The Interactive Advertising Bureau is expected to roll out the next phase of its self-regulatory privacy initiative on Monday, when it will launch a program to certify that online companies are in compliance with self-regulatory guidelines, Online Media Daily has learned. The IAB, along with the other trade groups participating in the self-regulatory initiative, also is expected to announce that the National Advertising Review Council has tapped the start-up Better Advertising to help monitor compliance with privacy principles. Those principles -- which grew out of a task force of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers, the Direct Marketing Association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Council of Better Business Bureaus -- generally require companies to notify consumers about targeting, and in many cases, allow them to opt out; in some situations, the principles call for opt-in consent. In addition, the "power i" icon, consisting of a lowercase 'i' inside an open circle -- which was supposed to indicate when online ads were being served based on users' Web activity -- appears likely to get a makeover. Industry insiders say that some ad organizations were concerned that the symbol was too similar to other logos to be licensed. The slightly renovated version is likely to consist of an 'i' inside a triangle pointing toward the right, like a 'play' button. The icon, initially developed by the think tank Future of Privacy Forum and WPP units Group M, Kantar Group and Ogilvy, is part of the online ad industry's attempt to curb the threat of privacy legislation by showing that online companies can effectively notify people about ad targeting and allow them to opt out. People who click on the icons can learn more about ad targeting as well as how to opt out of receiving ads based on their Web activity. Web companies were expected to start using the icon earlier this year, but the initiative stalled after concerns were raised about whether courts would back the trade groups' ability to use the symbol. The current plan calls for the four trade associations to allow Web companies that are in compliance with self-regulatory principles to license the icon and place it on their Web ads. For at least 10 years, many companies have used privacy policies to notify people about tracking and behavioral targeting, but those policies are often criticized as being too lengthy and dense to be effective. The Federal Trade Commission said last year that it supports industry self-regulation for now, but that companies need to improve their efforts to inform consumers about online tracking and how to opt out. The icon created by the Future of Privacy Forum and WPP isn't the only logo that's being used to indicate online behavioral advertising is occurring. Truste also is testing its own separate icon.
Yahoo previewed features and functions Thursday scheduled for release this fall across its network of sites. During a product demonstration at its headquarters, the Sunnyvale, Calif. technology company focused on search, news and entertainment running on a variety of devices, including Apple's iPad. The new design gives Twitter a place on Yahoo, and lets users import Facebook contents into Yahoo Mail. Those who find content on the Yahoo site will have an option to share it via their Twitter feed. Yahoo's network of sites will integrate social, rather than try to reinvent the social network. Rolling out on the search engine, an accordion design will allow Yahoo searchers to query broad keyword terms and expand or contract the results by clicking on a link. The tabs will serve up Twitter tweets, videos, events and more. The goal to reduce the footprint on the search page aims to give searchers answers as quickly as possible, according to Shashi Seth, Yahoo's senior vice president of search products. Fending questions related to handing off search and paid-search advertising to Microsoft Bing, Seth says it allows Yahoo engineers to shift the focus from traditional back-end stuff like crawl and index for relevance in search results to what he calls "the next generation of search." It's not about cosmetic changes to the way Yahoo Search looks. In the next three years, search will not look similar to how it appears today, Seth says. In fact, he would argue the product three years from now will completely change the landscape for search and content. Yahoo has been gaining U.S. search market share. August search market share numbers from comScore out late Wednesday reveal gains for the second consecutive month -- increasing to 21%, up from 20%, sequentially. Yahoo is trying to take the science and technology that it once applied to the back end and bring it to the forefront, rethinking search entirely. Today's sneak peek provides the first step in that direction. When asked what Yahoo will look like in three years, Yahoo's Chief Product Officer Blake Irving told attendees "a global series of Web experiences across a variety of devices that gives people what they want." That means connecting people with content, as well as giving advertisers the ability to personalize and target ads. Accomplishing that means taking advantage of signals from user-generated content that provides insight into the way people think, yet retaining awareness of privacy issues and what people want to share. This method to target ads more precisely becomes one of several new functions built into modules that Yahoo can "plop" into a variety of places across its network of sites. The technology allows Yahoo to customize the experience for each person who searches on the site. Cloud computing also will help Yahoo manage the network traffic and Yahoo Mail, which will help deliver an even faster experience. Yahoo pledged the release of a faster and better mail experience. Irving says Yahoo Mail will become twice as fast and easier to navigate after engineers tweak the architecture, user interface and back-end. Yahoo Mail's architectural changes aim to provide better SMS and creation of folders, offering unlimited storage and up to 25-Mbyte attachments.
