Publishings
Program Areas
-
Microsoft's further expansion into gaming, data gathering, digital marketing must trigger close scrutiny, inc. impacts on gamers, youth Microsoftâs proposed purchase of Activision-Blizzard raises serious red flags, Public Citizen, the Center for Digital Democracy, the Repair Association, the Communications Workers of America, and 11 additional groups said today in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The merger could give Microsoft an unfair amount of market power, threaten data privacy and security, limit consumersâ and independent businessâ right to repair game consoles, and lead to union busting and wage suppression, the groups said.âIf the FTC clears this merger, Microsoft will become the third largest gaming company in the world,â the letter reads. âThe proposed merger fits an alarming pattern of concentration in the gaming industry over the past several years. Microsoftâs expanding role in the gaming market may result in the company using its leverage to raise subscription prices and limit options, among other possible consumer harms.âIn January, Microsoft announced its deal to buy game publisher and developer Activision-Blizzard, subject to FTC approval. Activision is a titan of the gaming world, boasting 400 million monthly active users and incredibly popular titles like Call of Duty. Microsoft already is a major player in gaming as a hardware producer, platform provider, and game distributor. Combining the two companies could lessen competition in a market thatâs seen a rash of consolidation in recent years.Workers at Activision have mobilized over the past year to shine a light on an abusive workplace culture. Now, as these workers seek to form a union to address their collective interests, the potential takeover by Microsoft threatens to further undermine workersâ rights and suppress wages.Microsoftâs move also has negative implications for data privacy and surveillance advertising. Adding Activisionâs roster of game titles opens opportunities for advanced data collection, including the use of AI, influencers, neuromarketing, and other practices now used for its gaming operations.Additionally, the merger could strengthen Microsoftâs power to impinge on consumersâ right to repair their own video game equipment or to have it repaired by a service provider of their choice. Microsoftâs Xbox platform is already notoriously difficult to independently repair.
-
The European Unionâs efforts to legislate digital markets, specifically with its Digital Markets Act (DMA), make them fairer and more open, and benefit consumers. See PDF of full letter below. 20220203-letter-digital_markets_act-president-joe-r-biden.pdf
-
Documents 25 years of failures by agency to rein in practices that have eviscerated privacy and consumer protection in the U.S. and globallyThe Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) urges the Federal Trade Commission to develop a comprehensive set of rules to address a problem largely of its own makingâthe unfettered growth of commercial âsurveillance marketing.â We submit this comment based on the nearly 25-year record of CDD and its key consumer-protection and privacy colleagues, providing detailed documentation and analysis of the need for the commission to regulate what is known as behavioral, programmatic and surveillance-based advertising.[1]The systemic and multiple failures of the FTC over the decades to respond meaningfully to the role and nature of online marketingâwhich has eviscerated the privacy rights of Americans (and consumers worldwide)âhave enabled data-driven surveillance to thrive ubiquitously. Nearly every platform, application, device and experience in which Americans engage has been shaped by the commercial spying and manipulation apparatus that the commission has allowed to evolve and expand without constraint. In addition, by long ignoring the impact that the approval of countless mergers and acquisitions involving leading digital marketing companies had on commercial surveillance operations, the commission and Department of Justice have helped foster an online marketplace that is dominated by a few giants. There is no real competition in terms of how Americans are treated in the online surveillance marketing economy. Google, Meta/Facebook, Amazon and their partners set the global standards for how everyone else has to conduct data and digital marketing operations. FTC inaction on commercial surveillance practices has perversely promoted the widespread adoption of these practices. Today, nearly every major company is a big-data-driven information broker, surveillance advertiser, and real-time targeter of consumers.[2]At each critical momentâthe expansion of behavioral advertising; the emergence of mobile marketing; the widespread adoption of programmatic, real-time, algorithmic-driven buying and selling of people for targeting ads; the deployment of omnichannel (cross-device) tracking and targeting; and the widespread integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver enhanced predictive targetingâthe failure of the FTC to challenge the online data-driven model sent a message to the commercial surveillance industry, that it faced no serious regulatory or political consequences for its actions. This included regulatory immunity for the host of manipulative elements that are within the foundation of commercial surveillance, such as the deep analysis of a personâs emotions, interests, relationships, location, income, race, and ethnicity. By acting as an âenablerâ to the forces that have shaped our online platform and experiences, the commission has done more than harm consumer protection, privacy and competition. It is also responsible for allowing the online platform marketplace to grow in ways that have undermined democracy, at once diminishing civic discourse, enabling efforts to promote voter suppression, and facilitating the communication and spread of hate speech and uncivil acts, among other major harms. FTCââEyes Wide Shutâ: The commission has been engaged in risk-averse behaviors since the early 1980s, as a reaction to the successful attacks on it by the advertising lobby, which was able to convince Congress that the agency had engaged in regulatory excess when it tried to protect children from the harmful impact of marketing. The legacy of what is known as the âkidvidâ episode, which resulted in a significant loss of its rulemaking authority, has permeated the agencyâs operations for decades. It unleashed a âdonât ask, donât tellâ approach at the commission when it came to seriously confronting the impact of the digital marketplace on the public. Even when it came to childrenâs privacyâthe one area where advocates had successfully convinced Congress to give the agency rulemaking authorityâthe agency repeatedly failed to enforce the law (allowing Googleâs YouTube, for example, to openly violate COPPA for years, despite hearing repeatedly from advocates that it was doing so). The failure of the FTC to seriously implement its only congressionally mandated data-privacy law also sent a loud message to the data surveillance business that the commission wasnât to be taken seriously.The commission has never condemned the online surveillance model developed by the digital marketing industry. It had countless opportunities to challenge behavioral ads, mobile and geo-location surveillance, social media profiling, and real-time buying and selling of individual profiles for the purposes of micro-targeted advertising.[3] In this comment, we will briefly highlight how the FTC has been an âenablerâ of the unfettered operations of surveillance advertising, despite the many calls by CDD and its allies for the agency to act. The FTC and the Information Superhighway: At the earliest stages of what was then called the âInformation Superhighway,â cyberspace, or the âNational Information Infrastructure,â the FTC convened multiple âworkshopsâ focused on privacy and related ecommerce issues. Reflecting the priorities of the then-Clinton administration, the commission spent several years imploring marketers to implement a set of âfair information practiceâ principles.[4]During this time, a number of consumer and privacy advocates urged the commission to call on Congress to regulate online data marketing practices. It was evident even thenâespecially to those who had tracked the online marketing business during the âdial-upâ era, that privacy was not a priority at all for the marketing industry. The self-regulatory system was a total sham.[5]The lone exception to self-regulation was a data privacy law covering children 12 and under, an issue that this NGOâs predecessor group, the Center for Media Education (along with the Consumer Federation of America and the Institute for Public Representation, Georgetown University Law Center) championedâwhich led to the enactment of the Childrenâs Online Privacy Protection Act in 1998.[6]By the time the commission finally recommended (in 2000) that Congress enact privacy legislation âto supplement self-regulatory efforts and guarantee basic consumer protections,â the political winds had changed. There would be no further progress from Congress on privacy, given the clout of the big data marketing lobby.[7]Enabling behavioral advertising: In 2006, CDD and U.S. PIRG filed a complaint with the commission calling on it to use its Section 5 power to protect consumer privacy online. Specifically, we asked the commission to conduct an investigation of online advertising practices, focusing on five areas of concern: User Tracking/Web Analytics, Behavioral Targeting, Audience Segmentation, Data Gathering/Mining, and Industry Consolidation. As we explained in our petition, âCollectively, these five areas represented the foundations of an entirely new online environment, one in which engagement gives way to entrapment, in which personalization impinges on privacy.â The complaint discussed in detail all the methods used to track and target consumers, via their personal data, mobile phone use, and much more. It also urged action on the growing consolidation of what is now called the platform or ad-tech industry, explaining thatThe past few years have witnessed an alarming degree of consolidation in the Web analysis, advertising, and Internet data collection industries. The result of these transactions is not only the concentration of power in fewer hands, but also an increased ability, as our complaint has shown, for these companies to use their massive compilations of user data to violate consumer privacy in the U.S. Such consolidation within the core of the online marketing infrastructure also requires the FTC to conduct an anti-trust analysis to determine whether there is undue market power in this sector.[8]Ignoring the structure and consequences of behavioral advertising: In part due to the opposition to the proposed Google acquisition of DoubleClick that CDD, EPIC, U.S. PIRG and its allies in the U.S. and in the EU generated (discussed below), the commission convened several workshops, town halls and other forums focused on privacy and online data marketing. As CDDâs executive director, at the FTCâs 2007 âEhavioral Advertising: Tracking, Targeting & Technologyâ event, warned, I just want to underscore that the future of online advertising has profound consequences for the future of our democracy and democracies everywhere. The kind of society we are creating right now for ourselves, and particularly our children, in many ways, is being shaped by the forces of advertising and marketing.... [W]eâve watched since 2000 the ever-growing sophisticated array of techniques that had been deployed to track our every move, not just on individual websites, but through the development of new approaches called re-targeting where we were becoming digitally shadowed wherever we went, site to siteâŚ. [T]he time for fact-finding is over. The Commission is the designated Federal agency which is supposed to safeguard consumer privacy. It must act now to protect Americans from the unfair and deceptive practices that have evolved as part of what the industry calls the digital interactive marketing system.[9]Endorsing the monopolistic âSurveillance Marketplaceâ: In 2007, EPIC, U.S. PIRG, and CDD filed a complaint opposing plans by Google to acquire DoubleClick. As our initial filing explained, the acquisition, if approved, âwill give one company access to more information about the Internet activities of consumers than any other company in the world.â In a supplemental petition, we explained that âthe massive quantity of user information collected by Google coupled with DoubleClickâs business model of consumer profiling will enable the merged company to construct extremely intimate portraits of its usersâ behavior.â We also identified a major conflict of interest at the commission regarding this deal. Needless to say, it was approved anyway, paving the way for the unprecedented role that Google now plays in our lives, with its domination of the commercial surveillance marketplace.[10] (CDD also raised objections to the Google/AdMob, Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp, and other big-data-driven mergers that the FTC failed to address, again paving the way for the contemporary commercial surveillance apparatus).