Last week, the interesting speaker in class briefly talked about the online application/tools of  AdSense and AdWords, and a quick run-through of these, as well as some related issues, will be the topic of today’s blog.

AdSense was an ad serving application run by Google, where website owners could enroll to enable text, image and video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements were administered by Google and generated revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis.

Here is a picture of the typical reports page in the AdSense application:

The application was actually discontinued last year and superseded by DoubleClick, which was quickly snatched by Google after the huge potential of the application was revealed. This was solidly underlined by the $3.1 billion price tag! As an ironic twist, Microsoft actually tried to stall the acquisition on grounds of monopolistic effects – something quite hilarious considering the myriad of similar accusations against, well, Microsoft. DoubleClick, however, has not been without its problems; it has been linked to spy ware as cookies are tracked and it is therefore even considered “malware” by several antivirus programs. Additionally, DoubleClick was accused of misleading the consumer by proposing an, in effect, useless opt-out option of the tracking feature. Nonetheless, it continues to strive as a more or less independent subsidiary of Google and churns out some interesting products, especially for advertising and media companies to allow their clients to traffic, target, deliver, and report on their interactive advertising campaigns.

Below, one of many useful tools in the DoubleClick application is shown:

The other tool mentioned in class was AdWords – the grand flagship of Google’s online advertising, bringing in a staggering $21 billion in revenue in 2008 alone.

Below, an image of the AdWords position in the typical web browser is shown:

It is in relation to this that we see the currently ubiquitous Pay-Per-Click advertising model mentioned several times in my earlier blogs. The product has been developed extensively and is now relatively simple for anyone to operate and includes a suite of tools to enhance a website and monitor traffic. Despite of its huge success, there have also been a few glitches with the product, both in the form of trademark law suits (e.g. American Blind vs. Google and Rescuecom Corp vs. Google), patent infringements, and click fraud. The latter especially marred the reputation for and was settled for $90 million.

Nevertheless, the success of Google currently seems relentless and a plethora of sub-industries has appeared to cater for the increasing need of companbies needing to access all the people using the search engine. Included in such sub-industries are thousands of SEO and SEM specialists, as well as companies designing entire online campaigns to tap into the full potential of the online consumers.  The interesting aspect here is that, as Google increases the range of products offered directly to the companies, the intermediaries have to offer even more specialized and tailor-made solutions. It is currently not sure what the market for these will be in the future, but for now, it appears to be a lucrative market. A couple of examples of such intermediate companies are www.marketiniano.com as mentioned in class, as well as the even more interesting company www.guavamedia.com, which has received some attention in Scandinavia for having greatly increased the value of the companies in their portfolios. Apart from offering a complete overhaul of all online and branding issues of a company, Guava Media undertakes the innovative “Pay for Performance” solution where a company only pays for the actual sales realized as a consequence of an online campaign as opposed to the simple “pay-per-click” or “pay-per-lead” models.

 The only question is, how long it will be before such services merely become a standard part of the already rapidly expanding range of B2B and B2C offerings by Google…

DFA Analytics is the new reporting and visualisation tool for viewing advertising performance data. It shares similar technology with Google Analytics; if you’ve used Google Analytics before, you can quickly come up to speed with the easy-to-use graphical reporting tools that are now part of DFA.

With DFA Analytics, you can:

• Get frequent updates–about every three hours–of your campaign performance data.
• See account performance at a glance, in easy-to-understand charts and graphs.
• Drill down through reports at the advertiser, campaign, site, ad, and creative levels.

You can also review performance by:

• Country, designated market area (DMA), state, city, area code, or zip code.
• Hour, day, week, month, and one or more date ranges.
• Browser, operating system, and connection speed.

(Onderstaande blog heb ik geschreven als opdracht voor school. Mijn andere blogposts, en die van mijn medestudenten zijn ook te bewonderen op http://actua3cm.wordpress.com)

Google heeft zopas aangekondigt dat ze het mobiele advertentienetwerk AdMob heeft overgekocht. Hiervoor betalen ze 750 miljoen dollar in aandelen. Het is meteen de 3de grote overname voor Google, dat al eerder DoubleClick en Youtube voor respectievelijk 3,1 miljard dollar en 1,65 miljard dollar overkocht.

