CDD

Newsroom

  • Scrap cat videos. Google wants a piece of the $70 billion linear TV ad pie – of which $300 million-plus and growing is addressable. As such, the tech giant unveiled a bunch of TV-related products and updates Wednesday at the National Association of Broadcasters meeting in Las Vegas. Announcements included the addressable TV product DoubleClick Dynamic Ad Insertion (geared squarely toward TV broadcasters and distributors), an update to DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) that keeps competing advertisers from appearing consecutively in the same TV ad pod and improved search for TV shows. At the top of the stack was the intro of DoubleClick Dynamic Ad Insertion – a product that places Google in direct competition with video ad platform FreeWheel, which Comcast acquired (link is external) in 2014. With Google in the fray, the gauntlet is down in a serious way. “By creating individual streams for every viewer using server-side ad insertion, we are able to deliver a better, more personalized viewing experience that looks and feels as seamless as TV today,” wrote Daniel Algere, president of global partnerships for Google, in a blog post. “Not only will this work for both live and on-demand TV, but it works across directly sold and programmatic.” Google put the technology to work over the past year through a series of beta tests with French TV programmer TF1 and Fox News. The broadcasters used DoubleClick Dynamic Ad Insertion to embed ads dynamically into live “tentpole” content, including the Rugby World Cup finals and the Republican presidential debates. Google is also expanding DFP by creating “smarter TV ad breaks” for cross-screen and video ad serving for TV clients like AMC, Cablevision and over-the-top powerhouse Roku. Marketing lingo aside, “smarter TV ad breaks” is normal in linear broadcasting. It’s basically a system that separates two similar advertisers – so Pepsi and Coke, for instance, won’t have adjacent ads in a single commercial pod. The DFP expansion comes soon after Facebook’s LiveRail (link is external) exited the video ad-serving business. Roku, which used LiveRail until a few months ago, “appears to have fully completed transitioning just in the past few weeks” to Google, said an AdExchanger source speaking anonymously because of their relation to both companies. Google’s entrance into TV monetization, say industry insiders, is about more than capturing video market share from Facebook. Another AdExchanger source said Google’s push for premium video on YouTube was just the “Trojan horse” it needed to pursue more TV dollars. “All MVPDs realize that a tighter relationship with [tech and consumer-based companies like] Google, Facebook and Amazon is the rising tide that lifts all boats,” that source said. “They’re making very tangible, touchable proof points [about why they should be your TV tech partners].” --- Full article available at http://bit.ly/1U73NJ4 (link is external)
  • Blog

    Introducing Roku Audience Solutions

    We believe all TV will be streamed, and with it, TV advertising

    The Roku platform now natively integrates advertising capabilities that combine the best of both digital and TV advertising. We call it "Roku Audience Solutions". It enables Roku channel partners to deliver more effective advertising to their audience. And, it creates new opportunities for brands to connect with next-generation TV viewers. TV, Meet Digital TV is changing in profound ways. We’re headed for a world in which all TV will be streamed, on-demand, and personalized. With this transition, the “physics” of TV advertising is changing, too. Viewers are migrating out of traditional platforms. 2014 witnessed the first material losses for traditional TV distribution and viewership. People still love TV. They’re just doing it on their own time. 222K cable subscribers lost as of Q3 2014, more than all of 2013 Ratings dropped 9% in 2014, compared to 3% in 2013 1 in 3 US adults own a connected TV or streaming device Viewer growth is in streaming. Delivery of video ads via free, ad-supported streaming grew 236%, beating tablets for the first time and gaining rapidly on smartphones. We still love the big screen. Everyone’s watching TV on their smartphones now, right? Wrong. When viewers are home, screen size matters. --- Learn more about Roku by visiting http://bit.ly/1Uc9sh5 (link is external)
  • Blog

    AT&T, Videology Ink Programmatic TV Ad Pact

    AT&T Launches Automated Video Inventory Platform (VIP)

