Category Archives: Online advertising

Jan 5 2012

Website operators that track internet users’ online activity in order to serve targeted adverts do not automatically comply with EU privacy laws by following the industry code. This is according to a committee of all of the EU’s national data protection regulators

The Article 29 Working Party said that solely adhering to rules set out in the self-regulatory Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA) code [PDF] would not in itself be enough to comply with the EU’s Privacy and Electronic Communications (e-Privacy) Directive, because the code does not demand that operators obtain clear enough user permission to track online activity.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/05/advertising_code_not_compliant/

Jan 4 2012

Google: We’ve investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site’s PageRank for a period of at least 60 days.We strive to enforce Google’s webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users

While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site

More:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57351705-93/google-demotes-chrome-in-search-results-over-pay-for-post-promo/

Previously:

The first rule of not being evil is: don’t do things you think are evil. So it’s a shame that Google has violated its own policy by giving bloggers cash in exchanges for writing about its browser, Chrome 
http://vrritti.com/2012/01/03/the-first-rule-of-not-being-evil-is-dont-do-things-you-think-are-evil-so-its-a-shame-that-google-has-violated-its-own-policy-by-giving-bloggers-cash-in-exchanges-for-writing-about-its-browser-c/

Jan 3 2012

Google Bases Their Own Ad Campaigns On Emotions, Not Terms

Google ads took five of the top 10 spots on Ace Metrix’s list of the most effective TV ads for Web sites last year.

“Google has been so dominant in its usefulness,” he said. “Now they want to make you feel something about search, as opposed to just relying on it as a useful tool.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/technology/google-hones-its-advertising-message-playing-to-emotions.html

Dec 20 2011

Senators call for FTC probe of Google’s results – calling for ‘serious scrutiny’ of Google’s business practices

“We believe these allegations regarding Google’s search engine practices raise important competition issues,” wrote Kohl and Lee, whose committee is already investigating whether Google abuses its power in online search. “We are committed to ensuring that consumers benefit from robust competition in online search and that the Internet remains the source of much free-market innovation.”

Google fields more than 65 percent of Internet searches in the U.S., according to ComScore market research, and that domination has led to increased scrutiny of the company over the past several years.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57345352-93/senators-call-for-ftc-probe-of-googles-results/

Dec 6 2011

An advertising network has been found not guilty of copyright infringement for serving ads to a site offering links to unauthorized copies of ebooks

The case, brought by Elsevier and ‘For Dummies’ publisher Wiley & Sons, sought to find the Chitika ad network liable for contributory infringement, even though it produced no evidence of direct infringement, or that the network had knowledge of the e-book site’s allegedly infringing behavior

http://torrentfreak.com/ad-network-not-guilty-of-copyright-infringement-for-serving-pirate-site-111206/

Nov 21 2011

Rogues Falsely Claim Copyright on YouTube Videos to Hijack Ad Dollars

A Russian company called Netcom Partners and others are taking advantage of YouTube’s copyright-control filters, known as Content ID. It’s not clear how much money the scammers are stealing from YouTube videomakers. But if you judge by the volume of complaints about the hijacking on Google’s forums, it’s likely Netcom and others are doing pretty well making money for nothing.

“YouTube has developed some system that allows these companies to hijack videos for revenue for content that is not their own without any legal oversight,” Justin Pye, an Emory University physics doctoral student who produced the Pepper video, said in a telephone interview.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/youtube-filter-profiting/

Nov 17 2011

UnHate? Church of Scientology advertisement on Anonops blog

In February 2008, an Australia-based Today Tonight broadcast included a segment of the KTTV report, preceded by the statement: “The Church of Scientology has ramped up the offensive against Anonymous, accusing the group of religious bigotry and claiming they are sick, twisted souls.”[24]

On February 7, two members of Anonymous appeared on the show, explaining the nature of the group and the genuine criticism they held for Scientology.[9] After Anonymous held a protest in front of Scientology compounds around the world on February 10, 2008, Brown admitted that they had “proved me wrong.”[26]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)

See also:

‘Totally unacceptable’: Vatican slams Benetton ‘unhate’ campaign showing Pope Benedict kissing an imam on the mouth
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2062423/Benetton-kiss-advert-Vatican-slams-unhate-campaign-showing-Pope-Benedict-kissing-imam.html

 

Nov 10 2011

Not all advertisers play by the rules. Some legitimate websites belong to organisations that gather your personal information not for their corporate advertising use, but to sell it at a profit. These companies rarely play nice, and they certainly don’t limit themselves to the basic tracking methods