Op deze manier hoopt Google een grote speler te woorden op het vlak van mobile advertising. Een sector die, dankzij de komst van telefoons zoals de Iphone, in de toekomst veel mogelijkheden zal bieden. De Vice President Product Management van Google, Susan Wojcicki zegt :

“Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium and while this industry is still in the early stages of development, AdMob has already made exceptional progress in a very short time”

Analisten verwachten dat Google de technologie, de klantgegevens en de uitgevers van Admob gaat integreren in hun eigen advertentienetwerk AdSense, dat 2 jaar geleden zelf een mobiele component lanceerde.

Volgens de zoekmachinegigant is de overname positief voor zowel uitgevers van mobiele websites en applicaties, als voor de adverteerders. De deal zal leiden tot betere en meer relevante advertenties, die bovendien een groter bereik hebben.

This week, Google announced it’s takeover of AdMob, a leading mobile display ad technology provider, for $750 million in stock. Thats’s big money for a company that was a start-up in 2006! The acquisition will expand Google’s mobile advertising reach which is currently focused on mobile search ads. It will allow the search giant to expand its reach into the mobile banner and in-application ad space. The image below from ripped from Google’s press release site, shows the breakdown of Google’s mobile advertising offerings and how AdMob will fit in:

As we see in the graphic above, the only pillar of mobile advertising that is missing for Google is SMS based text ads – an area they are bound to enter by leveraging some type of Local Search meets Google Maps mashup that would allow companies to push their service ads to local searchers.

It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes Google to integrate AdMob inventory into their relevancy based content targeting system for ads as well as with their DoubleClick acquisition which allows publishers to buy adspace from publishers on an auction based system.

กูเกิล (Google) ประกาศเทเงิน 750 ล้านเหรียญสหรัฐ ซื้อบริษัทเครือข่ายโฆษณาบนโทรศัพท์มือถือรายใหญ่ในสหรัฐฯ นามแอดม็อบ (AdMob) แม้ทุกฝ่ายจะเชื่อว่าวงการโฆษณาบนโทรศัพท์มือถือคือดินแดนใหม่ที่จะเป็นบ่อทองแห่งต่อไปของกูเกิล แต่งานนี้ยังต้องลุ้นว่า กระทรวงยุติธรรมสหรัฐฯ จะลงดาบแท้งดีลระหว่างกูเกิลและแอดม็อบหรือไม่ เนื่องจากเสียงครหาว่าการซื้อขายบริษัทครั้งนี้อาจนำไปสู่การผูกขาดซึ่งจะทำให้ตลาดโฆษณาบนโทรศัพท์มือถือขาดการแข่งขันเสรี

การซื้อบริษัทแอดม็อบของกูเกิลในครั้งนี้ไม่แคล้วถูกมองว่าเป็นการปูทางให้กูเกิลสามารถขยายตลาดโฆษณาออกนอกโลกอินเทอร์เน็ตมาสู่โลกโทรศัพท์มือถือ กลยุทธ์นี้จะเสริมกันกับระบบปฏิบัติการแอนดรอยด์ (Android) ซึ่งกูเกิลใจดีให้ผู้ผลิตโทรศัพท์มือถือนำไปใช้งานได้ฟรี โดยเทคโนโลยีของแอดม็อบนั้นจะทำให้ผู้ใช้โทรศัพท์มือถือสามารถเห็นภาพกราฟฟิกโฆษณาได้ ขณะเดียวกันนักการตลาดก็จะมีช่องทางให้วางโฆษณาบนเว็บไซต์เพื่อโทรศัพท์มือถือได้

นักวิเคราะห์จาก J.P. Morgan ให้ข้อมูลว่า รายรับของแอดม็อบโดยเฉลี่ยนั้นอยู่ที่ประมาณ 45-60 ล้านเหรียญต่อปี แน่นอนว่ายังเติบโตโตได้อีกมาก เมื่อแอดม็อบย้ายมาอยู่ในชายคากูเกิล

ดีลซื้อขายบริษัทครั้งนี้ถือเป็นดีลที่มีมูลค่าสูงสุดอันดับ 3 ในประวัติศาสตร์กูเกิล โดยปี 2008 กูเกิลซื้อบริษัทดับเบิลคลิก (DoubleClick) ด้วยเงิน 3,100 ล้านเหรียญ เป็นดีลที่เกิดหลังจากการซื้อยูทูบ (YouTube) ในปี 2006 ด้วยเงิน 1,650 ล้านเหรียญ