    Establishing a key foothold in the world of programmatic TV, AT&T said it has launched a automated, self-service private marketplace for linear TV advertising in partnership with Videology. AT&T announced VIP Thursday at the Videology “Full Frontal” Upfront event. AT&T’s data-driven, programmatic system, called the Video Inventory Platform (VIP), will work off a web-based interface that aims to simplify targeting and planning for TV advertisers and ad agencies. VIP, it added, will enable those partners to build campaigns using the AT&T AdWorks national TV ad inventory on all cable networks and dayparts across 26 million homes in all 210 DMAs. Targeting, AT&T said, will be determined using proprietary aggregated and anonymized data and third-party sources. Signaling that it’s already on the programmatic TV onramp, AT&T said, in Q2, it will start to look to bring on a trial agency or brand to “run several campaigns across the platform, and plan to roll out the product more widely later this year.” AT&T’s VIP will initially include TV Blueprint inventory, the aforementioned 26 million homes coming way of DirecTV and U-verse TV (AT&T acquired DirecTV last July (link is external)), and, in the future, could include additional inventory sources such as addressable TV, TV Everywhere and digital video. Among AT&T’s digital-facing activities, it plans to launch three over-the-top services in Q4 2016 (link is external). --- Visit http://bit.ly/21TLdte (link is external) for more information.
  • Set-top Box market should be open, but consumers and privacy protected, CDD tells FCC

    Calls for Safeguards for sensitive data, including protecting youth, seniors, and use of ethnic/racial information in FCC"s Navigational Device Proceeding

