Symantec has released a cybercrime report showing increases in malicious activity in mobile and social networks, as Google acquires cybersecurity startup VirusTotal, which focuses on protecting Internet services supported by Android devices. The free security service analyzes suspicious files and URLs. The deal, completed for an undisclosed amount, extends a partnership the two companies previously had. The company will operate independently to support Google's Web scanning tools. VirusTotal offers browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. The app informs users on Android devices about malware such as viruses, Trojans and worms. It manages scans by more than 40 antivirus software applications, flagging undesirable content. It does not, however, provide real-time protection for Android devices, not a substitute for antivirus products, or compatible with Sony Internet TVs. Google has been the target of continuous malware attacks. Symantec's 2012 Norton Cybercrime Report estimates that crimes cost consumers $110 billion in the past year worldwide. In the United States it cost consumers $21 billion; Europe, $16 billion; China, $46 billion; India and Brazil, each $8 billion; Mexico, $2 billion; Russia and Australia, $2 billion each; and Japan, 500 million. The report estimates 1.5 million consumers affected daily at an average cost of $197 per victim. Email has become a potential gateway for cybercrime, but there's a strong uptick of cybercrime in social networks and mobile devices. Mobile vulnerabilities have doubled from 2010 to 2011, which can make consumers leery of clicking on mobile ads. Symantec notes that 31% of mobile users have received a text message from someone they didn't know requesting they click on an embedded link or dial an unknown number to retrieve voice mail. Some 44% don't know security platforms exist, and two-thirds of adults have lost their device or had it stolen. In social, four out of 10 users have fallen victim to cybercrime, one in six users report that someone hacked into their profile, and one in 10 social users have been affected by a scam or fake link on a social network platform.
As the lines continue to blur between conventional TV and online video advertising, yet another TV ad convention is going online: upfront audience guarantees. In what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind offer, Undertone has quietly begun guaranteeing advertisers delivery of the most premium online advertising video formats: so-called “user-initiated” video ads. But unlike conventional TV audience guarantees, which normally provide advertisers “makegood” audience impressions, Undertone’s new Video Guarantee will give cash-back to advertisers for campaigns that do not deliver the audiences they contracted for. The new program, which is being unveiled publicly today, will refund advertisers the full cost of their campaigns up to $50,000, if their ads appear within in-banner auto-play streams or other non-user-initiated video ad inventory. The program is similar in concept to a program Undertone launched in March giving advertisers up to a $50,000 refund on its display ad network buys if they failed to meet agreed-upon “brand lift” guarantees, and follows an earlier “quality guarantee” it implemented in 2008 on the quality of the pages its clients' ads are placed on. Undertone claims to have run “more than 10,000 campaigns” to date qualifying for its Quality Guarantee. Undertone executives said they are offering the new online video audience guarantees as part of an effort to differentiate their premium, user-initiated video ad buys, which they claim are the crème de la crème of the online video ad marketplace, and need to be differentiated from other formats, especially auto-stream inventory that may appear below the fold and may not even be viewed by users that advertisers are paying for. “The industry needs to coalesce around a set of quality standards for digital video," said Adam Kasper, executive vice president-partnerships and investments at Havas Digital, who has been evaluating the new Undertone program for his clients. "There are just too many horror stories about video being mis-sold -- stories that could ultimately derail the growth the space is currently enjoying. It’s great to see Undertone lead the way with a guarantee that gives buyers more confidence that they’re getting what they pay for.” Undertone’s new Video Guarantees actually represent a more rigorous standard than conventional TV ad guarantees, which only cover audience exposure, or opportunity-to-see, delivery, because it’s assumed that user-initiated ads are likely to have been seen by the audiences initiating them.
A computer programmer has written a "patch" for Apache's software that renders Microsoft's upcoming do-not-track command ineffective. Roy Fielding, a principal scientist at Adobe Systems, created the patch, which effectively nullifies the default do-not-track settings that are slated for Internet Explorer 10. If the patch becomes part of Apache, the move will have a wide-ranging effect because most Web publishers use Apache's open-source software. Fielding, who previously served as chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, posted the patch last month. But it didn't draw much attention until late this week, when other programmers began discussing it online. CNET first published news of the program on Friday. Fielding is among a group of computer programmers with "commit" privileges at Apache, which means that his patch will be incorporated in the next version of the software unless reversed. Fielding indicated that he created the patch because he disapproved of Microsoft's controversial decision to enable do-not-track by default in the upcoming IE10. "Apache does not tolerate deliberate abuse of open standards," Fielding wrote on a message board for developers. Microsoft's planned do-not-track settings have generated significant controversy since the company announced them earlier this year, but not everyone agrees that they violate "open standards." The company said in May that it intended to activate do-not-track by default in the upcoming version of IE10. But last month, Microsoft announced a revision to the original plan. The company said in a blog post that Windows 8 will offer users two choices at installation: "express settings" or customized. Only the express settings will include do-not-track by default. The headers themselves don't block tracking cookies. Instead, they serve as a signal that users don't want to be tracked. The patch strips out that signal from the server. The Internet standards group World Wide Web Consortium -- which currently is trying to craft recommendations for how companies should respond to the headers -- says that users should give "explicit and informed consent" to do-not-track, but also says there's no agreement yet about how to define the term. On Thursday, some other programmers involved with Apache said in comments that they disapproved of Fielding's patch, known as a "commit." "There's just so many things wrong with this commit," wrote one critic. "You don't find it just a little wrong that users are going to think this is turned on, yet you guys are just turning it off?"