น่าเสียดายที่ผู้บริหารกูเกิลไม่ยอมให้รายละเอียดเกี่ยวกับการคาด หวังในแง่ผลกำไรจากการเทเงินจำนวน 750 ล้านเหรียญในครั้งนี้ โดยกล่าวเพียงว่าดีลนี้จะทำให้กูเกิลสามารถเติบโตได้ในตลาดโทรศัพท์มือถือ

กูเกิลไม่เปิดเผยว่าสามารถทำรายได้จากตลาดโทรศัพท์มือถือเป็นเท่าใด เมื่อเทียบกับรายได้รวม 22,000 ล้านเหรียญฯตลอดปี 2008 ระบุเพียงว่าเมื่อเดือนที่ผ่านมาผู้ใช้โทรศัพท์มือถือหันมาใช้บริการค้นหาข้อมูลของกูเกิลเพิ่มขึ้นถึง 30%

หวั่นผูกขาด

กูเกิลระบุว่าไม่หวั่นใจผลการตรวจสอบของทางการสหรัฐฯ และคาดว่าจะสามารถดำเนินการควบรวมบริษัทได้เสร็จภายในไม่กี่เดือนนับจากนี้ ทั้งหมดสวนทางกับการวิเคราะห์ของสำนักข่าวต่างประเทศ ซึ่งตั้งข้อสังเกตว่าอิทธิพลของกูเกิลอาจผูกขาดการค้าในตลาดโฆษณาบนมือถือ

ความกังวลเรื่องการผูกขาดการค้าของกูเกิลนั้นคือความกังวลว่า บริษัทรายย่อยในตลาดโฆษณาบนโทรศัพท์มือถืออาจจะสู้กับกูเกิลไม่ไหวจนทำให้อุตสาหกรรมไม่มีพัฒนาการเท่าที่ควร ทั้งในแง่ความคิดสร้างสรรค์และความสามารถในการแข่งขัน ซึ่งเมื่อประเมินแล้ว การซื้อบริษัทนั้นทำให้กูเกิลได้รับประโยชน์ฝ่ายเดียวแต่ทำให้ภาพรวม อุตสาหกรรมเสียหาย จุดนี้ทำให้หลายสำนักชี้ว่ากระทรวงยุติธรรมอาจจะห้ามไม่ให้ดีลดังกล่าวเกิดขึ้น

แอดม็อบนั้นเป็นบริษัทที่มีเครือข่ายโฆษณาบนโทรศัพท์มือถือกว่า 15,000 เว็บไซต์ โดยอีริก ชมิดต์ ซีอีโอกูเกิลเคยกล่าวว่าวิกฤตเศรษฐกิจนั้นสร้างโอกาสที่ดีให้กูเกิลในการควบรวมบริษัท เนื่องจากทำให้กูเกิลสามารถซื้อบริษัทในราคาที่ไม่สูงนัก ซึ่งเฉลี่ยแล้วกูเกิลนั้นลงทุนซื้อบริษัทราว 1 บริษัทต่อ 1 เดือน

โดย ASTVผู้จัดการออนไลน์

MOBILE

Now that in-app purchasing has been live for a few weeks in the iTunes App Store, and Apple is now ranking the top-grossing apps, whether they start out as free or paid, we have some initial data on what kinds of apps are pulling in the most money from in-app purchases. (In-app purchases allow apps to offer a free version and then make money by requiring consumers to pay for additional features or content). Today, Distimo put out a report (download it here ) which breaks down the top 40 grossing in-app purchasing titles by category. Games, social networking, and Book apps are doing the best job upselling consumers from free apps to paid enhancements. Music, news, and finance apps, not so much. (Techcrunch11/10)

Today’s announced deal to by mobile ad startup AdMob for $750 million is Google’s largest acquisition since its $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick in March, 2008, and its third-largest ever after the $1.65 billion YouTube acquisition in 2006. (Techcrunch11/10)

Pretty big news as Google announced this morning that it has struck a deal to buy mobile ad network, AdMob, for $750 million in stock.

From the Associated Press:

Google already has a mobile ad delivery system, DoubleClick Mobile, which it got with its $3.2 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. in 2008. Google said buying AdMob will give it more expertise in a market that is expected to grow rapidly over the next several years.

Omar Hamoui founded AdMob in 2006. The company, which is based in San Mateo, Calif., provides a market for advertisers to buy space on Web sites geared for mobile devices.

“Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium and while this industry is still in the early stages of development, AdMob has already made exceptional progress in a very short time,” Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice president of product management, said in a statement.