[11]Mobile surveillance: In 2009, CDD and U.S. PIRG urged the commission to âto protect consumers from a growing number of deceptive and unfair marketing practices and the resultant threats to consumer privacy that are a part of the rapidly growing U.S. mobile advertising landscapeâŚ. [M]obile devices, which know our location and other intimate details of our lives, are being turned into portable behavioral tracking and targeting toolsâŚ.â The groupâs FTC filing cited a Google official who called the mobile phone âthe ultimate ad vehicle. Itâs the first one ever in the history of the planet that people go to bed with. Itâs ubiquitous across the world, across demographics, across age groups. People are giving these things to ever-younger children for safety and communicationâŚ. [I]t can know where youâve been, where youâve lingered, what store you stopped in, what car dealership you visited. It goes beyond any traditional advertising....â The complaint also discussed the myriad techniques, tactics, mergers and other critical issues to support the commissionâs investigation and action.[12]Yet the FTC did nothing, and geolocation-based surveillance marketing has thrived, including via the leading platforms. Nor has the commission challenged cross-device tracking, a component of the surveillance marketing industry that financially benefited from the agencyâs inability to protect consumer privacy, as unique identifiers are used to track and target the public.[13]Real-time programmatic, behavioral and algorithmic-based targeting: Also in 2009, CDD and U.S. PIRG submitted to the commission a comment as part of the agencyâs âPrivacy Roundtableâ process, which noted thatToday, consumers online face the rapid growth and ever-increasing sophistication of the various techniques advertisers employ for data collection, profiling, and targeting across all online platforms. The growth of ad and other optimization services for targeting, involving real-time bidding on ad exchanges; the expansion of data collection capabilities from the largest advertising agencies (with the participation of leading digital media content and marketing companies); the increasing capabilities of mobile marketers to target users via enhanced data collection; and a disturbing growth of social media surveillance practices for targeted marketing are just a few of the developments the commission must address. But despite technical innovation and what may appear to be dramatic changes in the online data collection/profiling/targeting market, the commission must recognize that the underlying paradigm threatening consumer privacy online has been constant since the early 1990âs. So-called âone-to-one marketing,â where advertisers collect as much as possible on individual consumers so they can be targeted online, remains the fundamental approach. âŚAdvertisers and marketers have developed an array of sophisticated and ever-evolving data collection and profiling applications, honed from the latest developments in such fields as semantics, artificial intelligence, auction theory, social network analysis, data-mining, and statistical modeling. Behavioral targeting is just one tool in the interactive advertisersâ arsenal.... We are being intensively tracked on many individual websites and across the Internet.[14]The filing called for action to address the buying and selling of individuals via online ad exchanges and giants such as Google; identified many other leading companies and practices; and explained how all of this was affecting mobile-device and social media users. It documented how self-regulation had been a failure, and how the âself-learning of contemporary interactive ad systemsâ threaten privacy and consumer welfare. Again, the FTC ignored these issues, enabling todayâs programmatic (surveillance marketing) system to evolve unchallenged. Surveillance marketing of health behaviors, including through social media: In 2010, CDD and allied consumer and privacy groups filed a petition on the role that behavioral advertising, as well as manipulative ad tactics such as âneuromarketing,â play in the promotion of health and medical products. Google, Microsoft, and others were the subjects of this complaint. As we explained,A far-reaching complex of health marketers has unleashed an arsenal of techniques to track and profile consumers, including so-called medical âcondition targeting,â to eavesdrop on their online discussions via social media data mining; to collect data on their actions through behavioral targeting; to use viral and so-called âword-of-mouthâ techniques online to drive interest in prescriptions, over-the counter drugs, and health remedies; and to influence their subconscious perceptions via pharma-focused âneuromarketingâŚ. Digital marketing raises many distinct consumer protection and privacy issues, including an overall lack of transparency, accountability and personal control, which consumers should have over data collection and the various interactive applications used to track, target, and influence them online (including on mobile devices). The use of these technologies by pharmaceutical, health product, and medical information providers that directly affect the public health and welfare of consumers requires immediate action.[15]As before, the FTC did nothing. Failures with Google and Facebook consent-decree enforcement: EPIC, CDD and allied consumer and privacy organizations, which helped bring cases against Google and Facebook, repeatedly told high-level commission staff and commissioners that these entities were routinely violating their respective consent decrees.[16] The failure of the commission to enforce its own decreesâreflecting the inability of the agency to analyze contemporary digital data and online marketing practicesâpermitted these companies, and the industry as a whole, to expand their surveillance capabilities still further.Neglecting communities of color: CDD also has repeatedly urged the commission to investigate and address how racial and ethnic data are used to target individuals and groups. For years, such data have been used to subject these communities to unfair treatment through predatory online marketing and other harmful practices. At best, the agency has given lip-service to these issues in the past, but has yet to take any meaningful action.[17]Failing our children, COPPA enforcement, and teens: CDD (along with Fair Play and Common Sense Media) is also filing comments in this docket on these issues. But we want to underscore that despite our repeated calls for action, the commission has never done anything to protect adolescents. Consequently, when someone turns 13 in the U.S., they are swept into the commercial surveillance marketing system that negatively affects every adult in the U.S.[18]Where we are today: Every day brings advances in the capabilities of commercial surveillance, led by the giant entities that dominate the marketplace, along with their affiliates. As we noted earlier, AI and machine-learning-based data analytic and targeting operations are routine for the commercial surveillance apparatus. And now the industry is poised to add what is known as âemotional intelligence,â a sophisticated new enhancement to ascertain and âunderstand how people feel in order to make AI more emotionally aware. There will be a shift from passive and grey interaction with AI, to an understanding of not only the cognitive, but also the emotive, channels of human interaction.â[19] Surveillance applications are also shaping the Internet of Things, the metaverse, and âover-the-topâ streaming video as well.[20]We urge the commission to act on this petition, as well as calls by civil rights, consumer and privacy groups that it engage in a comprehensive rulemaking that will help promote competition, data protection, fairness and civil rights online. [1] We especially want to single out two individuals whose leadership role in all these years has been so critical, including with the FTC. Marc Rotenberg, who created and led the Electronic Privacy Information Center for decades, has been at the forefront of these and other key digital democracy issues since the earliest days of the internet. Ed Mierzwinski, now senior director, Federal Consumer Program, U.S. PIRG, understood that the same commercial forces that had undermined consumer rights in the âanalogâ world was doing so online as well. [2] So-called consumer data platforms and similar technologies permeate the corporate environment. See, for example, Mariah Cooper, âPepsiCo Launches Data Practice to Help Food and Beverage Retailers Grow,â Campaign, 9 Sept. 2021, /article/pepsico-launches-data-practice-to-help-food-and-beverage-retailers-grow/472436; Josh Wolf, âWhere Does a Customer Data Platform Fit in With My AWS Data Lake?â AWS Blog, 13 May 2021, /blogs/apn/where-does-a-customer-data-platform-fit-in-with-my-aws-data-lake/; Wavicle Data Solutions, âGlobal QSR Uses Micro-segmentation to Improve Customer Engagement and Sales,â Dec. 2020, /wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Quick_Service_Restaurant_Customer_360_032421.pdf. [3] Federal Trade Commission, âPrivacy in the Electronic Age,â The Privacy & American Business Conference, Washington, D.C., 1 Nov. 1995, /public-statements/1995/11/privacy-electronic-age.[4] Federal Trade Commission, âStaff Report: Public Workshop on Consumer Privacy on the Global Information Infrastructureâ Dec. 1996, /reports/staff-report-public-workshop-consumer-privacy-global-information-infrastructure; Federal Trade Commission, About Privacy: Protecting the Consumer on the Global Information Infrastructure,â 8 Dec. 1998, /public-statements/1998/12/about-privacy-protecting-consumer-global-information-infrastructure; âPrivacy in the Electronic Age.â See also Jeff Chesterâs comments in U.S. Department of Commerce and Federal Trade Commission, âPublic Workshop on Online Profiling, Washington, D C, 8 Nov. 1999, /sites/default/files/documents/public_events/online-profiling-public-workshop/online.pdf. [5] See especially the digital marketing industry fundamental paradigm laid out in Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, The One to One Future (New York: Crown Business, 1993); see also, Jeff Chester, Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy (New York: The New Press, 2008). [6] See, for example, Federal Trade Commission, âPrivacy Online: A Report to Congress,â June 1998. /sites/default/files/documents/reports/privacy-online-report-congress/priv-23a.pdf; Federal Trade Commission, âFTC Staff Sets Forth Principles For Online Information Collection From Childrenâ 16 July 1997, /news-events/press-releases/1997/07/ftc-staff-sets-forth-principles-online-information-collection. To better understand the campaign developed to enact COPPA, including the industry pushback on teens, see Kathryn C. Montgomery, Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet (Cambridge, MA: 2007). CDD pressed to have âcookiesâ and other identifiers included as personal information under COPPA. Jeff Chester, âLeading Consumer, Privacy, Child Advocacy & Public Health Groups Call on FTC for Stronger Children's Privacy Safeguards Under COPPA,â Center for Digital Democracy, 25 Sept. 2012, /content/leading-consumer-privacy-child-advocacy-public-health-groups-call-ftc-stronger-childrens. [7] See, for example, Marc Rotenberg, letter to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Committee of Commerce, Science and Transportation, et al, 5 May 2010, /wp-content/uploads/privacy/facebook/EPIC_FB_FTC_Complaint_Letter.pdf.[8] Jeff Chester and Ed Mierzwinski, âComplaint and Request for Inquiry and Injunctive Relief Concerning Unfair and Deceptive Online Marketing Practices,â Federal Trade Commission, 1 Nov.2006, /sites/default/files/FTCadprivacy_0_0.pdf. CDD and U.S. PIRG filed a supplemental petition a year letter, which included an analysis of advances in behavioral marketing, including through the DoubleClick Advertising Exchange, among others. While the commission staff and commissioners made various proposals, there was no real attempt to address the surveillance ad system. See, for example, , âA Preliminary FTC Staff Report on Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change: A Proposed Framework for Businesses and Policymakers,â Dec. 2010, /reports/preliminary-ftc-staff-report-protecting-consumer-privacy-era-rapid-change-proposed-framework.[9] Federal Trade Commission, âEhavaorial Advertising: Tracking, Targeting & Technology,â meeting transcript, 1 Nov. 2007, pp. 35-36, /sites/default/files/documents/public_events/ehavioral-advertising-tracking-targeting-and-technology/71101wor.pdf. See also, Chesterâs comment that âA very sophisticated commercial surveillance system has been put in place,â in Louise Story, âF.T.C. to Review Online Ads and Privacy,â New York Times, 1 Nov. 2007, /2007/11/01/technology/01Privacy.html. [10] Jeff Chester, âCDD, EPIC, USPIRG Opposition to Google/Doubleclick âBig Dataâ Merger,â Center for Digital Democracy, 11 Sept. 2019, /article/cdd-epic-uspirg-opposition-googledoubleclick-big-data-merger; Roy Mark, âFTC Chairâs Impartiality Questioned,â eWeek, 13 Dec. 2007, /news/ftc-chair-s-impartiality-questioned/; âConflict of Interest in Google-Doubleclick Merger Review,â EPIC.org, /documents/epic-v-federal-trade-commission/. [11] Tom Krazit, âConsumer Groups Urge Block of Google-AdMob Deal,â CNET, 28 Dec. 2009, /news/consumer-groups-urge-block-of-google-admob-deal/; Jeff Chester, âEPIC and CDD file âUnfair and Deceptiveâ Practices Complaint at FTC on Facebook/WhatsApp Deal: WhatsApp Users Were Promised Privacy/Now They Will Have Facebook,â Center for Digital Democracy, 6 Mar. 2014, /content/epic-and-cdd-file-unfair-and-deceptive-practices-complaint-ftc-facebookwhatsapp-deal; Jeff Chester, âBig Data Gets Bigger: Consumer and Privacy Groups Call on FTC to Play Greater Role in Data Mergers/Investigation and Public Workshop Needed,â Center for Digital Democracy, 6 Feb. 2015, /content/big-data-gets-bigger-consumer-and-privacy-groups-call-ftc-play-greater-role-data-mergers.