Data Privacy

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 […]

There are myriad reasons why location data can be defective – and fraud is just one small piece of that growing problem. Growing because the lack of industry standards around the collection and use of location data leads to a fair amount of misunderstanding, unintentional discrepancies and widespread inaccuracy. “Location fraud is the easy part,” said […]

Technology is advancing so rapidly that industries have little time to update their privacy policies to comply with social norms, regulations and legislation, said Trevor Hughes, president and CEO of the International Association for Privacy Professionals (IAPP). Rapid technological development leads to what Hughes calls a public policy gap, where the leading edge of technology […]

As the ad industry girds for the mushrooming debate around privacy, consumer choice and ad blocking, it’s clear that existing opt-out mechanisms aren’t exactly cutting it, especially when it comes to cross-device. But although mobile adds another layer of complexity to the situation, online advertising is still reliant on a little .txt file called the […]

Beyond the morass of fraud and viewability hides another tripwire for advertisers: government regulation. That’s why UK-based credit card issuer Barclaycard is getting proactive about compliance. As a company that’s smaller than the competition and still making inroads in the US market, Barclaycard is particularly risk averse when it comes to regulatory issues. To that […]

In the wake of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s fighting words about data collection and a major study finding consumer sentiment toward online tracking is at an exasperated tipping point, it seems clear that privacy is having another “moment.” What’s an industry to do? Sources approached by AdExchanger sound a familiar chorus: Advertisers should increase operational […]

Krux is looking to overcome its industry perception as a publisher-focused data-management platform (DMP). This is one of the reasons why it hired Jon Suarez-Davis – previously Kellogg Co.’s VP of global media and digital strategy – as its chief marketing and strategy officer. Suarez-Davis officially starts Thursday and will report to Krux CEO Tom Chavez. “My […]

Apple’s stance on data collection: “We honestly just don’t want to know,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of software engineering, to roughly 5,000 app developers at the tech giant’s Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday. “We don’t mine your email, your photos or your contacts in the cloud to learn things,” Federighi said. “All of this is done […]

Earlier this week, Mary Engle, the Federal Trade Commission’s associate director of advertising practices, suggested to attendees at AdExchanger’s Clean Ads I/O conference that publishers could be held responsible for native ads deemed misleading that run on their properties. Read the original story by AdExchanger’s Sarah Sluis. Readers interested in her comments can now check out the above […]

Publishers taking the role of an ad agency by creating content for marketers should make sure they’re not creating misleading native advertising: The Federal Trade Commission will hold publishers responsible. “For us, the concern is whether consumers recognize what they’re seeing is advertising or not,” Mary Engle, the FTC’s associate director of advertising practices, told […]

Nestlé recently kicked off a global initiative to increase programmatic buying, but the market needed a specialized approach. Working with a local DMP and DSP, Nestlé media agency Mindshare recently kicked off a programmatic video program for its client in the region, allowing the brand to work with the big four video publishers there. “There […]

Fatemeh Khatibloo, principal analyst at Forrester, will appear at AdExchanger’s CleanAds I/O conference on June 3, an event addressing inventory quality and supply chain issues in the digital advertising ecosystem. As adland moves to clean up the supply chain and weed out fraud, the consumer perspective on data safety risks is becoming an afterthought. Fatemeh […]