    The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), which works to empower and protect consumers in the digital marketplace, endorses the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) important proposal to provide both choice and competition in the provision of navigational devices for video and related content. CDD strongly believes that the FCC should proceed with its plan to allow third parties to build and sell navigational devices. We support giving these developers/providers access to the information proposed in the NPRM, including Service Discovery, Entitlement, and Content Delivery data. For decades, a handful of powerful cable—and now also telephone—companies have held a monopoly over the design, availability, and use of set-top boxes. This has resulted in greater costs to subscribers, including an especially unfair burden on low- or limited-income consumers. The set-top stranglehold has impaired competition and programming diversity, and has undermined consumer privacy. --- Full PDF of filing attached.
  • How the Integration of Marketing Channels Enables Consistent Consumer Recognition for Cross-Channel Advertising: In this, the second of our MoneyAds Mentor Series, we look at how modern advertisers strive to create connected experiences for consumers and foster trust, all in (near) real time. Recognition – recognizing consumers across channels, offline or online – is the foundation for this, and it all begins with connected data to drive connected experiences when and where your audience is most receptive. While recognition may seem easy to achieve, the ability to do this across channels, devices and media is highly complex. The good news is, with more places to reach consumers, brands have the opportunity to drive expanded reach and greater relevance with ad technology partners. As consumers, we live multi-channel lives and often interact with our favorite brands through a myriad of channels, and nowhere more so these days than on websites, on our mobile phones, or wherever we go to watch TV or videos. Our shift in behavior has impacted marketing so much that when recently asked, 28 percent of marketing leaders said they plan to reallocate resources to prioritize an omni-channel engagement strategy. How can advertisers begin to execute such a strategy? A brand’s journey must start with its own invaluable customer data to recognize consumers consistently across channels, while respecting their need for privacy and discretion. While this concept has been table stakes in the offline world, the digital world has presented a slew of hurdles, such as rapidly evolving technology and platforms and the format of the data itself. The challenge then lies in the consistent application of consumer data across channels. After all, if recognition drives connected experiences, then consumer data matching drives the connection of data. Key takeaways: A cross-channel view of the consumer is the foundation for true multi-channel advertising. After all, you can’t target who you don’t recognize. Carefully craft the mix of digital channels to create connected experiences for your intended audience. Adopt recognition and matching best practices that deliver the highest degree of accuracy and reach. Expertise in recognition across time and channels is essential. Select an ad tech partner that is integrated with a large network of partners and publishers, especially those most important to your brand, to allow you to effectively leverage your customer data and boost your ability to reach consumers through their channel(s) of choice. Recognition across channels does not mean annoying people across channels. Ensure you and your ad tech partners always use data ethically to protect consumer privacy. I’m Supposed to Work with Who? Study after study shows the value of multichannel marketing and how consumers who engage with a brand through multiple channels spend much more than single-channel consumers, with some estimating a 4X difference between the two groups, with others finding an average of $9 in incremental sales for every $1 of online advertising. As enticing as that value proposition is, for marketers tasked with creating the connected experiences needed to reap these benefits, they must make sense of an ecosystem that looks like this: --- Full article available at http://bit.ly/1LeEYVW (link is external)
  • It’s no secret that information is consumed differently – through new channels and outlets – with viewers demanding personally relevant content the instant they want it. Catching a customer’s attention is more difficult than ever before, and standing out in this new environment is a constant challenge. With so many choices, it is vital for media & entertainment companies to know who their viewers are so they can engage them with the right content and the right advertising through the right channels, and to provide their advertisers with maximum exposure to target audiences with minimum spend. Alteryx allows you to prep, blend and analyze internal and third-party data sources in a repeatable workflow, to better understand and address viewer and advertiser expectations. You can then perform analytics – predictive, statistical and spatial - to uncover insights that help you make strategic decisions about content distribution; uncover additional types of services to offer and where to offer them; and optimize media plans, automating and iterating them as new data becomes available. Finally, you can share results across your organization and with your advertisers, allowing them to meet viewer preferences and demands. With self-service data analytics from Alteryx, you can: Prep and blend demographic, consumer, spatial and attitudinal data to forecast demand – for shows, titles, games or concert attendance, or for specific viewer or attendee segments and specific locations Create optimal media plans that minimize spend for advertisers, and maximize reach for target audiences Better understand your viewers, so you can target them with the right content in the right channel, and your advertisers can target them with the right message Make smarter location decisions by creating trade areas based on customer loyalty data, previous attendance and more Calculate and adjust ad pricing and sponsorship fees quickly, based on census data, customer segmentation and demographics Media & Entertainment Analytics for... Media An overwhelming amount of content is available to customers through cable, social media, mobile advertising and other channels. Ascontent viewing habits have changed, so has the way advertisers interact with potential customers and their standard approach to media planning. With Alteryx, you can blend set-top box data, viewerdemographic data, social media data, and more, to better understand your audience and their preferences. Leveraging statistical analysis, you can minimize advertiser budget spend and maximize viewership. Via a simple drag and drop workflow environment, you can leverage spatial data to calculate drive times and trade areas to help your advertisers understand where to advertise for target demographics and effectively reach their ideal audience with personalized messages. You can quickly understand available ad inventory and costs to do ad buys, and easily monetize ads offered on specific channels. --- For more information, visit http://bit.ly/1SNQVlK (link is external)