[12] âConsumer Groups Petition Federal Trade Commission to Protect Consumers from Mobile Marketing Practices Harmful to Privacy: Complaint Documents the Migration of Data Tracking, Profiling and Targeting to Mobile Phone Devices,â Center for Digital Democracy, 13 Jan. 2009, /mobile-marketing-harmful.[13] Center for Digital Democracy, âTen Questions that the Federal Trade Commission Should Answer on Cross Device Online Tracking of Individuals,â /system/files/documents/public_comments/2015/11/00061-99851.pdf. For a current example of such tracking, see, for example, LiveRamp, âMeasurement: Omnichannel Identity Linking,â /our-platform/cross-channel-measurement/omnichannel-identity-linking/. [14] Center for Digital Democracy and U.S. PIRG, âCookie Wars, Real-Time Targeting, and Proprietary Self Learning Algorithms: Why the FTC Must Act Swiftly to Protect Consumer Privacy,â FTC Privacy Roundtables â Comment, Project No. P095416, 4 Nov. 2009, /sites/default/files/documents/public_comments/privacy-roundtables-comment-project-no.p095416-544506-00013/544506-00013.pdf. [15] Center for Digital Democracy, U.S. PIRG, Consumer Watchdog, and the World Privacy Forum, âComplaint, Request for Investigation, Public Disclosure, Injunction, and Other Relief: Google, Microsoft, QualityHealth, WebMD, Yahoo, AOL, HealthCentral, Healthline, Everyday Health, and Others Named Below,â FTC filing, 23 Nov. 2010, /sites/default/files/public/2015/101123publiccmptdigitaldemocracy.pdf. This complaint was one of several where CDD also placed a spotlight on social media marketingâanother area in which the commission has repeatedly failed. For example, the complaint noted that ânew surveillance tools have been developed to monitor conversations among social network users to identify what is being said about a particular issue or product. Marketers then work to insert brand-related messages into the social dialogue, often by identifying and targeting individuals considered brand âloyalistsâ or âinfluencersâŚ.â Increasingly, advertisers are using Facebookâs marketing apparatusâwhich is largely invisible to its usersââŚto ⌠connect to the social communications of a very large pool of consumers.â [16] See, for example, Center for Digital Democracy, âFacebookâs Misleading Data and Marketing Policies and Practices,â Oct. 2013, /sites/default/files/field/public-files/2019/ftcfacebookdatapracticesfinal1013.pdf.[17] See for example, Jeff Chester, âDigital Target Marketing to African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans: A New Report,â Center for Digital Democracy,18 Feb. 2013, /content/digital-target-marketing-african-americans-hispanics-and-asian-americans-new-report; Center for Digital Democracy, âIn the Matter of âPrivacy and Security Implications of the Internet of Things,â FTC public workshop filing, 1 June 2013, /sites/default/files/documents/public_comments/2013/07/00006-86145.pdf; Jeff Chester, Kathryn Montgomery, and Lori Dorfman, âAlcohol Marketing in the Digital Age,â May 2010, /sites/default/files/documents/public_comments/alcohol-reports-project-no.p114503-00014%C2%A0/00014-58260.pdf.[18] âChildren's Online Privacy.â C-Span, 17 Oct. 2018, /video/?453170-1/childrens-online-privacy; Center for Digital Democracy, âDigital Youth,â /projects/focus/digital-youth.[19] Yasmin Borain, âMarketing Trends for 2022: Technology, Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things,â WARC, Nov. 2021, /content/article/warc-exclusive/marketing-trends-for-2022-technology-artificial-intelligence-and-internet-of-things/141212 (subscription required).[20] Hannah Murphy, âFacebook Patents Reveal How It Intends to Cash in on Metaverse: Meta Hopes to Use Tiny Human Expressions to Create Virtual World of Personalised Ads,â Financial Times, 17 Jan. 2022, /content/76d40aac-034e-4e0b-95eb-c5d34146f647 (subscription required).surveillanceadvertisingftccdd012622b.pdf
-
Congresswomen Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) Introduce Bill to Ban Surveillance AdvertisingWashington, DC 1-18-2022âIdentifying, tracking, discriminating, sorting, targeting, and manipulating online users lies at the heart of all that is toxic about todayâs digital world. Surveillance advertising drives discrimination and compounds inequities, it destroys democratic institutions and rights, strengthens monopoly power of Big Tech platforms, and is harmful to children, teens, families, and communities. If enacted, the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act would put a stop to surveillance advertising and would be an important first step in building a digital world that is less toxic to our democracy, economy, and collective well-being,â said Katharina Kopp, Ph.D., Director of Policy for the Center for Digital Democracy.Click here for statements of support.Click here for bill text.Click here for a section-by-section summary.Click here for additional background.
-
"Surveillance" Marketing meets what Google calls "embedded finance" online [excerpt]USPIRG and CDD believe the U.S. is at an especially critical inflection point regarding digital platforms, digital payment services and online consumer protection: the pervasive tracking of data on individuals, families and groups, online and off; the nearly real-time ability to target a consumer with financial and other product offers regardless of where they are or device they use; and the development of a highly sophisticated and now machine-driven apparatus to deliver personalized marketing and communications, have all led to a largely unaccountable digital marketplace. A handful of digital platform giants and their partners stealthily operate what is known as a âsurveillance marketingâ system, which now pervades every aspect of our livesâincreasingly affecting how the public engages with the financial services sector. As the Bureauâs Request for Comment illustrates, it is aware of the serious ramifications to consumers and small businesses as the U.S. accelerates its transition to what Google calls âembedded finance.â The leading platforms and online services, as they accelerate their roles as Americaâs new bankers and lenders, bring with them a host of critical issues that the Bureau must address. Moreover, the industryâs âclosed-loopâ business model, where platforms and online data and ad practices are able to operate in a non-transparent manner, which has already caused an uproar from global marketers, is poised to have even greater consequences as it assumes greater control over our daily financial experiences.  The growing role of platforms to leverage their market positions to shape the digital payment system is now disintermediating âbanks and credit card companies from consumers.â These platforms are poised to dominate consumer and small business financial markets as much as they now do ecommerce, entertainment, and communications. In the process, these platforms and their online financial and other service partners will pose a series of threats. Their operating model, as we discuss below, engages in far-reaching forms of consumer manipulation, relying on a host of online marketing tactics designed to trigger a range of responses. There is a very real risk that without Bureau action, the digital payments and platform complex will aggressively push Americans to new levels of debt, as the Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) apparatus now at the core of the consumer digital economy encourages impulse buying and other potentially consequential practices. These entities have so much information on individuals, communities and commerce, they easily dislodge smaller and locally-based businesses. Since data analyzed by the platforms is used to identify commercial opportunities across the range of their product offeringsâwhich is basically making everything available for saleâa consumer will not be aware, let alone control, how this information can be used to target them with other products and services. As Alphabet/Google highlighted in a recent report on âembedded finance,â âonline financeâ has altered what people think is banking and managing finances: ânow, most financial transactions happen via mobile apps, websites, email, text messages and other digital communications.â Googleâs âwhite paperâ suggests that embedded finance may be âthe new gold rushâ for financial services. Among the competitive benefits claimed by Google are that embedded finance âenables business to reach new customers at the moment when they need your services.â There is also an added âbonusâ: âthe data you collect from each transactionâŚ.âbigtechpaymentplatforms121921final.pdf
-
Groups urge Congress to stop Big Techâs manipulation of young people BOSTON â Thursday, December 2, 2021 â Today a coalition of leading advocacy groups launched Designed With Kids in Mind, a campaign demanding a design code in the US to protect young people from online manipulation and harm. The campaign seeks to secure protections for US children and teens similar to the UKâs groundbreaking Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC), which went into effect earlier this year. The campaign brings together leading advocates for child development, privacy, and a healthier digital media environment, including Fairplay, Accountable Tech, American Academy of Pediatrics, Center for Digital Democracy, Center for Humane Technology, Common Sense, ParentsTogether, RAINN, and Exposure Labs, creators of The Social Dilemma. The coalition will advocate for legislation and new Federal Trade Commission rules that protect children and teens from a business model that puts young people at risk by prioritizing data collection and engagement.The coalition has launched a website that explains how many of the most pressing problems faced by young people online are directly linked to platformâs design choices. They cite features that benefit platforms at the expense of young peopleâs wellbeing, such as: Autoplay: increases time on platforms, and excessive time on screens is linked to mental health challenges, physical risks like less sleep, and promotes family conflict.Algorithmic recommendations: risks exposure to self-harm, racist content, pornography, and mis/disinformation.Location tracking: makes it easier for strangers to track and contact children.Nudges to share: leads to loss of privacy, risks of sexual predation and identity theft.The coalition is promoting three bills which would represent a big step forward in protecting US children and teens online: the Children and Teensâ Online Privacy Protection Act S.1628; the Kids Internet Design and Safety (KIDS) Act S. 2918; and the Protecting the Information of our Vulnerable Children and Youth (PRIVCY) Act H.R. 4801. Taken together, these bills would expand privacy protections to teens for the first time and incorporate key elements of the UKâs AADC, such as requiring the best interest of children to be a primary design consideration for services likely to be accessed by young people. The legislation backed by the coalition would also protect children and teens from manipulative design features and harmful data processing. Members of the coalition on the urgent need for a US Design Code to protect children and teens:Josh Golin, Executive Director, Fairplay:We need an internet that helps children learn, connect, and play without exploiting their developmental vulnerabilities; respects their need for privacy and safety; helps young children disconnect at the appropriate time rather than manipulating them into spending even more time online; and prioritizes surfacing high-quality content instead of maximizing engagement. The UKâs Age-Appropriate Design Code took an important step towards creating that internet, and children and teens in the US deserve the same protections and opportunities. Itâs time for Congress and regulators to insist that children come before Big Techâs profits.Nicole Gill, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Accountable Tech:You would never put your child in a car seat that wasn't designed for them and met all safety standards, but that's what we do every day when our children go online using a network of apps and websites that were never designed with them in mind. Our children should be free to learn, play, and connect online without manipulative platforms like Facebook and Google's YouTube influencing their every choice. We need an age appropriate design code that puts kids and families first and protects young people from the exploitative practices and the perverse incentives of social media.Lee Savio