From TechCrunch:

Google has just announced that it has acquired AdMob, the mobile ad platform that has been especially popular on the iPhone, for $750 million. This is a big win for the company’s early investors, which include Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners (this is a huge day for Accel — they were also investors in Playfish, which was just acquired by EA). More recent investors include DFJ and Northgate Capital.

Google has set up a website to explain the benefits of the AdMob acquisition, detailing the rapidly growing (and still very nascent) mobile advertising space. Google also created the graphic below to highlight the differences between its own mobile search ads, and the display ads AdMob shows in applications on the iPhone and other platforms.

From Reuters:

The all-stock deal gives Google, whose Android software is increasingly used to power smartphones such as the Motorola Inc Droid, an important element to monetize mobile Internet traffic.

Privately held AdMob makes technology for serving display ads on mobile phones and to track the performance of the ads.

Google, the world’s No.1 Internet search engine, does not disclose how much of its revenue, which totaled nearly $22 billion in 2008, comes from mobile ads.

Rajeev Goel, CEO of upstart PubMatic, thinks his company can help print publishers recapture advertising revenue from their glory days.

Print media is dead! Yawn.

Goel says he can boost media companies' online ad revenue. Photo: PubMatic

You’d think media analysts and bloggers would find another catchphrase. This executioner’s call is as tired as Jon and Kate’s tabloid tussles.

So when Rajeev Goel, co-founder and CEO of PubMatic, told me that not only would print publications survive, but he knew how they could, he definitely got my attention.

PubMatic offers what it calls “real-time ad price prediction technology.” In other words it lets publishers of premium content (read: traditional magazine and newspaper companies) decide in real time which ad networks on which to sell unused advertising inventory.

Others, including Google’s (GOOG) DoubleClick and the Rubicon Project, make similar promises. But Goel touts that PubMatic is the only advertising optimization company completely devoted to publishers, pushing his close competitors into a separate category. Not to mention he’s doing this all in real-time.

Still not convinced? I wasn’t either. But Goel says his two-year-old company has already been able to increase publishers’ advertising revenue from 30% to 70%. (In one case, PubMatic was able to catapult revenue by 300%.) He only charges a 15% commission fee.

We sat down with Goel to see how he thinks PubMatic can help the ailing print industry.

Fortune: What trends and mistakes do you think publishers are making in choosing ad networks?

Goel: As people spend more and more time online, there’s a huge growth in the supply of inventory, which is changing the pricing dynamics. Second, publishers typically have a wide audience in terms of their global reach of their readership — and that’s typically an under-monetized opportunity for the publisher, where they might not be focused on selling that ad inventory. And third, a place where we place an increasing amount of importance is in ad quality. We’ve all seen the not-so-desirable ads online and I think typically the large premium brand publishers are looking to not only maximize revenue but also protect the user experience.

We’ll source the right networks and then pass information to those networks in real-time about the audience that’s on the website — such as household make-up and income of the users and other demographics — so the right ads can be targeted.

Fortune: Many have tried to take the route you are doing right now and have either failed or changed their business model. What makes you think you’ll succeed?

Goel: Where most others have failed is that they felt they could deploy a couple of engineers on the problem for six months without a clear understanding of what is required to be successful. Our ongoing technology investment and investment to-date are a significant competitive barrier that makes it very difficult for most newcomers to be successful. What’s unique to PubMatic is our patent-pending Ad Price Prediction technology, which looks at every impression in real-time along with dozens of factors and predicts how each ad network or exchange will price that impression. We do this for every single impression on a unique basis in less than four milliseconds. This is what is unique relative to any other solution provider, including DoubleClick or the Rubicon Project.

Fortune: What’s the advantage of being real-time?

Goel: We are consistently able to outperform non-real-time solutions, such as publisher’s in-house ad operations team, through our real-time optimization. One of the latest trends in online advertising is known as “real-time bidding,” in which a buyer of media will evaluate an ad impression in real time and determine what they are willing to pay for that ad impression. The vast majority of publishers can earn approximately 50% more revenue from real-time bidding advertising campaigns.

Fortune: Tell us about the technology behind this.

Goel: The technology is a predictive ad server. It looks at the demand across these hundreds of ad networks and in real-time, it predicts how each network is going to price the next impression that comes in. So when the user goes to the page, the publisher will call our system and our system will look at all the networks that they’re working with, predict which network is going to best monetize that impression — based on the geography, time of day, what the page is about — and we select that network to serve the ad. Doing that, we process over 100,000 data transactions per second. It’s just a huge amount of data to know about the site, to know about the audience, and also know about the networks and in terms of what is their demand.