  • In August 2014, Facebook launched its cross-device targeting tool for digital ads, as reported by AdExchanger (link is external), which sent a clear signal that the social media giant is becoming accepted by marketers as a way to measure and reach Internet users across smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. Cross-device targeting occurs when a brand identifies a visitor to its website and subsequently serves an ad to that consumer when they are browsing elsewhere on another device. If a person is perusing Kate Spade handbags from her work desktop on the Nordstrom website, for instance, she may see a Kate Spade banner ad for a sale on her mobile Pandora app. The goal of cross-device targeting is to more closely follow the new customer journey (link is external), requiring multiple touches to influence purchasing decisions. Here are three ways the tool will change your digital advertising strategy: 1. It Will Force Cookies to Evolve Into Something Better For years, cookies have served as de facto online advertising markers, enabling marketers to identify and recognize shopper behavior. But today, as non-Web-based digital activities on mobile phones, apps and other IP-enabled devices continue to expand, cookies are becoming less useful. In addition, as MediaPost (link is external) points out, the looming "Do Not Track (link is external)" movement worldwide may ultimately force marketers to rely on other tools. Cross-device targeting will require a move from total reliance on cookies to other identification tags across all digital screens, operating systems, devices and browsers. Log-in data linking — which gives consumers the option to log in to your website using their Google, Facebook or email credentials — could be the most viable way to solve cookie problems. 2. It Will Make Social Media Advertising Even More Vital According to Facebook's latest research (link is external), communicating via Facebook and checking email are the two most popular behaviors by mobile users, and consumers do both constantly, throughout the day. In a survey of marketers, Ad Age (link is external) and RBC Capital Markets revealed that 84 percent of respondents use Facebook ads for marketing, with Twitter and YouTube rounding out the top three. Of these, 36 percent indicated that the ROI on mobile ads for Facebook was "much greater" or "somewhat greater" than its desktop offering. Now that tools exist to help marketers get even more granular on ROI, expect mobile social media budgets to increase. Adweek (link is external) is forecasting a 70 percent increase in social ad spending, and not just on Facebook — Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat will also be big players. --- For more information, visit http://bit.ly/1XxDLNW (link is external)
  • Renewed discussions about interruptive advertising and its residual effects (e.g. ad blocking) have elevated the need for the industry to rethink the relationship between ads and content. AOL’s focus has been to develop more premium advertising experiences and invest across a number of teams and technologies to deliver more beautiful, engaging and relevant advertising experiences, while lessening the load of ads on pages and streamlining the back-end technologies that enable these experiences. Since 2010 – when we launched our first Project Devil ad format – we’ve expanded our premium solutions across mobile and video, and helped infuse programmatic into the creative process (through our launch of ONE by AOL: Creative), automating the grunt work and allowing creatives to focus on, well, creativity. Today, we are taking another step in advancing the growth of premium advertising, and are excited to announce the expansion of AOL’s premium formats on MSN.com (link is external), as well as greatly scaling programmatic access of premium formats to tens of thousands of mobile applications. This development brings a number of new mobile-centric opportunities to advertisers who want to engage with audiences on a much deeper level with more data-driven, interactive formats. As part of our vision of an open ecosystem, we believe that continuing to partner and integrating with first- and third-party solutions helps to simplify the process for advertisers and gives them new ways to think about how to engage with audiences. Included in this expansion are: MSN: Halo (link is external), Devil (link is external), Billboard (link is external), Loft (link is external), and Devil Full-Page Flex (link is external) ad formats are now available on MSN’s sites in the US, Canada, Japan and Spain, and will be available in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Brazil in March. AOL’s linear video premium formats (link is external) will also be available in these markets later in Q1; Millennial Media: The Devil Full-Page Flex (User-expand) (link is external) ad format will be available on more than 65,000 mobile apps globally in Q1; ONE by AOL: Display: Devil Full-Page Flex and Mobile Interstitial (link is external) ad formats are available today to be purchased programmatically, and will get increased mobile in-app scale in early Q2 through integrations with MoPub and ONE by AOL: Mobile. Through these roll-outs, AOL’s reach for in-app rich media will be increased by an estimated four-times. --- Learn more at: http://aol.it/1Xt9HTC (link is external)
  • Media is complex. Time Warner Cable Media makes it easier for you with the best resources across screens. The average American spends 60+ hours a week across all devices. Your needs come first. Unlike some media partners who are pressured to sell their products, we are screen-agnostic. As the leading provider of full service local marketing solutions, we continually invest on your behalf. --- For more information, visit http://bit.ly/1ByqfS6 (link is external)
  • The Verizon Digital Media Services platform — and the products built upon it — support three primary solutions: our Web Acceleration (link is external), Commerce Acceleration (link is external) and Video Lifecycle (link is external). Each solution is purpose-built to transform your content into world-class experiences. Albert Cheng, EVP and Chief Product Officer, Digital Media Albert Cheng talks about the evolving TV landscape and how Disney/ABC plans to deliver video in this new world of TV Everywhere. Using Verizon Digital Media Services’ next-generation platform and solutions, Disney/ABC will be better prepared for the new consumer reality when it comes to content consumption. The Challenge Traditional TV viewing is evolving as more viewers are choosing to access more media on a multitude of devices. Millennials are cutting the cord and ending their cable subscriptions. They want to watch TV anytime, anywhere. Broadcasters like Disney/ABC have had to develop new methods and adjust their workflows to bring content closer to their viewers. But they can’t do it alone. Traditionally, broadcasters have had to rely on a mix of vendors and technologies to deliver optimal content to the countless number of devices, platforms, screen sizes and software updates available. There’s also video encoding, ad insertion, asset management, internet delivery and skyrocketing costs to consider. Having just one partner who could help simplify content preparation and accelerate online delivery would make online distribution much easier while reducing costs. Verizon Benefits Thanks to Verizon’s evolved platform and Video Lifecycle Solution, broadcasters like Disney/ABC only have to deal with one partner to prepare, deliver and display their content online. Verizon’s encoding technology uses just one format to deliver the perfect TV-like viewing experience to every device and every screen. Closed captioning is inserted seamlessly into one workflow, and live content can be made available for on-demand playback immediately. Even local affiliate stations can stream relevant, local ads instantly, with great sound and picture quality. Verizon makes it easier for broadcasters to stay focused on content, while we take care of delivering the perfect experience. --- For more information visit, http://bit.ly/1SESYcf (link is external) and http://bit.ly/1Wi0sHJ (link is external)
  • Blog