Back in May, Google announced that its newly branded Google Shopping service would soon become an exclusively paid service in which product listings are ranked by a combination of bid price and relevance. Google positioned the change as a good thing for online retailers and product searchers alike. For searchers, abandoning free listings would eliminate duplicate results, reduce SERP “clutter,” and thereby improve the overall relevance of product listings. For merchants, paid listings offer greater control over where listings appear, more visibility on the SERP, and better reporting. As many have noted, eliminating free product listings will likely enhance Google’s revenues in Q4 as well. As my colleague Kevin Lee observes, “Google loves it when revenue accompanies relevance improvements and spam reduction.” Online retailers, on the other hand, are justified in expressing frustration that Google’s massive change is coming right now -- at the beginning of the frenetically competitive Xmas shopping season. How much budget should they allocate to Google Shopping PLAs (Product Listing Ads)? How should their teams manage the demands of yet another auction-driven listing service? How can they avoid under-spending on PLAs, thus ceding SERP real estate to competitors -- or overspending (exhausting budgets and reducing already razor-thin profit margins to zero)? What To Do? Managing the transition to paid listings isn’t going to be easy, even for experienced e-commerce players. Still, there are things that you can do. Here are 10 action items to help you make it through this crucial time.
With consumer adoption of smartphones continuing to grow at an unprecedented speed, by now most email marketers will agree that optimizing campaigns for mobile devices is a key priority. But what is the best way to do this? Here are pros and cons of the emerging approaches to mobile email optimization: prefab content, responsive design, and live content. Option 1: Prefab Email Content Prefab email content relies on reporting from email tracking vendors to ascertain recipients’ device usage. If the reporting shows that a user opened a marketer’s last email on an iPhone, the marketer will send that user iPhone-optimized content in subsequent sends. Likewise, if the last email was opened on a desktop, future messages will be tailored for desktop viewing. Pros: Marketers can send users content designed for specific devices. Setting up tracking is easy, and usually involves adding an invisible pixel to email templates prior to sending. Cons: Pre-send content selection doesn’t take into account the phenomenon of “email triage,” where consumers interact with messages across multiple devices and screen sizes. There is always the possibility that a person who opened a marketer’s last email on an iPhone will open its next email on a desktop, and vise versa – with the result being that, inevitably, some recipients will end up receiving device-inappropriate emails. Option 2: Responsive Email Design There’s been a lot of talk in recent months about applying responsive design techniques to email. By coding media queries into email templates, marketers’ emails can be designed to dynamically adapt to fit the screen sizes of recipient devices upon open. A common example is that emails originally designed with a two-column layout for desktops can be set to display in one column, with one above the other, when viewed on a handheld. Pros: Marketers can create a single email template, and have it optimally render in real-time across a variety of screen sizes. Cons: The effort required to code an email for responsive design can be intensive, and support for media queries is spotty -- many marketers complain of breakage when their designs are viewed in unsupported email clients and web browsers. Lastly, responsive design only takes into account a recipient’s screen size, and isn’t able to adapt to the contextual and experiential differences between desktop and mobile email usage. Option 3: Live Email Content With the newest approach to mobile email optimization -- live content -- marketers can create device-specific versions of email templates and render them on the fly based on which devices recipients are using when they open email. Images and links within templates become highly dynamic, and can automatically redirect to launch installed mobile apps instead of opening web browsers. Pros: Using live content decisioning technology means that marketers don’t need to worry about sending smartphone-specific content to desktops, and vice versa. Email triage is fully accounted for, and recipients always receive the right content for their devices – content that is optimally designed for mobile screen size, context, and experience. Cons: Some marketers might not have the resources or bandwidth to create device-specific content or designs. The Verdict Prefab design is currently the most widely used tactic, but it completely misses the mark when it comes to today’s platform-shuffling consumers, and has quickly been rendered archaic by more advanced, real-time technologies. Responsive design is a great leap forward from pre-send design, but the amount of time and resources required to code templates combined with inconsistent receiver-side support for media queries makes the tactic suboptimal. Live content is the most elegant and effective approach, as long as marketers have the ability to create different content for different devices, and are concerned with creating the most engaging multiplatform email experiences for recipients. Regardless of what you decide for your own email program, one thing is certain: Consumers are going mobile, and if you want to remain relevant across all of their inboxes, you have no choice but to evolve with them. Go mobile, or go home.