Beers, MD, FAAP, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics:The American Academy of Pediatrics is proud to join this effort to ensure digital spaces are safe for children and supportive of their healthy development. It is in our power to create a digital ecosystem that works better for children and families; legislative change to protect children is long overdue. We must be bold in our thinking and ensure that government action on technology addresses the most concerning industry practices while preserving the positive aspects of technology for young people.Jeff Chester, Executive Director, Center for Digital Democracy:The âBig Techâ companies have long treated young people as just a means to generate vast profits â creating apps, videos and games designed to hook them to an online world designed to surveil and manipulate them. Itâs time to stop children and teens from being victimized by the digital media industry. Congress and the Federal Trade Commission should adopt commonsense safeguards that ensure Americaâs youth reap all the benefits of the online world without having to constantly expose themselves to the risks.Randima Fernando, Executive Director, Center for Humane Technology:We need technology that respects the incredible potential â and the incredible vulnerability â of our kids' minds. And that should guide technology for adults, who can benefit from those same improvements.Irene Ly, Policy Counsel, Common Sense:This campaign acknowledges harmful features of online platforms and apps like autoplay, algorithms amplifying harmful content, and location tracking for what they are: intentional design choices. For too long, online platforms and apps have chosen to exploit childrenâs vulnerabilities through these manipulative design features. Common Sense has long supported designing online spaces with kids in mind, and strongly supports US rules that would finally require companies to put kidsâ well-being first.Julia Hoppock, The Social Dilemma Partnerships Director, Exposure Labs:For too long, Big Social has put profits over people. It's time to put our kids first and build an online world that works for them.Dalia Hashad, Online Safety Director, ParentsTogether: From depression to bullying to sexual exploitation, tech companies knowingly expose children to unacceptable harms because it makes the platforms billions in profit. It's time to put kids first.Scott Berkowitz, President of RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network):Child exploitation has reached crisis levels, and our reliance on technology has left children increasingly vulnerable. On our hotline, we hear from children every day who have been victimized through technology. An age-appropriate design code will provide overdue safeguards for children across the U.S.launch_-_design_code_to_protect_kids_online.pdf
-
Time for the FTC to intervene as marketers create new ways to leverage our âidentityâ data as cookies âcrumbleâ For decades, the U.S. has allowed private actors to basically create the rules regarding how our data is gathered and used online. A key reason that we do not have any real privacy for digital media is precisely because it has principally been online marketing interests that have shaped how the devices, platforms and applications we use ensnare us in the commercial surveillance complex. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has long played this role through an array of standards committees that address everything from mobile devices to big data-driven targeting to ads harnessing virtual reality, to name a few. As this blog has previously covered, U.S. commercial online advertising, spearheaded by Google, the Trade Desk and others, is engaged in a major transformation of how it processes and characterizes data used for targeted marketing. For various reasons, the traditional ways we are profiled and tracked through the use of âcookiesâ are being replaced by a variety of schemes that enable advertisers to know and take advantage of our identities, but which they believe will (somehow!) pass muster with any privacy regulations now in force or potentially enacted. Whatâs important is that regardless of the industry rhetoric that these approaches will empower a personâs privacy, at the end of the day they are designed to ensure that the comprehensive tracking and targeting system remains firmly in place.As an industry trade organization, the IAB serves as a place to generate consensus, or agreed-upon formats, for digital advertising practices. To help the industryâs search for a way to maintain its surveillance business model approach, it has created whatâs called âProject Rearcâ to âre-architect digital marketing.â The IAB explains that Project Rearc âis a global call-to-action for stakeholders across the digital supply chain to re-think and re-architect digital marketing to support core industry use cases, while balancing consumer privacy and personalization.â It has set up a number of industry-run working groups to advance various components of this âre-architecting,â including whatâs called an âAccountability Working Group.â Its members include Experian, Facebook, Google, Axel Springer, Nielsen, Pandora, TikTok, Nielsen, Publicis, Group M, Amazon, IABs from the EU, Australia, and Canada, Disney, Microsoft, Adobe, News Corp., Roku and many more (including specialist companies with their own âidentityâ for digital marketing approaches, such as Neustar and LiveRamp).The IAB Rearc effort has put out for âpublic commentâ a number of proposed approaches for addressing elements of the new ways to target us via identifiers, cloud processing, and machine learning. Earlier this year, for example, it released for comment proposed standards on a âGlobal Privacy Platform;â an âAccountability Platform,â âBest Practices for User-Enabled Identity Tokens,â and a âTaxonomy and Data Transparency Standards to Support seller-defined Audience and Context Signaling.âNow it has released for public comment (due by November 12, 2021) a proposed method to âIncrease Transparency Across Entire Advertising Supply Chain for New ID usage.â This proposal involves critical elements on the data collected about us and how it can be used. It is designed to âprovide a standard way for companies to declare which user identity sources they useâ and âease ad campaign execution between advertisers, publishers, and their chosen technology providersâŚ.â This helps online advertisers use âdifferent identity solutions that will replace the role of the third-party cookie,â explains the IAB. While developed in part for a âtransparent supply chainâ and to help build âauditable data structures to ensure consumer privacy,â its ultimate function is to enable marketers to âactivate addressable audiences.â In other words, itâs all about continuing to ensure that digital marketers are able to build and leverage numerous individual and group identifiers to empower their advertising activities, and withstand potential regulatory threats about privacy violations.The IABâs so-called public comment system is primarily designed for the special interests whose business model is the mass monetization of all our data and behaviors. We should not allow these actors to define how our everyday experiences with data operate, especially when privacy is involved. The longstanding role in which the IAB and online marketers have set many of the standards for our online lives should be challengedâby the FTC, Congress, state AGs and everyone else working on these issues.Weâthe publicâshould be determining our âdigital destinyâânot the same people that gave us surveillance marketing in the first place.
-
Blog
The Big Data Merger Gold Rush to Control Your âIdentityâ Information
Will the DoJ ensure that both competition and consumer protection in data markets are addressed?
There is a digital data âgold rushâ fever sweeping the data and marketing industry, as the quest to find ways to use data to determine a personâs âidentityâ for online marketing becomes paramount. This is triggered, in part, by the moves made by Google and others to replace âcookiesâ and other online identifiers with new, allegedly pro-privacy data-profiling methods to get the same results. Weâve addressed this privacy charade in other posts. In order to better position themselves in a world where knowing who we are and what we do is a highly valuable global currency, there are an increasing number of mergers and acquisitions in the digital marketing and advertising sector.For example, last week data-broker giant TransUnion announced it is buying identity data company Neustar for $3.1 billion dollars, to further expand its âpowerful digital identity capabilities.â This is the latest in TransUnionâs buying spree to acquire data services companies that give it even more information on the U.S. public, including what we do on streaming media, via its 2020 takeovers of connected and streaming video data company Tru Optik (link is external) and the data-management-focused Signal. (link is external)In reviewing some of the business practices touted by TransUnion and Neustar, itâs striking that so little has changed in the decades CDD has been sounding the alarm about the impacts data-driven online marketing services have on society. These include the ever-growing privacy threats, as well as the machine-driven sorting of people and the manipulation of our behaviors. So far, nothing has derailed the commercial Big Data marketing.With this deal, TransUnion is obtaining a treasure trove of data assets and capabilities. For Neustar, âidentity is an actionable understanding of who or what is on the other end of every interaction and transaction.â Neustarâs âOneID system provides a single lens on the consumer across their dynamic omnichannel journey.â This involves: (link is external) data management services featuring the collection, identification, tagging, tracking, analyzing, verification, correcting and sorting of business data pertaining to the identities, locations and personal information of and about consumers, including individuals, households, places, businesses, business entities, organizations, enterprises, schools, governments, points of interest, business practice characteristics, movements and behaviors of and about consumers via media devices, computers, mobile phones, tablets and internet connected devices.Neustar keeps close track of people, saying that it knows that âthe average person has approximately 15 distinct identifiers with an average of 8 connected devicesâ (and notes that an average household has more than 45 such distinct identifiers). Neustar has an especially close business partnership with Facebook, (link is external) which enables marketers to better analyze how their ads translate into sales made on and spurred by that platform. Its âCustomer Scoring and Segmentationâ system enables advertisers to identify and classify targets so they can âreach the right customer with the right message in the right markets.â Neustar has a robust data-driven ad-targeting system called AdAdvisor, which reaches 220 million adults in âvirtually every household in the U.S.â AdAdvisor (link is external) âuses past behavior to predict likelihood of future behaviorâ and involves âthousands of data points available for online targetingâ (including the use of â2 billion records a month from authoritative offline sourcesâ). Its âPropensity Audiencesâ service helps marketers predict the behaviors of people, incorporating such information (link is external) as âcustomer-level purchase data for more than 230 million US consumers; weekly in-store transaction data from over 4,500 retailers; actual catalog purchases by more than 18 million householdsâ; and âcredit information and household-level demographics, used to build profiles of the buying power, disposable income and access to credit a given household has available.â Neustar offers its customers the ability to reach âpropensity audiencesâ in order to target such product categories as alcohol, automotive, education, entertainment, grocery, life events, personal finance, and more. For example, companies can target people who have used their debit or credit cards, by the amount of insurance they have on their homes or cars, by the âlevel of investable assets,â including whether they have a pension or other retirement funds. One also can discover people who buy a certain kitty litter or candy barâthe list of AdAdvisor possibilities is far-reaching.Another AdAdvisor application, âElementOne,â (link is external) comprises 172 segments that can be âleveraged in real time for both online and offline audience targeting.â The targeting categories should be familiar to anyone who is concerned about how groups of people are characterized by data-brokers and others. For example, one can select âSegment 058âhigh income rural younger renters with and without childrenâor âSegment 115âmiddle income city older home owners without children; or any Segment from 151-172 to reach âlow incomeâ Americans who are renters, homeowners, have or donât have kids, live in rural or urban areas, and the like.Marketers can also use AdAdvisor to determine the geolocation behaviors of their targets, through partnerships that provide Neustar with â10 billion daily location signals from 250+ million opted-in consumers.