    Rovi and Charter Sign Multi-Year License Renewal

    Leading Cable Service Provider Extends Agreement for Rovi's IP Portfolio and IPGs

    Santa Clara, Calif., April 20, 2015 — Rovi Corporation (NASDAQ: ROVI) today announced that Rovi has renewed its patent license and interactive program guide (IPG) product agreement with Charter Communications, Inc. The license renewal extends Charter’s IPG patent license. Under the terms of the agreement, Charter will also be able to license Rovi’s products and services, including Rovi Search, Recommendations and Conversation Services, Rovi Metadata and Rovi Analytics. “As the media and entertainment marketplace becomes increasingly fragmented, Rovi is helping customers like Charter raise the bar by delivering innovative discovery experiences that increase entertainment content consumption,” said Tom Carson, chief executive officer, Rovi. “Our license renewal with Charter reinforces the value of Rovi’s patent and product portfolio in Pay-TV homes across the nation. Rovi is pleased to have reached this significant license agreement with Charter and we look forward to continuing to work together as our respective businesses evolve.” Rovi Search and Recommendations Services are built upon a predictive process that analyzes past viewing behaviors and preferences. Rovi uniquely combines entertainment metadata with a dynamic Knowledge Graph that maintains semantic, real-time information on more than 100 million entertainment-related entities. Rovi Conversation Services create intuitive ways for consumers to discover and access huge libraries of programming, bringing a next-generation user experience to television and video applications with naturally spoken language. Rovi Analytics provides data-driven insights and business intelligence to advance operational efficiency, improve customer experience and support business decisions to help mitigate churn. --- Full article available at http://bit.ly/1ROhho5 (link is external)
  • Today’s consumers live in digital homes, using Comcast’s technology to watch video on more screens all around the house—and on the go. Comcast Spotlight’s multi-screen advertising solutions combine the strengths of each screen customers use. Our expertise in reaching fragmented audiences lets us create custom campaigns with broader reach, more impressions and deeper engagement. Television Advertising With more than 50 networks appealing to distinct demographic, psychographic and geographic audiences, cable television is unmatched in its ability to offer both broad and targeted reach. On-demand advertising extends television campaigns and engages viewers by showcasing additional video about advertisers’ products and services. Digital Advertising Through high-visibility placements on popular websites like XFINITY.com, marketers can align their advertising by bringing their TV commercials online, enhancing them with interactive features and links for unsurpassed effectiveness and efficiency. Features • Leverages growing consumer “media multitasking” behavior: using multiple devices simultaneously. • Advertising can be segmented by demographic, psychographic and geographic criteria, across full markets or at the neighborhood level. Benefits • Maximizes reach by targeting audiences using multiple devices for unduplicated local reach. • Allows for deeper engagement with advertisers’ target audiences. --- See Comcast media kit, attached.
  • Comcast’s NBCUniversal is launching a new division, Audience Studio, designed to allow marketers to target audiences across TV, digital and social media marketing channels, the Wall Street Journal (link is external) reported. The key component of Audience Studio is a data management platform that marketers can use to combine their first-party data with NBCU data and third-party data. Denise Colella, senior vice president of data platforms and strategy for NBCU, will lead the new division, according to the Journal. Dive Insight: Audience Studio is combining four relatively new NBCU ad products that reach different marketing channels: Audience Targeting Platform for TV, NBCUx for digital, NBCU+ Powered by Comcast for set-top boxes, and Social Sync for social media. By combining these products, the new division simplifies advertising across all channels using the same targeting data. Previously marketers had to manually navigate each product to execute a multi-channel campaign. Krishan Bhatia, executive vice president of business operations and strategy at NBCU, told the Wall Street Journal, “If before you had this Chinese Wall between groups, with this, you are permeating that. Going forward, a brand can now align their data inputs and outputs.” Although Audience Studio should help marketers looking to reach NBCU’s diverse audience, the division does play into industry fears that the large media corporations are beginning to create “walled gardens (link is external)” of data and tools – not unlike the current state of affairs with Google and Facebook on the digital side. --- Visit http://bit.ly/1oxsUIO (link is external) for more information.
  • Phone and cable ISPs pose a major threat to the privacy of their subscribers and consumers. They have a growing arsenal of “Big Data” capabilities that eavesdrop on their customers—including families. Internet Service Providers are gathering data on what we do and where we go, using sophisticated algorithms and predictive analytics to sell our information to marketers. As CDD documented in a report released last week, ISPs have been on a data buying and partnering shopping spree so they can build in-depth digital profiles of their customers (such as Verizon (link is external)/AOL/Millennial Media and Comcast/ (link is external)Visible World). Consumers should have the right to make decisions on how their information can be collected, shared or sold. With a set of FCC safeguards, Americans will have some of their privacy restored. We look forward placing on the record all the ways those ISPs now—and will—threaten the privacy of Americans. Several commissioners appear uninformed about the ability of the FTC to protect consumer privacy. The FTC does not have the regulatory authority to ensure privacy of Americans is protected (except in rare cases, such as the Children’s privacy law we helped develop). The FTC’s framework has failed to do anything to check the massive collection of our data that everyone online confronts. It’s the role of the FCC to ensure that broadband networks operate in the public interest, including protecting consumers. Today’s vote reaffirms that the FCC takes its mission to do so seriously.