Fortune: Has the advertising slump given you an opportunity or, adversely, has it brought down business?

Goel: Clearly, online advertising has gone through quite a spike and a downward slope in the last couple of years. I think there are a couple of things that are driving that. One is the dramatic growth in the supply of inventory and that’s led to a precipitous drop in pricing. What we found for the industry as a whole is that in’07 and ’08 pricing decreased anywhere from 30% to 40% in annual pricing. So pretty steep declines in pricing. Every month since January of this year, there’s been an uptick in pricing. The pricing hasn’t returned to the level it was to ‘07, but it’s clearly bottomed out. Everyone is waiting for the recovery to take root.

Fortune: Do you think advertising can support publishers online the same way it used to in print?

Goel: I do believe with the right model of content creation and the distribution of it, there can be online-only, advertising-based models that work. One of the things we advise publishers to do is to figure out ways to deliver differentiated ad products to your premium sponsors — to sponsors that really want to engage with your audience. If you’re trying to sell the same ad product or the same ad unit via the direct sales force or the ad network, then it’s no surprise that there’s going to be conflict there. But if you can differentiate the ad products sold, then I think you can have a very successful ad strategy.

Since the next version of the privacychoice opt-out tool will incorporate integrated control of Flash cookies, we’ve developed internal tools to start monitoring the incidence of use of Flash cookies by tracking companies. It’s not news that use of Flash cookies has been widely embraced by ad networks; what is surprising is how few of them explain this in their privacy disclosures, or provide any guidance on how to delete or control them.

The most notable example of missing Flash-cookie disclosure comes from the biggest dog of all: Google’s DoubleClick subsidiary. We’re seeing their Flash cookie, googleads.g.doubleclick.net, on multiple test machines, which raises questions:

1. Is DoubleClick’s Flash cookie used to gather interest information? This is not confirmed one way or another in the privacy policy, but should be. (In fact, a search of DoubleClick’s site reveals no mention of Flash cookies.)
2. If I expressly opt out using the regular DoubleClick browser cookie, and then that opt-out cookie is deleted for any reason, does DoubleClick reconnect my profile with the surviving Flash cookie? Why doesn’t Google just delete the Flash cookie as part of the normal opt-out process?
3. Better yet, if Google is using Flash cookies to enhance the ad serving experience, why not set the user’s opt-out preference with a durable Flash cookie?

My guess is that DoubleClick’s Flash cookies are not used for interest gathering or ad targeting, but in the absence of a clear statement as to how they are used, consumers are left to wonder.

It’s all gone wrong stateside. According to the latest research out of Starcom people that click on display in the US has plummeted to its lowest levels in years.

Apparently, ‘…the number of people who click on display ads in a month has fallen from 32 percent of Internet users in July 2007 to only 16 percent in March 2009, with an even smaller core of people (representing 8 percent of the Internet user base) accounting for the vast majority (85 percent) of all clicks’

I’m not convinced Comscore data is any true measure of the likelihood of a click. I’m not convinced Comscore is the company to answer the question either, given it’s enormous consumer bias – is B2B factored into this? Doubt it.

It doesn’t compare to DoubleClick’s annual benchmark report for 08 either, which shows that for most rich media formats it’s probably slightly below average. But not by much:

Average CTR by Country, according to DoubleClick [pg 14]

Australia 0.10%

Austria 0.15%

Belgium 0.17%

Canada 0.10%

China 0.18%

Denmark 0.12%

Finland 0.09%

France 0.12%

Germany 0.13%

Greece 0.18%

Hong Kong 0.21%

Hungary 0.11%

India 0.20%

Ireland 0.08%

Italy 0.12%

Luxembourg 0.08%

Malaysia 0.29%

Netherlands 0.16%

New Zealand 0.14%

Norway 0.07%

Singapore 0.20%

Spain 0.14%

Sweden 0.10%

Switzerland 0.11%

Turkey 0.14%

United Arab Emirates 0.26%

United Kingdom 0.08%

United States 0.10%

Tricky.  Two competing reports, from two self-serving companies, DC and CScore. What’s the true picture? If you ask me, I’ve no idea currently.