â In other words, Neustar knows whether you walked into that liquor store, grocery chain, hotel, entertainment venue, or shop. It also has data on what you view on TV, streaming video, and gaming. And itâs not just consumers who Neustar tracks and targets. Companies can access its âHealthLink Dimensions Doctor Data to target 1.7 million healthcare professionals who work in more than 400 specialties, including acute care, family practice, pediatrics, cardiovascular surgery.âTransUnion is already a global data and digital marketing powerhouse, with operations in 30 countries, 8,000 clients that include 60 of the Fortune 100. What is calls its âTruAudience Marketing Solutions (link is external)â is built on a foundation of âinsight into 98% of U.S. adults and more than 127 million homes, including 80 million connected homes.â Its âTruAudience Identityâ product provides âa three-dimensional, omnichannel view of individuals, devices and households⌠[enabling] precise, scalable identity across offline, digital and streaming environments.â It offers marketers and others a method to secure what it terms is an âidentity resolution,â (link is external) which is defined as âthe process of matching identifiers across devices and touchpoints to a single profile [that] helps build a cohesive, omnichannel view of a consumerâŚ.âTransUnion, known historically as one of the Big Three credit bureaus, has pivoted to become a key source for data and applications for digital marketing. It isnât the only company expanding what is called an âID Graf (link is external)ââthe ways all our data are gathered for profiling. However, given its already vast storehouse of information on Americans, it should not be allowed to devour another major data-focused marketing enterprise.Since this merger is now before the U.S. Department of Justiceâas opposed to the Federal Trade Commissionâthere isnât a strong likelihood that in addition to examining the competitive implications of the deal, there will also be a focus on what this really means for people, in terms of further loss of privacy, their autonomy and their potential vulnerability to manipulative and stealthy marketing applications that classify and segment us in a myriad of invisible ways. Additionally, the use of such data systems to identify communities of color and other groups that confront historic and current obstacles to their well-being should also be analyzed by any competition regulator.In July, the Biden Administration issued (link is external) an Executive Order on competition that called for a more robust regime to deal with mergers such as TransUnion and Neustar. According to that order, âIt is also the policy of my Administration to enforce the antitrust laws to meet the challenges posed by new industries and technologies, including the rise of the dominant Internet platforms, especially as they stem from serial mergers, the acquisition of nascent competitors, the aggregation of data, unfair competition in attention markets, the surveillance of users, and the presence of network effects.âWe hope the DOJ will live up to this call to address mergers such as this one, and other data-driven deals that are a key reason why these kind of buyouts happen with regularity. There should also be a way for the FTCâespecially under the leadership of Chair Lina Khanâto play an important role evaluating this and similar transactions. Thereâs more at stake than competition in the data-broker or digital advertising markets. Who controls our information and how that information is used are the fundamental questions that will determine our freedom and our economic opportunities. As the Big Data marketplace undergoes a key transition, developing effective policies to protect public privacy and corporate competition is precisely why this moment is so vitally important. -
Blog
Who is Really âPushingâ Your Online Shopping Cart as You Buy Groceries? Itâs Big Data, Machine Learning and Lots of Cash from Advertisers
The FTC and States Should Investigate âGrocery Techâ
Online grocery shopping became a pandemic response necessity for those who could afford it, with revenues to exceed $100 billion (link is external) in 2021. Leading supermarket chains such as Kroger, big box stores like Walmart, online specialist companies such as Instacart, and the ubiquitous Amazon, have all experienced greater demand from the public to have groceries ordered and then quickly delivered or available for pick up. The pandemic has spurred ârecordâ (link is external) downloads of grocery shopping apps from Instacart, Walmart Grocery and Target, among others. Consequently, this marketplace is now rapidly expanding its data collection and digital marketing operations, to generate significant revenues from advertisers and food and beverage brand sponsors.So itâs not a surprise that Instacartâs new (link is external) CEO comes from Facebook (link is external), and the company has also just hired that social networkâs former head of advertising. Walmart, Kroger, Amazon and others are also further adding (link is external) adtech and data marketing experts. There has been a spate of announcements involving new grocery-focused alliances to improve the role digital data play in marketing and sales, including by Albertsonâs (involving Google (link is external)) (link is external) and Hy-Vee (link is external) (also with Google). Albertsonâs (link is external) (which includes the Safeway, Vons and Jewel-Osco divisions) deal with Google is designed to include âshoppable digital maps to make it easier for consumers to find and purchase products online; AI-powered conversation commerceâ technologies for shopping, and âpredictive grocery list buildingâŚ.â Similarly, Hy-Veeâs work with the Google Cloud will help enable âpredictive (link is external) shopping carts,â among other services. (Hy-Vee is also one of the supermarket chains participating in the USDAâs online SNAP (link is external) pilot project, raising questions regarding how its alliance with Google will impact the privacy and well-being of people enrolled in SNAP).All the data that is flowing into these companies, how it is being analyzed, its use by advertisers and product sponsors, and how it impacts the products we see and purchase, should all be subject to scrutiny from consumer protection and privacy regulators.A good example is Instacart. Its Instacart (link is external) Advertising service allows brands to pay to become âfeatured productsâ and more (link is external). Featured Product ads are a form of paid search advertising. As Instacart tells its clients, if a consumer is searching (link is external)for âchocolate ice creamâ or just âice cream,â and you have bought such ads, âyour product can appear as one of the first products in the search result.â And even after âconsumers place an order, weâll make some suggestions for last-minute additions to the order that the consumer might be interested in. Among these suggestions, the system can include Featured Product ads.âBut itâs all the data and connections to their consuming customers that is the real âsecret sauceâ for Instacartâs ad-targeting and influence operations. The company knows whatâs in and out of everyoneâs shopping carts, explaining that âInstacart tracks (link is external) the source or âpath to cartâ for all items purchased through Instacart marketplace, differentiating between three main groupsâitems bought from search results, browsing departments, aisles, and other discovery areas of Instacart, or from a list of previous purchases, which we call âbuy it again.ââ As it explains, the âInstacart Ads solution (link is external)â offers âa full suite of advertising products that animate the entire customer journeyâfrom search through purchase.â These include opportunities for marketers to become part of âthe âbuy it againâ lists where consumers are shown a list of products that they have bought on previous orders. These can act as reminders of meals or recipes theyâve made before and items they tend to stock up on. Our brand partners can leverage Instacart Ads products to appear on âbuy it againâ lists so they stay top of mind with their customers and aid in retaining valuable customers.âThe companyâs advertising blog discusses its use of what is increasingly the most valuable information a company can haveâknown as âfirst-partyâ data, where (allegedly) a consumer has given their consent to have all their information used. Instacart explains (link is external) this data âencompasses intent and purchase signals⌠from users signed up to an online grocery app,â and that it can be leveraged by its brand and advertising clients. The online ordering company explains that its ârich and diverse data sourcesâ include âaccess to millions of orders over time from over 600 retail partners, across 45,000 stores, involving millions of householdsâŚ. [A] tremendously valuable data setâŚthis data is updated every nightâŚ.â Instacart analyzes this trove of data, including point-of-sale, transaction log and out-of-stock information, to help it zero in on a key goalâto enable its advertisers to better understand and take advantage of what it terms âbasket affinities.â In a webinar, Instacart defined (link is external) that concept:Basket affinities helps Instacart, and its brand partners, to create consumer âtypesâ, discover product interactions, understand mission-dominant baskets, and identify trigger products â ultimately building a picture of how brands are bought online that we then share with our partners to build a better plan to acquire and retain valuable consumers. The term âbasket affinityâ covers examining the one-to-one, group-to-group, or many-to-many relationships between products, as well as identifying consumer shopping missions and consumer profiles. [We note that Instacart says it âaggregates and anonymizesâ this information. However, given its ability to target individuals, we will rely on regulators to determine how well such personal information is actually handled].Instacart also touts its ability to track the actual impact of advertising on its site, noting that it is a âclosed loopâ service âwhere ads are served to consumers in the same âspaceâ any resulting sales occur.â In a blog post (link is external) on how it empowers its advertiser partners, the company notes that Our advertising products provide options that can put their products in front of consumers on every âdiscovery surfaceâ on the platform to catch their eye when they are in this mode. Plus, our data shows that the majority of add to carts from these discovery surfaces are the first time the consumer has added that item to their cart â meaning itâs a great place for brands to acquire new customers.As with other major data (link is external)-driven digital marketers, Instacart has many grocery tech and ecommerce specialist partners, who provide brands and advertisers with a myriad of ways to promote, sell and otherwise âoptimizeâ their products on its platform (such as Perpetua, (link is external) Tinuiti, (link is external) Skai (link is external) and Commerce IQ, (link is external) to only name several).The dramatic and recent growth of whatâs called grocery tech is shaping the way consumers buy products and what prices they may pay. With companies such as Amazon, (link is external) Kroger, (link is external) Walmart, (link is external) Albertsonâs (link is external) and Instacart now in essence Big Data-driven digital advertising companies, the public is being subjected to various practices that warrant regulatory scrutiny, oversight and public policy. We call on the Federal Trade Commission and state regulators to act. Among the key questions are how, if at all, are racial, ethnic and income data being used to target a consumer; are health data, including the buying of drugs and over-the-counter medications, being leveraged; and what measurement and performance information is being made available to partners and advertisers? We donât want to have to âdropâ our privacy and autonomy when we shop in the 21st Century. -
Blog
Surveillance Marketing Industry Claims Future of an âOpen Internetâ Requires Massive Data Gathering
New ways to take advantage of your âidentityâ raise privacy, consumer-protection and competition issues