    Jeff Chester
  • The average TV viewer in the U.S. watches more than four hours of programming daily. And marketers spend $71 billion each year to reach them. The consumer has 100 times more places and ways to access their favorite TV content than just 10 years ago. With so much money on the line and massive viewer fragmentation, it only makes sense that advertisers are seeking ways to combine the data-driven targeting, automation and accountability of digital with the reach and influence of TV. They want to be able to reach their most highly-qualified customers with the most relevant, personalized ads possible. Fortunately, thanks to addressable television, the advertising industry has a means to deliver on that promise. However, despite the landscape shifting in its favor, growth in addressable TV advertising spend has been slower than anyone expected. The industry still faces technology challenges, with millions of outdated set-top-boxes that aren’t compatible with addressable TV technology; it’s expensive for the operators to deploy addressable TV ad delivery systems and pay for the measurement data necessary to support the business. Also, the buying and selling tactics for addressable TV ads have been very manual, although that’s beginning to change with some addressable TV ad impressions now available to be purchased programmatically. Finally, the TV industry still lacks the standardization for measurement and analytics marketers require for addressability to grow as fast as it should. But, as an industry, we’ve reached a tipping point with addressable TV. Adoption is only becoming a necessity. Here’s why 2016 is poised to be the year addressable finally breaks through, despite the obstacles. Finally, the infrastructure for addressability is in place. For years, industry players talked about moving beyond basic age and gender demographics as being critical to the future of television, but the time wasn’t quite right for it. MVPDs have been working hard to build out the technology infrastructure to insert addressable ads at scale, activate first- and third-party data sets for precision targeting and deliver the invaluable campaign attribution and ROI data marketers so desperately want for their TV ad investments. A study by the IAB (link is external) found nearly 80 percent of advertisers now use “advanced TV,” which includes programmatic and addressable TV, and 70 percent of advertisers plan to spend more on the medium in the coming year. The same research found addressable advertising is increasing the most, with advertisers citing strong benefits like better targeting capabilities and the ability to personalize or localize messages. The pieces that were missing from the equation are finally in place, and adoption has reached a critical mass, making it the right time for addressability to take off. The election is driving us toward addressability. This couldn’t be more clearly demonstrated than in political campaigns. We’re in the throes of another big election season, and this time, the tide is shifting away from traditional media campaigns toward a more data-driven and targeted advertising approach. --- See more at http://bit.ly/1MBoH1f (link is external)
  • Americans face new privacy threats from the use of their facial and other biometric information, as personal details of our physical selves are captured, analyzed and used for commercial purposes. Facial recognition (link is external)technologies are part of the ever-growing (link is external)data collection and profiling (link is external) being conduced daily on Americans today—whether we are online and offline. Companies want to be able to use the power (link is external) of facial recognition to make (link is external) decisions about us—including how we are to be treated in stores and on websites. Consumer groups have called on industry to support pro-consumer and pro-rights policies that would ensure an individual can decide whether facial and other personal physical information can be collected in the first place. Last June, however, the industry dominated process led by the Department of Commerce refused to support respecting a persons’ right to control how their biometric data can be gathered and used. As a result, consumer and privacy groups withdrew (link is external) from the Commerce Department “stakeholder” convening on facial recognition. These meetings—primarily dominated by industry lobbyists—are part of a White House initiated effort to design “codes of conduct” to ensure American’s have greater privacy rights. But instead of trying to address the concerns of the consumer and privacy community about meaningful safeguards for facial recognition when used for commercial purposes, the Commerce Department merely continued the process without their participation. For the Commerce Department, its priority is to help grow the consumer data profiling industry—regardless of whether Americans face a serious threat to their privacy and the consequences of potential discriminatory and unfair practices. Today, the Commerce Department is considering industry proposals (link is external) on facial recognition that fail to ensure the American public is protected by the growing use of facial data collection for commercial use. The drafts allow unlimited use of our most personal data without effective safeguards. Instead of ensuring basic rights—such as giving people the right to make informed decisions prior to the collection of their facial data—the industry proposes a scheme that would allow it to harvest our faces, skin color, age, race/ethnicity and more without any limit. By allowing such a clearly inadequate and self-serving industry proposal to be considered at all, the Department of Commerce (and its NTIA division) demonstrates it cannot be trusted to protect consumers. It is putting the commercial interests of the data industry ahead of its responsibilities to the American public. The process and the proposals are not reflective of America today. We cannot believe that President Obama (link is external) endorses how his Commerce Department has transformed the idea of a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” into one that really gives carte blanche to the unfettered use of our faces and other highly personal biometric information.
  • Blog