However,  I do believe that the US is set for a shakeup shortly. Geotargeting is rapidly spreading amongst the agency community in the states and that means CTR’s will crumble – you can get great performance from running regional ads globally, particularly if you focus them on India. Hello US publishers. But that will be stopping soon, 12-24mths, and that’s when US CTR’s will really stand out.

Google sprawls across the Port Authority of New York Building

Ray Norwood and I spent the morning with Jonathan Bellack, Group Product Manager of Google last week in New York. If you haven’t been to the Port Authority Building in NYC, it’s an amazing building.

It was a delight to hear about how our kenote speaker in New York on November 5 will talk about the lifecycle of an Adsense Publisher and Advertiser journey that Google are providing.

Jonathan Bellack, Keynote for CRS in NYC on November 5

With Jonathan’s background at DoubleClick, he’s going to give some terrific insights into AdManager, AdExchange and how publishers and advertisers can make more money and increase advertising effectiveness in the contextual network.

Jonathan will be at CRS all day so remember to look for him and introduce yourself.

Meet Dave

Dave Prukop has ten years of experience in interactive development. He currently resides in San Francisco, CA. and even though he has only been there three months, he could easily get a paid job on the side guiding tours there.  Dave, along with Nick Velloff, owns development and overall technical strategy for PingGadget.  His project portfolio includes work with ESPNTV, Kajeet, Discovery, and DoubleClick.

In the privacy debate about behavioral tracking and ad targeting, most folks agree that new rules are needed in areas that are considered “sensitive.” Some activities, like researching health conditions or financial planning, will be off limits for tracking once new rules are in place. Companies won’t be able to use information about those activities when compiling user profiles or targeting advertising, and probably will be obligated to delete such data promptly.

This will impose new policies (and probably new operating practices) on many firms engaged in tracking. A substantial majority (65%) of the tracking companies in the privacychoice database make no mention in their privacy statements of special handling for sensitive information.

The larger players are ahead of the curve. With a few exceptions, each of the top ten ad networks already exclude sensitive information from their targeting matrix in some way. In the most typical formulation, “sensitive” information is defined to include government-issued identifiers (like SSN), insurance plan and financial account numbers, your real-time geographic location (via GPS), and “precise information about past, present, or potential future health or medical conditions or treatments, including genetic, genomic, and family medical history.”

A few ad networks go further, also establishing exclusions around sexual identity and adult activities. Google, for example, says it will not associate the omnipresent DoubleClick cookie with information about “sexual orientation.” Clearsight Interactive and AlmondNet will not store information from “adult and gambling sites.” BlueKai does not collect or share data involving “adult behavior such as drinking, politics, or pornographic content.” Exelate promises not to target ads based on “adult related searches or adult content.”

It is easier for an ad network to promise not to use adult activities if they don’t serve ads or collect data on adult sites in the first place. But mainstream ad networks and measurement firms are present on adult sites. Take a look at the Network Privacy Profile for playboy.com, where you will find DoubleClick, Quantcast, Eyewonder and several others. Those networks are in a position to connect visits to adult sites with a user’s overall profile (and any personally identifiable information, if they have it).

Consumers have some privacy protection in the form of anonymous surfing tools, which are now available in all of the major browsers. But although private browsing mode cuts off access to regular browser cookies on your computer, it doesn’t mask IP addresses or block Flash cookies, which are common across all browsers and are favorite tracking tools for many ad networks. There are technical workarounds, but none within reach of an average consumer.

As regulations emerge, here are two predictions:

• Use of sexual orientation will be off-limits in behavioral targeting as a matter of law, but activities on adult sites will not. While advocates want to circumscribe targeting as much as possible, they will pick their battles. (Thus the recent proposal from a coalition of privacy advocates only suggested sensitizing information about sexual orientation and “personal relationships.”)
• In the long run, as opt-out (or even opt-in) choices become more prevalent and robust, companies will extend their definition of sensitive categories beyond non-controversial areas like finance and health. This will be an easy way to make consumers more comfortable, particularly if new rules require companies to show users what’s in their own profiles.

In sampling top websites for the privacychoice service, we see that nearly all of them use hosted website analytics to understand user behavior. Like an ad network, an analytics service works through Javascript code embedded throughout pages on a website. As humans navigate the site, background communications with the analytics server provide complete visibility on behavior, including counting new or repeat users, seeing which search terms they used to find your site, and which of your pages pages are most popular. Using cookies and IP addresses, a user’s multiple sessions can be linked in order to understand user loyalty and behavior over time.

