider, Chartbeat, showed […]

Adobe rolled out the Audience Marketplace data exchange on Tuesday, featuring a data cooperative (which Adobe first revealed to prospective partners last summer) and a data partner network. Both are powered by Adobe’s data management platform, Audience Manager. The co-op aspect is designed to let companies pool their first-party data sets. The data partner network […]

Some corners of the ad and marketing tech industries wonder if the data management platform (DMP) is on the verge of becoming a commodity. But a Forrester Wave report on the technologies noted points of differentiation among DMPs’ abilities to handle social information, ingest data from channels usually associated with marketing tech, such as email […]

The Been Choice saga seems to be coming to an unexpected conclusion – Apple is going to allow the in-app ad blocker to block in-app ads after all, including in Apple News. Just not in Facebook, Pinterest, Yahoo, Yahoo Finance, Google or any other apps that requires end to encryption, a process that prevents third parties […]

Dstillery released Thursday a self-serve version of its digital audience platform, combining a data management and demand-side platform. While the bulk of Dstillery’s business comes from agencies, it does some brand-direct deployments. The new self-serve offerings won’t replace Dstillery’s managed services, but will offer more flexibility to clients who wish to take an active role […]

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the EU’s highest court, on Tuesday invalidated the “Safe Harbor” agreement, which since 2000 has allowed companies to store and transfer data between the US and EU. A pillar of the agreement required the US to ensure equivalent protections to those guaranteed by the EU, but […]

Oracle’s aggressive stance on acquisition is evident when you consider its Marketing Cloud shopping spree, and it’s not backing down. It recently added web personalization platform Maxymiser to a long list of purchases that included data-management platform BlueKai, campaign-management tool Responsys and Datalogix. The intent is to round out a complete stack that covers all […]

Does Verizon have access to rich user data? Undeniably. Will Verizon successfully capitalize on that opportunity? Questionable. After all, Verizon’s user data is only as valuable as its data practices. Verizon could certainly benefit in the wake of an acquisition spree that somewhat resembled a line of falling dominos – AOL into Verizon, Millennial Media […]

The debate around privacy – and where Google stands – is kicking up on the eve of Apple’s upcoming September launch of iOS 9. Why? Because though advertising revenue hardly tickles the bottom line at Apple, its decision to enable content blocking in iOS 9 affects how Google’s developers monetize. Apple’s content-blocking feature allows developers to create […]

“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 Chris O’Hara, vice president of strategic accounts at Krux. Almost every marketer is starting to lean into data management technology. Whether they are trying to build an in-house programmatic practice, […]

Wyndham Hotels has lost a motion to dismiss an FTC case alleging the hotel chain exposed consumer personal data to potential theft. While the case, which will be sent back to a federal trial court following Monday’s ruling by a three-judge appeals panel, doesn’t directly affect advertisers, it affirms the FTC’s power to penalize companies […]