    Time Warner Cable is more than television, Internet, and telephone

    Service provider uses Adobe Marketing Cloud to better acquire, develop, retain, and serve customers with optimized digital experiences.

    Time Warner Cable’s residential business is comprised of 14.5 million customers who make more than 17 million monthly visits to each of the company’s websites. Given the company’s size and scale, gaining insights into customer segments is a monumental task, while understanding individual customer behaviors and preferences added even greater challenges. However, that is exactly the approach the company wanted to take to create more personal customer experiences in order to acquire, grow, and retain customers. “Building successful customer relationships is vital to our business,” says Rob Roy, head of eCommerce & Digital Marketing at Time Warner Cable. “We needed to create the best first impression possible for the broadest audience, as well as create personalized experiences so customers understand exactly how important they are.” To support its overarching digital strategies and focus on connecting one to one with customers, Time Warner Cable wanted to gain deeper visibility into customer behaviors and preferences, as well as make those insights actionable. By understanding what each customer was looking for and then automating content and offer delivery, digital teams could enrich experiences and sales delivery to boost customer engagement and revenues. At the highest level, the company wanted to identify new and existing customers arriving on the site to deliver content focused on account login, personalized upgrade offers, or general product information. “By identifying customers on the landing page and delivering optimized experiences, we set a much better impression and more positive tone for customer conversations,” says Jeff Henshaw, director of Web Analytics and Business Intelligence at Time Warner Cable. “It also eliminates redundant conversations and enables us to keep relationships with customers moving forward.” Foundation for omnichannel personalization With an eye on delivering dynamic digital experiences, Time Warner Cable chose to retire its disparate digital marketing technologies and implement an extensible, end-to-end digital marketing platform built on Adobe Marketing Cloud. Prior to using Adobe Marketing Cloud, the company had a set of disparate analytics, targeting, and audience management systems in place. However, challenges with integrating and maintaining the various third-party technologies, maintaining interoperability when new version releases came out, and keeping staff proficient on multiple systems limited the value the company was able to extract. By implementing Adobe solutions, the company upgraded to best-in-class technology in each functional area and improved overall marketing and business performance by moving to a single, unified platform with Adobe Marketing Cloud. As a result, the company saw a significant opportunity to have its marketing initiatives meet the maturity of its business. To achieve the company’s vision, Time Warner Cable had to do three things. First, it had to create a unified customer profile taking into account all known first-party data including visitor and customer CRM database information, as well as second- and third-party data from partner and paid data providers. Secondly, the company’s need to integrate a unified profile with web and display media channel technology in order to deliver personalized content. And finally, its need to establish a strategy and process to test and target personalized content. A disciplined approach The first step was to integrate visitor data with CRM database information and second- and third-party provided consumer data. To do this, Time Warner Cable utilized Adobe Audience Manager. By integrating visitor data captured in Adobe Analytics with the company’s CRM database along with second- and third-party provided consumer data, Time Warner Cable had a complete view of its current customers as well as prospective customers for the first time. For example, the company can create a segment of current customers who have Internet-only service in the Northeast and are due for a subscription renewal. The output of this step was a unified customer profile with nearly 300 active segments of customers from which Time Warner Cable could target content and offers. The second step was to integrate this profile information with downstream systems, including display media technology, to personalize display media content with Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Target. In turn, the company could push personalized content to hundreds of customer segments across the website based on profile attributes, such as navigation and indicated interest. “Adobe Marketing Cloud has accelerated our testing and measurement capabilities,” says Henshaw. “It enables us to interpret customer engagement within different side-by-side experiences and, in turn, make informed, segment-driven marketing decisions.” The net effect was the ability to target detailed segments with precise communication across channels. --- Full article attached.