The sheer ubiquity of analytics code raises an obvious question: Is website analytics data used to target advertising?

The question gains importance given the growing overlap between analytics providers and ad networks, where Google is the biggest in each market. It has the widest footprint in selling and serving ads through the AdSense network and DoubleClick. It also also gives away Google Analytics for free to web publishers, which is present on over three-quarters of the sites sampled for privacychoice. For  customers who are also advertisers on Google networks, the appeal is an integrated end-to-end cycle — from ad click through user actions taken on the site — enabling publishers to connect the dots for a more effective ad spend. The other analytics providers include a handful of enterprise-grade platforms like Omniture. Once Omniture becomes part of Adobe, they may have access to a larger web-wide footprint through the huge installed base of Flash applications (also widely used in ads).

Yahoo! also offers its own analytics product to advertising customers, and Yahoo! makes it clear that analytics data is leveraged to target advertising. User activities on sites running Yahoo!’s analytics program can be associated with the user’s account and activities on Yahoo!’s family of sites. For purposes of disclosure, websites using Yahoo!’s service are directed to include specific language in their privacy policies and a link to more information. According to Yahoo! search, around 3,000 sites carry the required language:

“We use third-party web beacons from Yahoo! to help analyze where visitors go and what they do while visiting our website. Yahoo! may also use anonymous information about your visits to this and other websites in order to improve its products and services and provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.”

Yahoo! can connect user activities from its analytics network with Yahoo!’s sites or ad networks. Does Google?

The answer is, probably not, if only in light of Google’s other practices. DoubleClick requires each participating website to make a special privacy disclosure about the use of information for ad targeting, and provides an opt-out cookie for consumers. Google Analytics has neither. Also Google analytics collects user information through a different domain (google-analytics.com) than they use for their ad networks (doubleclick.net, googlesyndication.com and others). While this doesn’t mean they can’t use analytics data for ad targeting, it does make it harder as a practical matter.

However unlikely it may be, given the huge but invisible reach of Google Analytics, it’s reasonable to expect an express statement from Google. This could be as simple as: information gathered via Google Analytics is not associated with other Google user information or used to target advertising.

To search of this kind of statement, you can start start by navigating Google’s privacy policies. Which one is relevant is not immediately obvious. Look at Google Analytics for a privacy policy and you end up at the general Google Privacy Center (unlike DoubleClick, which has a separate policy, and 15 other Google services, which have supplements to the general policy).

Google’s general policy is particularly unhelpful in explaining how user information is handled by Google Analytics. In the explanation of data gathering via cookies, IP addresses and such, matters are framed with “when you visit Google’” or “when you access Google services.” Who even knows they are using Google services when they happen to trigger Google Analytics code on a third-party site? But still you will find no express statement about mixing analytics and targeting data.

Turn from the consumer disclosures to the terms of service Google Analytics provides its analytics customers. There you find this express statement about the use of information:

Google and its wholly owned subsidiaries may retain and use, subject to the terms of its Privacy Policy (located at http://www.google.com/privacy.html , or such other URL as Google may provide from time to time), information collected in Your use of the Service.

The policy does go on to say that, although Google may retain and use the information, it will not share any site’s information with third parties. But by implication, Google still can use the information to target ads, so long as it does not disclose the targeting information to advertisers. The fact that Google probably doesn’t use analytics data this way isn’t the point. What is needed is a statement that makes Google accountable for that policy. In crafting privacychoice summaries, this ambiguity in Google’s policies means we cannot assume that users are anonymous to Google when they are on sites using Google Analytics.

This example provides important takeaways for folks writing rules for this industry. To ensure clarity and accountability, any company in the business of collecting and using information about users from across different websites should register each domain they use, and bind it legally to a complete privacy policy that governs the activity. There’s no room — and no reason — for ambiguity.

It was a momentous weekend. Just six scant weeks after its smashing debut, eSarcasm – The Saucy Little Site That Goes Great With Meat or Fish ™ — began serving up banners to an advertising-starved public.

Of course, that meant making a few key decisions. Which advertisers would be worthy of carrying the banner for eSarcasm? We decided to pick only the finest. Not just any under-the-counter vendor of fake pharmaceuticals, but those that offer free shipping and 24-7 customer service. Not just any penis enlargement pills, but the most fully engorged throbbingly tumescent ones. (Also: Did you know you could meet Hot Single Girls in Your Area just by clicking on an ad? This was a revelation to us.)