The Trade Desk is a leading (link is external) AdTech company, providing data-driven digital advertising services (link is external) to major brands and agencies. It is also playing an outsized role responding to the initiative led by Google (link is external) to create new, allegedly âprivacy-friendlyâ approaches to ad targeting, which include ending the use of what are called âthird-partyâ cookies. These cookies enable the identification and tracking of individuals, and have been an essential building block for surveillance advertising since the dawn (link is external) of the commercial Internet. As we explained in a previous post about the so-called race to âendâ the use of cookies, the online marketing industry is engaged in a full-throated effort to redefine how our privacy is conceptualized and privately governed. Pressure from regulators (such as the EUâs GDPR) and growing concerns about privacy from consumers are among the reasons why this is happening now. But the real motivation, in my view, is that the most powerful online ad companies and global brands (such as Google, Amazon and the Trade Desk) donât need these antiquated cookies anymore. They have so much of our information that they collect directly, and also available from countless partners (such as global brands). Additionally, they now have many new ways to determine who we areâour âidentityââincluding through the use of AI, machine learning and data clouds (link is external). âUnified ID 2.0â is what The Trade Desk calls its approach to harvesting our identity information for advertising. Like Google, they claim to be respectful of data protection principles. Some of the most powerful companies in the U.S. are supporting the Unified ID standard, including Walmart, Washington Post, P&G, Comcast, CBS, Home Depot, Oracle, and Nielsen. But more than our privacy is at stake as data marketing giants fight over how best to reap the financial rewards (link is external) of what is predicted eventually to become a trillion dollar global ad marketplace. This debate is increasingly focused on the very future of the Internet itself, including how it is structured and governed. Only by ensuring that advertisers can continue to successfully operate powerful data-gathering and ad-targeting systems, argues Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green, can the âOpen (link is external) Internetâ be preserved. His argument, of course, is a digital dĂŠjĂ vu version of what media moguls have said in the U.S. dating back to commercial radio in the 1930âs. Only with a full-blown, ad-supported (and regulation-free) electronic media system, whether it was broadcast radio, broadcast TV, or cable TV, could the U.S. be assured it would enjoy a democratic and robust communications environment. (I was in the room at the Department of Commerce back in the middle 1990âs when advertisers were actually worried that the Internet would be largely ad-free; the representative from P&G leaned over to tell me that they never would let that happenâand he was right.) Internet operations are highly influenced to serve the needs of advertisers, who have reworked its architecture to ensure we are all commercially surveilled. For decades, the online ad industry has continually expanded ways to monetize our behaviors, emotions, location and much more. (link is external) Last week, The Trade Desk unveiled its latest iteration using Unified ID 2.0âcalled Solimar (see video (link is external) here). Solimar uses âan artificial intelligence tool called Koa (link is external), which makes suggestionsâ to help ensure effective marketing campaigns. Reflecting the serial partnerships that operate to provide marketers with a gold mine of information on any individual, The Trade Desk has a âKoa Identity (link is external) Alliance,â a âcross-device graph that incorporates leading and emerging ID solutions such as LiveRamp Identity Link, Oracle Cross Device, Tapad (link is external) Device Graph, and Adbrain Device Graf.â This system, they say, creates an effective way for marketers to develop a data portrait of individual consumers. Itâs useful to hear what companies such as The Trade Desk say as we evaluate claims that âbig dataâ consumer surveillance operations are essential for a democratically structured Internet. In its most recent Annual Report (link is external), the company explains that âThrough our self-service, cloud-based platform, ad buyers can create, manage, and optimize more expressive data-driven digital advertising campaigns across ad formats and channels, including display, video, audio, in-app, native and social, on a multitude of devices, such as computers, mobile devices, and connected TV (âCTVâ)âŚ. We use the massive data captured by our platform to build predictive models around user characteristics, such as demographic, purchase intent or interest data. Data from our platform is continually fed back into these models, which enables them to improve over time as the use of our platform increases.â And hereâs how The Trade Deskâs Koaâs process is described in the trade publication Campaign (link is external) Asia: âŚclients can specify their target customer in the form of first-party or third-party data, which will serve as a seed audience that Koa will model from to provide recommendations. A data section provides multiple options for brands to upload first-party data including pixels, app data, and IP addresses directly into the platform, or import data from a third-party DMP or CDP. If a client chooses to onboard CRM data in the form of email addresses, these will automatically be converted into UID2s. Once converted, the platform will scan the UID2s to evaluate how many are âactive UID2sâ, which refers to how many of these users have been active across the programmatic universe in the past week. If the client chooses to act on those UID2s, they will be passed into the programmatic ecosystem to match with the publisher side, building the UID2 ecosystem in tandem. For advertisers that don't have first-party data⌠an audiences tab allows advertisers to tap into a marketplace of second- and third-party data so they can still use interest segments, purchase intent segments and demographics. In other words, these systems have a ton of information about you. They can easily get even more data and engage in the kinds of surveillance advertising that regulators (link is external) and consumer (link is external) advocates around the world are demanding be stopped. There are now dozens of competing âidentity solutionsââincluding those from Google, Amazon (link is external), data brokers (link is external), telephone (link is external) companies, etc. (See visual at bottom of page here (link is external)). The stakes here are significantâhow will the Internet evolve in terms of privacy, and will its core âDNAâ be ever-growing forms of surveillance and manipulation? How do we decide the most privacy-protective ways to ensure meaningful monetization of online contentâand must funding for such programming only be advertising-based? In what ways are some of these identity proposals a way for powerful platforms such as Google to further expand its monopolistic control of the ad market? These and other questions require a thoughtful regulator in the U.S. to help sort this out and make recommendations to ensure that the public truly benefits. Thatâs why itâs time for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to step in. The FTC should analyze these advertising-focused identity efforts; assess their risks and the benefits; address how to govern the collection and use of data where a person has supposedly given permission to a brand or store to use it (known as âfirst-partyâ data). A key question, given todayâs technologies, is whether meaningful personal consent for data collection is even possible in a world driven by sophisticated and real-time AI systems that personalize content and ads? The commission should also investigate the role of data-mining clouds and other so-called âcleanâ rooms where privacy is said to prevail despite their compilation of personal information for targeted advertising. The time for private, special interests (and conflicted) actors to determine the future of the Internet, and how our privacy is to be treated, is over. -
Press Release
Against surveillance-based advertising
CDD joins an international coalition of more than 50 NGOs and scholars in a call for a surveillance-based advertising ban in its Digital Services Act and for the U.S. to enact a federal digital privacy and civil rights law
International coalition calls for action against surveillance-based advertising Every day, consumers are exposed to extensive commercial surveillance online. This leads to manipulation, fraud,âŻdiscriminationâŻand privacy violations.âŻInformation about what we like, our purchases, mental and physical health, sexual orientation,âŻlocationâŻand political views are collected,âŻcombinedâŻand used under the guise of targeting advertising. ⯠In a new report, theâŻNorwegian Consumer Council (NCC)âŻsheds light on the negative consequencesâŻthatâŻthisâŻcommercial surveillanceâŻhasâŻon consumers and society. Together with [XXX] organizations and experts, NCC is asking authorities on both sides of the Atlantic to consider a ban. In Europe, the upcoming Digital Services Act can lay the legal framework to do so.âŻIn the US, legislators should seize the opportunity to enact comprehensive privacy legislation that protects consumers.⯠- The collection and combinationâŻofâŻinformation about us not only violates our right to privacy, but renders us vulnerable to manipulation,âŻdiscriminationâŻand fraud. This harms individuals andâŻsociety as a whole,âŻsaysâŻthe director of digitalâŻpolicyâŻin the NCC, FinnâŻMyrstad.⯠In a Norwegian population survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of the NCC, consumers clearly state that they do not want commercial surveillance. Just one out of ten respondents were positive to commercial actors collecting personal information about them online, while only one out of five thought that ads based on personal information is acceptable. - Most of us do not want to be spied on online, or receive ads based on tracking and profiling. These results mirror similar surveys from Europe and the United States, and should be a powerful signal to policymakers looking at how to better regulate the internet, Myrstad says. Policymakers and civil society organisations on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly standing up against these invasive practices.âŻFor example,âŻThe European Parliament and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS)âŻhave alreadyâŻcalled forâŻphasing out and banningâŻsurveillance-based advertising. A coalition of consumer and civil rights organizations in the United States has called for a similar ban.âŻâŻ ⯠Significant consequences⯠The NCC reportâŻâTime to ban surveillance-based advertisingâ exposesâŻaâŻvariety ofâŻharmfulâŻconsequencesâŻthatâŻsurveillance-based advertisingâŻcan have on individuals and on society:⯠⯠1. Manipulation⯠Companies with comprehensive and intimate knowledge about us can shapeâŻtheirâŻmessages inâŻattempts to reach us when we are susceptible,âŻfor example to influenceâŻelections orâŻtoâŻadvertiseâŻweight loss products, unhealthyâŻfoodâŻor gambling.âŻâŻ ⯠2. Discrimination⯠TheâŻopacity and automation ofâŻsurveillance-basedâŻadvertisingâŻsystems increaseâŻtheâŻrisk of discrimination,âŻfor example by excluding consumers based on income, gender,âŻrace,âŻethnicity or sexual orientation,âŻlocation,âŻor byâŻmakingâŻcertain consumers payâŻmore for productsâŻor services.âŻâŻ ⯠3. MisinformationâŻâŻ The lack of control over where ads are shown can promote and finance false orâŻmaliciousâŻcontent.âŻThis also poses significant challenges to publishers and advertisers regarding revenue, reputational damage, and opaque supply chains. 4. Undermining competitionâŻâŻ TheâŻsurveillanceâŻbusiness model favoursâŻcompaniesâŻthatâŻcollectâŻand processâŻinformation across different services and platforms. This makes it difficult forâŻsmallerâŻactorsâŻto compete, and negativelyâŻimpactsâŻcompanies that respectâŻconsumersââŻfundamental rights.⯠5. Security risks⯠When thousands of companiesâŻcollect andâŻprocessâŻenormous amounts of personal data, the risk of identity theft,âŻfraudâŻand blackmail increases.âŻNATO has described this data collection as a national security risk.âŻâŻâŻ 6. Privacy violationsâŻâŻ The collection and use of personal data is happening with little or no control, both by large companies and by companies that are unknown to most consumers. Consumers have no way to know what data is collected, who the information is shared with, and how it mayâŻbe used. ⯠-âŻâŻIt isâŻvery difficult to justfy the negative consequences of this system. A ban will contribute to a healthier marketplace thatâŻhelpsâŻprotect individuals and society,âŻMyrstadâŻcomments.⯠Good alternatives⯠In the report, the NCC points to alternative digital advertising models that do not depend on the surveillance of consumers, and that provide advertisers and publishers more oversight and control over where ads are displayed and which ads are being shown. - It is possible to sell advertising space without basing it on intimate details about consumers. Solutions already exist to show ads in relevant contexts, or where consumers self-report what ads they want to see, Myrstad says. - A ban on surveillance-based advertising would also pave the way for a more transparent advertising marketplace, diminishing the need to share large parts of ad revenue with third parties such as data brokers. A level playing field would contribute to giving advertisers and content providers more control, and keep a larger share of the revenue. The coordinated push behind the report and letter illustrates the growing determination of consumer, digital rights, human rights and other civil society groups to end the widespread business model of spying on the public. -
The Center for Digital Democracy and 23 other leading civil society groups sent a letter to President Biden today asking his Administration to ensure that any new transatlantic data transfer deal is coupled with the enactment of U.S. laws that reform government surveillance practices and provide comprehensive privacy protections.