  • Data-Driven Marketing Decoded: As a digital marketer, you know that your customers and prospects are moving targets. People constantly investigate, consider, start and stop transactions; and they change their minds at web velocity across a dizzying array of platforms, channels and devices. Unify your data silos Krux's next-generation Data Management Platform (DMP) helps you zero in on and connect with your customers more efficiently, no matter which channel they are on or which device is in their hands. That’s the premise and power of People Data Activation (link is external). Krux offers true one-to-one marketing with personalization that scales. Our solution interconnects seamlessly with your own data systems and those of your partners, enabling you to activate and control your marketing activities across any consumer touch point. Krux doesn't buy or sell media, and we don't operate a data exchange (link is external), so you can rest easy that our business objectives align 100% with yours. No Trojan Horses. No gotchas. No gimmicks. With Krux, you can: Unlock the value of first-party data (your CRM, website, and other media) for audience segmentation, targeting and analytics. Unify and analyze people data across all devices, systems and channels to create a single view of each customer. Improve engagement (conversions, purchases, brand awareness) by matching people with their devices through multi-channel, global messaging. Expand reach through lookalike modeling (link is external) to find new prospects who behave like existing customers. Optimize media investment through global frequency management (link is external) and smarter spend allocation across channels. Optimize media execution through A/B testing and sequential messaging. Measure the ROI and effectiveness of your marketing initiatives using the Nielsen+Krux joint solution for Multi-Touch Attribution. Now is the time for true data-driven marketing. Reach the right people, with the right message, delivered at the right frequency across all devices, browsers and operating systems. All while speeding your way to market, improving ROI, gaining deeper customer insights and protecting your data. Activate your people potential with Krux. --- For more information, visit http://bit.ly/1RRwap2 (link is external)
  • The Challenge: Finding Low Income Renters on TV A national company specializing in personal loans approached AudienceXpress seeking a television buy for the first time. In coming to AudienceXpress, the Client hoped to reach low income households with a low budget and the cheapest possible CPM. Our Solution: Optimization Using Nielsen MarketBreaks The AudienceXpress platform licenses Nielsen MarketBreaks segments, to target audiences by household income, presence and age of children, home ownership status, pet ownership, and ethnicity. The Client may target their campaign by selecting up to three MarketBreaks segments. Plan of Action: Based on Nielsen MarketBreaks segments, AudienceXpress built a plan for the Client targeting networks and dayparts that skewed towards lower income viewers. After the first successful week, AudienceXpress and the Client optimized the next week’s buy: Household income
  • Americans face growing new threats to their personal privacy as phone and cable Internet service providers (ISPs), along with leading Internet companies, expand their ability to capture details about what we do online in order to target us with data-driven personalized advertising. This report examines AT&T, Comcast, Cablevision, Charter, Cox, Verizon, Dish, Time Warner Cable, Viacom, Google, News Corp. (Fox), Turner Broadcasting (Time Warner), and Disney, focusing on some of their recent data- and video-related advertising practices. ISPs have formed partnerships with powerful data brokers (including Acxiom, Krux, and Oracle Marketing Cloud), gaining new insights into our online and offline behaviors. They are incorporating state-of-the-art “Big Data” practices, such as “programmatic advertising” that instantaneously buys and sells individual consumers—to financial marketers, fast-food companies, and health advertisers, for example—all without the consumer’s knowledge. In the process, ISPs have transformed TV and digital video into a vast new source of personal information, analyzing set-top box and streaming-video data for our viewing habits, and combining that information with sensitive online and offline data (including financial, health, racial, ethnic, and location) to compile detailed “digital dossiers” on millions of Americans. The ability of an ISP and others to identify and target us regardless of what digital device we use, moreover, has effectively erased any privacy safeguards we may have enjoyed in the past when we switched between devices. The report provides more evidence of the “digital data arms race” that is further eroding consumer privacy: AT&T, through its AdWorks division, has developed a “cross-screen system to match users’ mobile, online and television devices together based on identifiers and systems” that the company has “access to.” It operates a “consumer insights platform” that uses “Big-Data” techniques to advance AT&T’s targeted-marketing objectives. Comcast is using Rubicon’s Advertising Automation Cloud, “one of the largest cloud and Big Data computing systems in the world, [which] leverages over 50,000 algorithms and analyzes billions of data points in real time” to buy and sell individuals to marketers. Verizon, by acquiring mobile-marketing-data company Millennial Media, gained access to customer data gathered by more than 60,000 apps, including “location, social, interest, and contextual” information. Millennial has “developed more than 700 million active server-side unique user profiles, over 60 million of which link multiple mobile devices and PCs to a single specific user ... ,” with some 175 million monthly unique users in the “United States alone.” The Federal Communications Commission’s pending proceeding on privacy should examine all the ways that broadband networks operated by Internet service providers gather and use consumer information today. The review and policy proposals need to address the data-targeting relationships that ISPs have with leading digital marketing companies, including ad exchanges, data brokers, and advertisers. The FCC should enact privacy and consumer protection rules that provide individuals with rights over their data—including a set of Fair Information Practices that address the current data practices of ISPs. These companies should not be allowed to share data with affiliates or to use information for marketing their services without the informed, prior consent of the customer. Policies for privacy are essential as well for a competitive digital video market. Otherwise powerful ISPs and other gatekeepers will control the key way programming is financially supported and distributed. --- Full report attached.