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/08/how_to_stay_anonymous_part_ii/

Oct 23 2011

A new report suggests Facebook’s cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) is up 60 percent, while cost per click (CPC) revenue is up 30 percent

In the past six months, Facebook has made significant improvements and innovation to its advertising products, including launching new products like the Sponsored Stories ad unit, zip code targeting, topical targeting, broad targeting and improved ad metrics. Businesses have been increasingly investing in Facebook pages and Facebook apps instead of spending their budgets on Yahoo, AOL, and MSN. On top of all this, with its quickly growing user base (800 million active users and counting), the company’s social graph is exploding across all demographics, which fuels improved ad targeting, performance, and revenue as well.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebooks-advertising-business-cpm-up-60-report/4803

Oct 13 2011

Verizon Wireless To Mine Your Usage Data For Marketing And Ads

The new privacy policy will gather a long list of information including URLs, search terms, location information, app usage and feature usage. And if that isn’t enough, Verizon will monitor how you use your calling plan and what mobile phones you buy. It’ll also compile your demographic information. The only stuff it won’t plunder is your identifying information which is off-limits and will not be shared.

http://gizmodo.com/5849334/verizon-wireless-to-mine-your-usage-data-for-marketing-and-targeted-ads

See also:

In the language of computer science, clickstreams – browsing histories that companies collect – are not anonymous at all; rather, they are pseudonymous
http://vrritti.com/2011/10/13/in-the-language-of-computer-science-clickstreams/

Oct 13 2011

In the language of computer science, clickstreams – browsing histories that companies collect – are not anonymous at all; rather, they are pseudonymous

The latter term is not only more technically appropriate, it is much more reflective of the fact that at any point after the data has been collected, the tracking company might try to attach an identity to the pseudonym (unique ID) that your data is labeled with. Thus, identification of a user affects not only future tracking, but also retroactively affects the data that’s already been collected. Identification needs to happen only once, ever, per user.

Arvind noted five ways in which a user’s identity may be associated with third-party web tracking data.

  • A third party is also a first party, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.
  • A first party hands off (“leaks”) identifying information to a third party.
  • A third party buys identifying information from a “matching service.”
  • A third party exploits a security vulnerability to learn a user’s identity.
  • A third party “deanonymizes” its data by matching it against identified data.

See also:
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6701

Oct 4 2011

Facebook has launched new ways to help its advertisers bank sackfuls of cash and no doubt cause privacy advocates to despair

The social network has introduced Page Insights tools, due to go into the wild in the next week or so, which let Page owners see the number of friends of fans of a page, the total likes of the Page, the weekly total reach of a Page and the new ‘people talking about this’ metric.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/04/facebook_starts_counting_conversations/

Oct 3 2011

Hackers have been distributing malware to Dutch internet users via websites of publishers Sanoma and Reed Business

The hackers used the network of an advertising broker. The problems originated at an advertising server belonging to the Dutch company CoolConcepts.

At least 7 websites have been affected (and were taken down temporarily). It is unknown how many internet users have been infected.

Dutch newspaper NRC has tweeted that it has stopped using the services of CoolConcepts several months ago, due to issues such as these.

Dutch language news article:
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/77155/hackers-besmetten-nederlandse-internetters-via-advertentienetwerk.html

Sep 28 2011

European Court of Justice clarifies rules on use of adwords – The next interesting question that might be raised in the future, could regard the use of adwords of legal download and streaming sites such as iTunes by illegal file sharing sites

The ECJ rules companies on the internet may use keywords that are similar to the competition in search engines such as Google, provided such use does not have an adverse affect on the functions of the trademark, such as the ‘origin function’, the ‘investment function’ and the ‘advertising’ function.

Furthermore, the ECJ set up some guidelines regarding the use of a well-known trademark as an adword. The use and selection of well-known trademarks as keywords will in principle be seen as taking unfair advantage of a trademark as a result of free riding on a trademark.

The next interesting question that might be raised in the future, could regard the use of adwords of legal download and streaming sites such as iTunes by illegal file sharing sites. Should these sites be seen as an alternative and fall within the limits of fair competition, or should they be considered as imitation and as illegal free riders of the well-known trademark iTunes?

More:

http://www.futureofcopyright.com/nc/home/blog-post/2011/09/28/european-court-of-justice-clarifies-rules-on-use-of-adwords.html