-
Contact: Jeff Chester, CDD (jeff@democraticmedia.org (link sends e-mail); 202-494-7100) David Monahan, CCFC (david@commercialfreechildhood.org (link sends e-mail);) Advocates Ask FTC to Protect Youth From Manipulative âDark Patternsâ Online BOSTON, MA and WASHINGTON, DC â May 28, 2021âTwo leading advocacy groups protecting children from predatory practices online filed comments today asking the FTC to create strong safeguards to ensure that internet âdark patternsâ donât undermine childrenâs well-being and privacy. Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) cited leading authorities on the impacts of internet use on child development in their comments prepared by the Communications & Technology Law Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. These comments follow testimony given by representatives of both groups last month at a FTC workshop spearheaded by FTC Acting Chair Rebecca Slaughter. CCFC and CDD say tech companies are preying upon vulnerable kids, capitalizing on their fear of missing out, desire to be popular, and inability to understand the value of misleading e-currencies, as well as putting them on an endless treadmill on their digital devices. They urged the FTC to take swift and strong action to protect children from the harms of dark patterns. Key takeaways include: - A range of practices, often called âdark patternsâ are pervasive in the digital marketplace, manipulate children, are deceptive and unfair and violate Section 5 of the FTC Act. They take advantage of a young personâs psycho-social development, such as the need to engage with peers. - The groups explained the ways children are vulnerable to manipulation and other harms from âdark patterns,â including that they have âimmature and developing executive functioning,â which leads to impulse behaviors. - The FTC should prohibit the use of dark pattern practices in the childrenâs marketplace; issue guidance to companies to ensure they do not develop or deploy such applications, and include new protections under their Childrenâs Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rulemaking authority to better regulate them. The commission must bring enforcement actions against the developers using child-directed dark patterns. - The FTC should prohibit the use of micro-transactions in apps serving children, including the buying of virtual currency to participate in game playing. - The FTC should adopt a definition of dark patterns to include all ânudgesâ designed to use a range of behavioral techniques to foster desired responses from users. The groupsâ filing was in response to the FTCâs call for comments (link is external) on the use of digital âdark patternsâ â deceptive and unfair user interface designs â on websites and mobile apps. Comment of Jeff Chester, executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy: âDark Patternsâ are being used in the design of child-directed services to manipulate them to spend more time and money on games and other applications, as well as give up more of their data. Itâs time the FTC acted to protect young people from being unfairly treated by online companies. The commission should issue rules that prohibit the use of these stealth tactics that target kids and bring legal action against the companies promoting their use. Comment of Josh Golin, executive Director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood: In their rush to monetize children, app and game developers are using dark patterns that take advantage of childrenâs developmental vulnerabilities. The FTC has all the tools it needs to stop unethical, harmful, and illegal conduct. Doing so would be a huge step forward towards creating a healthy media environment for children. Comment of Michael Rosenbloom, Staff Attorney & Clinical Teaching Fellow, Communications and Technology Law Clinic, Georgetown University Law Center: Software and game companies are using dark patterns to pressure children into playing more and paying more. Today, many apps and games that children play use dark patterns like arbitrary virtual currencies, encouragement from in-game characters, and ticking countdown timers, to get children to spend more time and money on microtransactions. These dark patterns harm children and violate Section 5 of the FTC Act, and we urge the FTC to act to stop these practices. ###
-
Press Release
âBig Foodâ and âBig Dataâ Online Platforms Fueling Youth Obesity Crisis as Coronavirus Pandemic Rages
New Report Calls for Action to Address Saturation of Social Media, Gaming Platforms, and Streaming Video with Unhealthy Food and Beverage Products
âBig Foodâ and âBig Dataâ Online Platforms Fueling Youth Obesity Crisis as Coronavirus Pandemic RagesNew Report Calls for Action to Address Saturation of Social Media, Gaming Platforms, and Streaming Video with Unhealthy Food and Beverage Products Contact: Jeff Chester (202-494-7100) For Immediate ReleaseWashington, DC, May 12, 2021A report released today calls for federal and global action to check the growth of digital marketing of food and beverage products that target children and teens online. Tech platforms especially popular with young peopleâincluding Facebookâs Instagram, Amazonâs Twitch, ByteDanceâs TikTok, and Googleâs YouTube â are working with giant food and beverage companies, such as Coca Cola, KFC, Pepsi and McDonaldâs, to promote sugar-sweetened soda, energy drinks, candy, fast food, and other unhealthy products across social media, gaming, and streaming video. The report offers fresh new analysis and insight into the most recent industry practices, documenting how âBig Foodâ and âBig Techâ are using AI, machine learning, and other data-driven techniques to ensure that food marketing permeates all of the online cultural spaces where children and teenagers congregate. The pandemic has dramatically increased exposure to these aggressive new forms of marketing, further increasing young peopleâs risks of becoming obese. Black and Brown youth are particularly vulnerable to new online promotional strategies. Noting that concerns about youth obesity have recently fallen off the public radar in the U.S., the report calls for both international and domestic policies to rein in the power of the global technology and food industries. The report and an executive summary are available at the Center for Digital Democracyâs (CDD) website, along with other background material.âOur investigation found that there is a huge amount of marketing for unhealthy foods and beverages all throughout the youth digital media landscape, and it has been allowed to flourish with no government oversight,â explained Kathryn C. Montgomery, PhD, the reportâs lead author, Professor Emerita at American University and CDDâs Senior Strategist. âWe know from decades of research that marketing of these products contributes to childhood obesity and related illnesses. And weâve witnessed how so many children, teens, and young adults suffering from these conditions have been particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus. Both the technology industry and the food and beverage industry need to be held accountable for creating an online environment that undermines young peopleâs health.âThe report examines an array of Big Data strategies and AdTech tools used by the food industry, focusing on three major sectors of digital culture that attract large numbers of young people -- the so-called âinfluencer economy,â gaming and esports platforms, and the rapidly expanding streaming and online video industry.Dozens of digital campaigns by major food and beverage companies, many of which have won prestigious ad industry awards, illustrate some of the latest trends and techniques in digital marketing:The use of influencers is one of the primary ways that marketers reach and engage children and teens. Campaigns are designed to weave branded material âseamlessly into the daily narrativesâ shared on social media. Children and teens are particularly susceptible to influencer marketing, which taps into their psycho-social development. Marketing researchers closely study how young people become emotionally attached to celebrities and other influencers through âparasocialâ relationships.McDonaldâs enlisted rapper Travis Scott, to promote the âTravis Scott Mealâ to young people, featuring âa medium Sprite, a quarter pounder with bacon, and fries with barbecue sauce.â The campaign was so successful that some restaurants in the chain sold out of supplies within days of its launch. This and other celebrity endorsements have helped boost McDonaldâs stock price, generated a trove of valuable consumer data, and triggered enormous publicity across social media.Food and beverage brands have flocked to Facebook-owned Instagram, which is considered one of the best ways to reach and engage teens.According to industry research, nearly all influencer campaigns (93%) are conducted on Instagram. Cheetosâ Chester Cheetah is now an âInstagram creator,â telling his own âstoriesâ along with millions of other users on the platform.One Facebook report, âQuenching Todayâs Thirsts: How Consumers Find and Choose Drinks,â found that â64% of people who drink carbonated beverages use Instagram for drinks-related activities, such as sharing or liking posts and commenting on drinks content,â and more than a third of them report following or âlikingâ soft drink âbrands, hashtags, or influencer posts.âThe online gaming space generates more revenue than TV, film or music, and attracts viewers and players â including many young people -- who are âhighly engaged for a considerable length of time.â Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) and first-person shooter games are considered one of the best marketing environments, offering a wide range of techniques for âmonetization,â including in-game advertising, sponsorship, product placement, use of influencers, and even âbranded gamesâ created by advertisers. Twitch, the leading gaming platform, owned by Amazon, has become an especially important venue for food and beverage marketers. Online gamers and fans are considered prime targets for snack, soft drink, and fast food brands, all products that lend themselves to uninterrupted game play and spectatorship.PepsiCoâs energy drink, MTN DEW Amp Game Fuel, is specifically âdesigned with gamers in mind.â To attract influencers, it was featured on Twitchâs âBounty Board,â a one-stop-shopping tool for âstreamers,â enabling them to accept paid sponsorship (or âbountiesâ) from brands that want to reach the millions of gamers and their followers.Red Bull recently partnered with Ninjaâthe most popular gaming influencer in the world with over 13 million followers on Twitch, over 21 million YouTube subscribers, and another 13 million followers on Instagram.âDr. Pepper featured the faces of players of the popular Fortnite game on its bottles, with an announcement on Twitter that this campaign resulted in âthe most engaged tweetâ the soft-drink company had ever experienced.Wendyâs partnered with âfive of the biggest Twitch streamers,â as well as food delivery app Uber Eats, to launch its âNever Stop Gamingâ menu, with the promise of âfive days of non-stop gaming, delicious meal combos and exclusive prizes.â Branded meals were created for each of the five streamers, who offered their fans the opportunity to order directly through their Twitch channels and have the food delivered to their doors.One of the newest marketing frontiers is streaming and online video, which have experienced a boost in viewership during the pandemic. Young people are avid users, accessing video on their mobile devices, gaming consoles, personal computers, and online connections to their TV sets.Concerned that teens âare drinking less soda,â Coca-Colaâs Fanta brand developed a comprehensive media campaign to trigger âan ongoing conversation with teen consumers through digital platformsâ by creating four videos based on the brandâs most popular flavors, and targeting youth on YouTube, Hulu, Roku, Crackle, and other online video platforms. âFrom a convenience store dripping with orange flavor and its own DJ cat, to an 8-bit videogame-ified pizza parlor, the digital films transport fans to parallel universes of their favorite hangout spots, made more extraordinary and fantastic once a Fanta is opened.âNew video ad formats allow virtual brand images to be inserted into the content and tailored to specific viewers. âWhere one customer sees a Coca-Cola on the table,â explained a marketing executive, âthe other sees green tea. Where one customer sees a bag of chips, another sees a muesli bar⌠in the exact same scene.âThe major technology platforms are facilitating and profiting from the marketing of unhealthy food and beverage products.Facebookâs internal âcreative shopâ has helped Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever, Nestle and hundreds of other brands develop global marketing initiatives to promote their products across its platform. The division specializes in âbuilding data-driven advertising campaigns, branded content, branded entertainment, content creation, brand management, social design,â and similar efforts.Google regularly provides a showcase for companies such as Pepsi, McDonaldâs and Mondelez to tout their joint success promoting their respective products throughout the world.For example, Pepsi explained in a âThink with Googleâ post that it used Googleâs âDirectorâs Mixâ personalization video advertising technology to further what it calls its ability to âunderstand the consumerâs DNA,â meaning their âneeds, context, and location in the shopping journey.â Pepsi could leverage Googleâs marketing tools to help its goal of combining âinsights with storytelling and drive personalized experiences at scale.âHersheyâs has been working closely with Amazon to market its candy products via streaming video, as well as through its own ecommerce marketplace. In a case study published online, Amazon explained that ââŚas viewing consumption began to fragment, the brand [Hersheyâs] realized it was no longer able to reach its audience with linear TV alone.â Amazon gave Hersheyâs access to its storehouse of data so the candy company could market its products on Amazonâs streaming services, such as IMDbTV. Amazon allowed Hersheyâs to use Amazonâs data to ensure the candy brands would âbe positioned to essentially âwinâ search in that category on Amazon and end up as the first resultâŚ.â Hersheyâs also made use of âimpulse buyâ strategies on the Amazon platform, including âcart intercepts,â which prompt a customer to âadd in snacks as the last step in their online shopping trip, mimicking the way someone might browse for candy during the checkout at a physical store.âSome of the largest food and beverage corporationsâincluding Coca-Cola, McDonaldâs, and Pepsiâhave, in effect, transformed themselves into Big Data businesses.Coca-Cola operates over 40 interconnected social media monitoring facilities worldwide, which use AI to follow customers, analyze their online conversations, and track their behaviors.PepsiCo has developed a âfully addressable consumer databaseâ (called âConsumer DNAâ) that enables it to âsee a full 360 degree view of our consumers.âMcDonaldâs made a significant investment in Plexure, a âmobile engagementâ company specializing in giving fast food restaurants the ability âto build rich consumer profilesâ and leverage the data âto provide deeply personalized offers and content that increase average transaction valueâ and help generate other revenues. One of its specialties is designing personalized messaging that triggers the release of the brain chemical, dopamine.The report raises particularly strong concerns about the impact of all these practices on youth of color, noting that food and beverage marketers âare appropriating some of the most powerful âmulticulturalâ icons of youth pop culture and enlisting these celebrities in marketing campaigns for sodas, âbrandedâ fast-food meals, and caffeine-infused energy drinks.â These promotions can âcompound health risks for young Blacks and Hispanics,â subjecting them to âmultiple layers of vulnerability, reinforcing existing patterns of health disparity that many of them experience.ââU.S. companies are infecting the worldâs young people with invasive, stealth, and incessant digital marketing for junk food,â commented Lori Dorfman, DrPH, director, Berkeley Media Studies Group, one of CDDâs partners on the project. âAnd they are targeting Black and Brown youth because they know kids of color are cultural trendsetters,â she explained. âBig Food and Big Tech run away with the profits after trampling the health of children, youth, and families.âThe Center for Digital Democracy and its allies are calling for a comprehensive and ambitious set of policies for limiting the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to young people, arguing that U.S. policymakers must work with international health and youth advocacy organizations to develop a coordinated agenda for regulating these two powerful global industries. As the report explains, other governments in the UK, Europe, Canada, and Latin America have already developed policies for limiting or banning the promotion of foods that are high in fat, sugar, and salt, including on digital platforms. Yet, the United States has continued to rely on an outdated self-regulatory model that does not take into account the full spectrum of Big Data and AdTech practices in todayâs contemporary digital marketplace, places too much responsibility on parents, and offers only minimal protections for the youngest children.âIndustry practices have become so sophisticated, widespread, and entangled that only a comprehensive public policy approach will be able to produce a healthier digital environment for young people,â explained Katharina Kopp, PhD, CDDâs Deputy Director and Director of Research.The report lays out an eight-point research-based policy framework:Protections for adolescents as well as young children.Uniform, global, science-based nutritional criteria.Restrictions on brand promotion.Limits on the collection and use of data.Prohibition of manipulative and unfair marketing techniques and design features.Market research protections for children and teens.Elimination of digital racial discrimination.Transparency, accountability, and enforcement.### -
To watch the full FTC Dark Patterns Workshop online visit the FTC website here (link is external).