Ford on Thursday kicked off a new combined print and mobile campaign for its Edge crossover in The New York Times that includes 2D barcodes in print ads providing readers with access to Times articles on technology and style on their phones. Ford is running a full-page ad Thursday in The Times featuring the 2011 Edge, highlighting the vehicle's new voice recognition technology called MyFord Touch. An upgrade to the automaker's Sync in-car communication system, MyFord Touch promises the ability to recognize up to 10,000 voice commands and launches initially with the Edge. The bottom of the ad includes 2D barcodes providing mobile users with camera phone access to a selection of Times articles on technology and style intended to appeal to tech-savvy prospective Edge buyers. When someone uses the barcodes to link to the stories on their handset, Ford banner ads will appear at the top of those mobile pages, extending the company's branding to the phone screen. People without camera phones could text a specific keyword for each of the four featured stories to 698698 to receive the link to that article on the mobile site. Ford also bought a home page takeover of the Times' mobile site on Thursday. Eric Peterson, a Ford spokesman, said the execution pairing print with mobile was combining the reach and content of The New York Times with a mobile tie-in "was a perfect fit for the Edge." He added that the inclusion of Times articles that related to the tech-centric theme of the campaign came about through joint planning and discussion by Ford and the newspaper's ad staff. Times spokesperson Kristin Mason said the Edge ad was the first time the newspaper has worked with an advertiser to include barcodes that link to Times content. Because the articles are identified as Times stories in the print ad and appear with reporter bylines on the site, the newspaper is not worried about readers mistaking them for advertorial. The barcode and mobile component will be part of Ford's remaining seven placements with the Times through the rest of the year, according to Mason.
When Ty Montague and Rosemarie Ryan left JWT earlier this year, where they sat atop the North American operation, it was with the stated intention of starting a shop of their own. On Friday, the new venture the two have started -- dubbed Co: (including the colon, a hint that the base agency is just a hub) -- launched, and they expressed a desire to serve marketers in a new way. Taking its name from the spirit and mechanism of its operation -- co-creation, collaboration, and co-venturing, according to the new shop -- all those ideas that finish the thought the agency's name started, it calls itself a "brand innovation studio." As if leaving a giant agency to start a boutique were not brave enough, using a morpheme (the smallest unit of meaning in the English language) certainly shows real gumption. As do the ideas expressed by that name. "We call it a Brand Innovation Studio because we are taking our structural cues from the evolving entertainment industry -- an industry built around a talent model that is much more fluid -- the right talent is brought together at the right moment to get the right outcome," said Ryan in a statement. The concept is that the core of the agency, or rather, brand innovation studio, can scale from a five person to a 1,500-plus person organization as dictated by the needs of a particular marketer. And Co: claims it has this capability as of launch. The core of five referred to is, of course, Montague and Ryan, joined by Chief Strategy Neil Parker (of IBM and, most recently Wolff Olins), and Chief Technology Experience Officer Richard Schatzberger (who comes via BBH and previously worked in interaction design and product innovation at Motorola), as well as the proverbial player to be named later -- an as-yet-unnamed Chief Commercial Officer who will manage the co-ventures practice. The expansion to a cast of thousands comes courtesy of what Co: refers to as "Co:conspirators" -- namely agencies, brand consultancies, design houses and companies across the media and tech sectors who will be brought on as collaborators as needs dictate. At launch, Co: counted 43 companies already signed on. "We believe today and in the future, success for clients is driven by two things: superior talent, and the ability to effectively collaborate," said Montague. "We have carefully evaluated the industry and selected co-conspirators based on those two criteria. This collective of co-conspirators specialize in different things but they all have this in common: they are all industry leading talent and they are all committed to upending the old advertising model." At first blush at least, the model does not sound wholly dissimilar from that of Victors & Spoils (one of the 43 co-conspirators, not incidentally), which is based on crowd-sourcing principals and likewise figures to disrupt the holding company and traditional agency models. Though V&S's crowd is comprised of individuals not entire companies. Other companies signed on as co-conspirators include Big Spaceship, Berg London, Campfire, Collins, Horizon Media, MediaLink, Naked Communications, Powell Communications, Red Bricks Media (which now goes by simply RBM), Tronic, Vast Ventures, and Your Majesty. Victor & Spoils cofounder John Winsor told us in an interview this summer that he sees the studio model coming. "Good ideas come from everywhere," he said. "You'll see great ideas that clients throw out there and can aggregate folks around ... It'll be much more flexible and clients will save a lot of money by not holding these big retainer-based relationships."