We also elected to reject those pop up-ads that flash on and off in psychedelic colors, mostly because viewing them automatically sends JR into an epileptic fit. He’s already bitten through two of DT’s wallets and a cell phone, and enough’s enough.

Within its first hour, the site already generated revenue of $0.24. At this rate, eSarcasm will achieve a $1 billion revenue rate by year 477340 A.C.E., which is perfectly in line with our business projections (as well as the Book of Revelations and chapters 3 through 7 of The Joy of Sex).

We hope you’ll click early and often.

Also, we updated our privacy policy accordingly. You have just been officially notified. Don’t come crying to us later when you discover Doubleclick cookies on your hard drive.

You may have read on the Official Google Blog that the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange is open for business.

The new DoubleClick Ad Exchange helps to open the ecosystem and establish a new marketplace for buyers and sellers.

For a large publisher managing multiple sales channels and ad networks, the Ad Exchange provides real-time yield management to maximize returns.

Participating ad networks and agency networks get access to a large pool of inventory and the controls they need to precisely achieve their marketing goals.

More: http://www.doubleclick.com/insight/blog/archives/doubleclick-advertising-exchange/announcing-the-new-doubleclick-ad-exchange.html

Forrás: ITcafé

Az online grafikus hirdetések piacának meghódítása a cég következő célja, s minden esélyük megvan arra, hogy ez sikerüljön is.

A Google tegnap bejelentette, hogy jelentős mértékben átalakítják internetes hirdetési gyakorlatukat, ami nagy vonalakban azt jelenti, hogy a tavaly felvásárolt DoubleClick korábbi technológiáján javítva, azt saját megoldásaikkal kiegészítve a grafikus hirdetések piacára is belépnek.

A tavaly márciusban több mint hárommilliárd dollárért felvásárolt DoubleClick jó üzlet volt a Google számára, mivel e cég technológiája kiválóan kiszolgálta a vállalat igényeit, noha kezdetben leginkább csak abban segített, hogy a kereső találatai összerendezhetőek legyenek szöveges hirdetésekké, valamint ezek menedzselését is megkönnyítette. A Google vezetői feltehetően úgy gondolták – talán már a felvásárlás idején –, hogy a mindinkább kép- és videoigényű felhasználók esetében hatékonyabb lehet a grafikus megjelenítés. A tegnapi bejelentéskor Neil Mohan, a Google termékmenedzselésért felelő alelnöke elmondta, jelentős újításról van szó, amely keretén belül összehangolják a DoubleClick rendszerét a Google már meglévő megoldásaival.

Ez nem csak azt jelenti, hogy a grafikus hirdetések számára megnyitják az utat, hanem azt is – hiszen ebben a keresőcég a legjobbak közé tartozik –, hogy az új verzióban a hirdetők számára olyan lehetőségeket biztosítanak, melyek akár monopohelyzetbe is hozhatják a Google-t ezen a piacon. Ezek közül a két legfontosabb: a célzott hirdetések magas szintű megoldása, illetve egy fejlett eszköztár a hirdetési hatékonyság ellenőrzésére; az „új DoubleClick” – hivatalos nevén Ad Exchange – össze lesz kapcsolva a Google már bevált rendszereivel, az AdWordsszel és az AdSense-szel. A változtatást a cég szerint az indokolja, hogy az online hirdetések több mint negyven százaléka azért nem éri el célját, mivel a hirdetők nem ismerik a hatékony reklámozási technológiákat, illetve nem áll rendelkezésükre ilyen megoldás.

Az Ad Exchange-nek nevezett lehetőség valóban nevezhető akár forradalminak is, mivel az eddigi lehetőségek kombinációja valami egész új környezet megteremtéséhez vezetett. A Google egy olyan könnyen kezelhető, számtalan ponton testre szabható hirdetési lehetőséget hozott létre, amely első ránézésre roppant vonzó lehet a hirdetők számára, akik egyrészt könnyedén tudnak tervezni, ugyanakkor minden lehetőségük megvan arra, hogy kampányaik hatását pontos statisztikákkal mérjék.

A Google elnök-vezérigazgatója, Eric Schmidt roppant fontosnak tartja a változtatást, s optimistán azt nyilatkozta, hogy az új megoldás „a cég legújabb milliárdos üzlete lesz”.

Google annouced the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange, a real-time marketplace for display advertising; http://j.mp/zXe2d