Three California residents have sued mobile ad technology company Ringleader Digital for allegedly violating their privacy with its media stamp, which the company describes as the "mobile equivalent of an online 'cookie.' " The lawsuit also names other companies including CNN, Medialets and WhitePages.com, which allegedly worked with Ringleader. In a complaint filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the consumers allege that Ringleader and the other companies intentionally exploited the operating software on their mobile devices "for the purpose of tracking plaintiffs' internet activities." The plaintiffs -- Charlie Aughenbaugh, Tony Weber and Brooke Stafford -- allege that Ringleader is tracing their mobile activity for ad purposes without their permission. The plaintiffs, who are seeking class-action status, allege that Ringleader and the other companies violated various federal and state laws, including computer fraud laws, privacy laws and consumer protection statutes. The lawsuit stems from the alleged deployment of Ringleader's media stamp, unveiled by the company in November of 2008, as a mechanism for creating and storing profiles about cell users based on the mobile sites they visit. Ringleader gathers information about mobile phones based on the characteristics of the device. The company says it can amass enough data to create unique, anonymous media stamps for every device. In their lawsuit, Aughenbaugh and the others allege that in addition to collecting data about mobile devices, Ringleader creates a new database, "RLGUD," in phones' HTML5 software -- which is used by the iPhone and other devices. "This allows Ringleader Digital and ... mobile website operators to track the mobile device's internet activities over multiple websites based on the unique ID assigned to the mobile device and the HTML5 databases created on the mobile devices," the complaint alleges. Aughenbaugh and the two other plaintiffs allege that they are unable to delete the HTML5 databases allegedly created by Ringleader because, they say, "if a database is deleted from a phone it simply recreates itself only moments later." "This is clear evidence of defendants attempt to further thwart the efforts of mobile device users to protect their privacy," the lawsuit alleges. Ringleader declined to comment for this article. The company's privacy policy provides an opt-out link that allows users to opt out of receiving targeted ads. The policy states: "If you have opted out, we will not use Media Stamp to apply targeting that relies on the unique identification of your device or otherwise use data concerning your mobile device other than to implement your opt out decision." Ringleader adds in its privacy policy that opting out "prevents us from associating non-personally identifiable data with your device's browser starting from the time you implement the opt out utility. It does not affect data collected prior to that time."
Microsoft Advertising on Thursday debuted its Mobile Advertising SDK for Windows Phone 7 and Microsoft Advertising Exchange for Mobile. Raj Kapoor, global director for product planning and marketing for Microsoft Mobile Advertising, calls the latter "the industry's first real-time, bidded ad exchange in mobile." "The release of these innovative platforms is designed to enable display ad serving for Windows Phone 7 applications," Kapoor said in a blog post on Thursday. In addition to the company's own sales force and adCenter ad marketplace, the exchange is partnering with several outside mobile ad nets, including Millennial Media, WHERE, InMobi and MobClix. Refined Attentive, according to Kapoor. While the mobile ad space is presently dominated by Apple and Google, it is still in its infancy and ripe for the taking. Last month, Microsoft reportedly committed over half a billion dollars to help launch its Windows Phone 7 platform this fall. The money is likely to be spread across marketing, developers, handset makers and carriers. Jonathan Goldberg, an analyst with Deutsche Bank, suggested that Microsoft will likely spend billions in the first year on marketing and development. In show of confidence, NBC tapped Microsoft Advertising in May to promote its "More Colorful" Fall 2010 program lineup. Executed through a multi-screen ad campaign, the partnership relied heavily on Microsoft Mobile. For the deal, Microsoft Advertising deployed one of its largest and most comprehensive campaigns ever across 19 digital owned-and-operated properties, as well as syndicated partners -- to deliver a combined reach of nearly 470 million unique users monthly. Specific capabilities of Microsoft's Mobile Advertising SDK include demographic, category, carrier and location targeting; text and image units; cick to call and click to Web ad actions, along with reporting on in-app ad revenue, ad inventory, clicks, CPM and sell thru rate. As a standalone platform, Microsoft's Windows Mobile actually lost ground to rival platforms -- dropping to 11.8% in the three-month period ending July from 14% the prior quarter -- according to new comScore findings. In the ad exchange arena, Microsoft faces stiff competition from Google's Doubleclick and Yahoo's Right Media. The software giant acquired AdECN about three years ago, but has since made limited headway in the market. Earlier this year, Microsoft opened up AdECN to a handful of ad buyers, but only allowed them to purchase a limited amount of inventory.
Analyzing large amounts of structured and unstructured data will continue to complicate advertising campaigns, as marketers find ways to integrate search, social, rich media ads, real-time bidding and behavioral or contextual advertising. Marketers who don't understand the importance of advertising data and the mounds that online ads and social signals collect might as well hang up their hats and look for other work. Attempting to educate advertisers and marketers, Turn, a software and services company that provides platforms for managing data in digital ad campaigns, published this week the white paper, "Cheetah: A High Performance, Custom Data Warehouse on Top of MapReduce" at the 36th annual International Conference of Very Large Data Bases (VLDB). Cheetah, built from scratch in Java running on MapReduce, Google's programming model, can efficiently process, sometimes in seconds, any portion of the Petabyte of data it stores. Advanced analytics like machine learning and statistical modeling lay on top of the framework to automate the process of mining data from campaigns. The aim is to reduce the cost for clients, according to Dominic Bennett, vice president of engineering and products at Turn. Bennett says Turn engineers wrote the processes and built the technology that allows advertisers to sort through the mound of data companies can expect to collect from ad campaigns. Turn designed Cheetah to augment its advertising applications, as well as simplify and customize ad campaign optimization. The company's engineers also developed methods to find variables that correlate with behavior. "When you provide the correct tool sets, even when systems are very complex, people typically not familiar with technology become evangelists," Bennett says. "We all know behavioral targeting and data works, but how do you show it to make people understand?" The white paper details the background of the work that went into creating the process and technology, and why it's important to have a platform in place that can process the mounds of data tech companies expect. It also provides an overview of Turn's data warehouse system, Cheetah's schema design and query language, query processing and optimization, and the steps required to integrate Cheetah into user program.