-
Blog
Contextual AdvertisingâNow Driven by AI and Machine LearningâRequires Regulatory Review for Privacy and Marketing Fairness
Contextual AdvertisingâNow Driven by AI and Machine LearningâRequires Regulatory Review for Privacy and Marketing FairnessWhatâs known as contextual advertising is receiving a big boost from marketers and some policymakers, who claim that it provides a more privacy-friendly alternative to the dominant global surveillance-based âbehavioralâ marketing model. Googleâs plans to eliminate cookies and other third-party trackers used for much of online ad delivery are also spurring greater interest in contextual marketing, which is being touted especially as safe for children.Until several years ago, contextual ads meant that you would see an ad based on the content of the page you were onâso there might be ads for restaurants on web pages about food, or cars would be pitched if you were reading about road trips. The ad tech involved was basic: keywords found on the page would help trigger an ad.Todayâs version of whatâs called âcontextual intelligence (link is external), âContextual 2.0 (link is external),â or Googleâs âAdvanced Contextual (link is external)â is distinct. Contextual marketing uses artificial intelligence (AI (link is external)) and machine learning technologies, including computer vision and natural language processing, to provide âtargeting precision.â AI-based techniques, the industry explains, allow marketers to read âbetween the linesâ of online content. Contextual advertising is now capable of comprehending âthe holistic and subtle meaning of all text and imagery,â enabling predictions and decisions on ad design and placement by âleveraging deep neural (link is external) networksâ and âproprietary data sets.â AI is used to decipher the meaning of visuals âon a massive scale, enabling advertisers to create much more sophisticated links between the content and the advertising.â Computer vision (link is external) technologies identify every visual element, and ânatural language processingâ minutely classifies all the concepts found on each page. Millions of ârules (link is external)â are applied in an instant, using software that helps advertisers take advantage of the âmultiple meaningsâ that may be found on a page.For example, one leading contextual marketing company, GumGum (link is external), explains that its âVerityâ algorithmic and AI-based service âcombines natural language processing with computer vision technology to execute a multi-layered reading process. First, it finds the meat of the article on the page, which means differentiating it from any sidebar and header ads. Next, it parses the body text, headlines, image captions with natural language processing; at the same time, it uses computer vision to parse the main visuals.⌠[and then] blends its textual and visual analysis into one cohesive report, which it then sends off to an adserver,â which determines whether âVerityâs report on a given page matches its advertisers campaign criteria.âMachine learning also enables contextual intelligence services to make predictions about the best ways to structure and place marketing content, taking advantage of real-time events and the ways consumers interact with content. It enables segmentation of audience targets to be fine-tuned. It also incorporates a number of traditional behavioral marketing concepts, gathering a range of data âsignals (link is external)â that ensure more effecting targeting. There are advanced measurement (link is external) technologies; custom methods to influence what marketers term our âcustomer journey,â structuring ad-buying in similar ways to behavioral, data-driven approaches, as âbidsâ are made to targetâand retargetâthe most desirable people. And, of course, once the contextual ad âworksâ and people interact with it, additional personal and other information is then gathered.Contextual advertising, estimated to generate (link is external) $412 billion in spending by 2025, requires a thorough review by the FTC and data regulators. Regulators, privacy advocates and others must carefully examine how the AI and machine-learning marketing systems operate, including for Contextual 2.0. We should not accept marketersâ claims that it is innocuous and privacy-appropriate. We need to pull back the digital curtain and carefully examine the data and impact of contextual systems. -
Blog
The Whole World will Still be Watching You: Google & Digital Marketing Industry âDeath-of-the-Cookieâ Privacy Initiatives Require Scrutiny from Public Policymakers
The Whole World will Still be Watching You: Google & Digital Marketing Industry âDeath-of-the-Cookieâ Privacy Initiatives Require Scrutiny from Public Policymakers Jeff Chester One would think, in listening to the language used by Google, Facebook, and other ad and data companies to discuss the construction and future of privacy protection, that they are playing some kind of word game. We hear terms (link is external) such as âTURTLEDOVE,â âFLEDGE,â SPARROW and âFLoC.â Such claims should be viewed with skepticism, however. Although some reports make it appear that Google and its online marketing compatriots propose to reduce data gathering and tracking, we believe that their primary goal is still focused on perfecting the vast surveillance system theyâve well-established. A major data marketing industry effort is now underway to eliminateâor diminishâthe role of the tracking software known as âthird-partyâ cookies. Cookies were developed (link is external) in the very earliest days of the commercial âWorld Wide Web,â and have served as the foundational digital tether connecting us to a sprawling and sophisticated data-mining complex. Through cookiesâand later mobile device IDs and other âpersistentâ identifiersâGoogle, Facebook, Amazon, Coca-Cola and practically everyone else have been able to surveil and target usâand our communities. Tracking cookies have literally helped engineer a âsweet spot (link is external)â for online marketers, enabling them to embed spies into our web browsers, which help them understand our digital behaviors and activities and then take action based on that knowledge. Some of these trackersâplaced and used by a myriad (link is external) of data marketing companies on various websitesâare referred to as âthird-partyâ cookies, to distinguish them from what online marketers claim, with a straight face, are more acceptable forms of tracking softwareâknown as âfirst-partyâ cookies. According to the tortured online advertiser explanation, âfirst-partyâ trackers are placed by websites on which you have affirmatively given permission to be tracked while you are on that site. These âwe-have-your-permission-to-useâ first-party cookies would increasingly become the foundation for advances in digital tracking and targeting. Please raise your hand if you believe you have informed Google or Amazon, to cite the two most egregious examples, that they can surveil what you do via these first-party cookies, including engaging in an analysis of your actions, background, interests and more. What the online ad business has developed behind its digital curtainâsuch as various ways to trigger your response, measure your emotions (link is external), knit together information on device (link is external) use, and employ machine learning (link is external) to predict your behaviors (just to name a few of the methods currently in use)âhas played a fundamental role in personal data gathering. Yet these and other practicesâwhich have an enormous impact on privacy, autonomy, fairness, and so many other aspects of our livesâwill not be affected by the âdeath-of-the-cookieâ transition currently underway. On the contrary, we believe that a case to be made that the opposite is true. Rather than strengthening data safeguards, we are seeing unaccountable platforms such as Google actually becoming more dominant, as so-called âprivacy preserving (link is external)â systems actually enable enhanced data profiling. In a moment, we will briefly discuss some of the leading online marketing industry work underway to redefine privacy. But the motivation for this post is to sound the alarm that we should notâonce againâallow powerful commercial interests to determine the evolving structure of our online lives. The digital data industry has no serious track record of protecting the public. Indeed, it was the failure of regulators to rein in this industry over the years that led to the current crisis. In the process, the growth of hate speech, the explosion of disinformation, and the highly concentrated control over online communications and commerceâto name only a fewâ now pose serious challenges to the fate of democracies worldwide. Google, Facebook and the others should never be relied on to defer their principal pursuit of monetization out of respect to any democratic idealâlet alone consumer protection and privacy. One clue to the likely end result of the current industry effort is to see how they frame it. It isnât about democracy, the end of commercial surveillance, or strengthening human rights. Itâs about how best to preserve what they call the âOpen Internet.â (link is external)Some leading data marketers believe we have all consented to a trade-off, that in exchange for âfreeâ content weâve agreed to a pact enabling them to eavesdrop on everything we doâand then make all that information available to anyone who can pay for itâprimarily advertisers. Despite its rhetoric about curbing tracking cookies, the online marketing business intends to continue to colonize our devices and monitor our online experiences. This debate, then, is really about who can decideâand under what termsâthe fate of the Internetâs architecture, including how it operationalizes privacyâat least in the U.S. It illustrates questions that deserve a better answer than the âindustry-knows-bestâ approach we have allowed for far. Thatâs why we call on the Biden Administration, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Congress to investigate these proposed new approaches for data use, and ensure that the result is truly privacy protective, supporting democratic governance and incorporating mechanisms of oversight and accountability. Hereâs a brief review (link is external) of some of the key developments, which illustrate the digital âtug-of-warâ ensuing over the several industry proposals involving cookies and tracking. In 2019, Google announced (link is external) that it would end the role of whatâs known as âthird-party cookies.â Google has created a âprivacy sandbox (link is external)â where it has researched various methods it claims will protect privacy, especially for people who rely on its Chrome browser. It is exploring âways in which a browser can group together people with similar browsing habits, so that ad tech companies can observe the habits of large groups instead of the activity of individuals. Ad targeting could then be partly based on what group the person falls into.â This is its âFederated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) approach, where people are placed into âclustersâ based on the use of âmachine learning algorithmsâ that analyze the data generated from the sites a person visited and their content. Google says these clusters would âeach represent thousands of people,â and that the âinput featuresâ used to generate the targeting algorithm, such as our âweb history,â would be stored on our browsers. There would be other techniques deployed, to add ânoiseâ to the data sets and engage in various âanonymization methodsâ so that the exposure of a personâs individual information is limited. Its TURTLEDOVE initiative is designed to enable more personalized targeting, where web browsers will be used to help ensure our data is available for the real-time auctions that sell us to advertisers. The theory is that by allowing the data to remain within our devices, as well using clusters of people for targeting, our privacy is protected. But the goal of the processâ to have sufficient data and effective digital marketing techniquesâis still at the heart of this process. Google recently (link is external) reported that âFLoC can provide an effective replacement signal for third-party cookies. Our tests of FLoC to reach in-market and affinity Google Audiences show that advertisers can expect to see at least 95% of the conversions per dollar spent when compared to cookie-based advertising.â Googleâs 2019 announcement caused an uproar in the digital marketing business. It was also perceived (correctly, in my view) as a Google power grab. Google operates basically as a âWalled Garden (link is external)â and has so much data that it doesnât really need third-party data cookies to hone in on its targets. The potential âdeath of the cookieâ ignited a number of initiatives from the Interactive (link is external) Advertising Bureau, as well as competitors (link is external) and major advertisers, who feared that Googleâs plan would undermine their lucrative business model. They include such groups as the Partnership for Addressable Media (PRAM), (link is external) whose 400 members include Mastercard, Comcast/NBCU, P&G, the Association of National Advertisers, IAB and other ad and data companies. PRAM issued a request (link is external) to review proposals (link is external) that would ensure the data marketing industry continues to thrive, but could be less reliant on third-party cookies. Leading online marketing company Trade Desk is playing a key role here. It submitted (link is external) its âUnited ID 2.0 (link is external),â plan to PRAM, saying that it ârepresents an alternative to third party cookies that improves consumer transparency, privacy and control, while preserving the value exchange of relevant advertising across channels and devices.â There are also a number of other ways now being offered that claim both to protect privacy yet take advantage of our identity (link is external), such as various collaborative (link is external) data-sharing efforts. The Internet standards groups Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) has created (link is external) a sort of neutral meeting ground where the industry can discuss proposals and potentially seek some sort of unified approach. The rationale for the [get ready for this statement] âImproving Web Advertising Business Group goal is to provide monetization opportunities that support the open web while balancing the needs of publishers and the advertisers that fund them, even when their interests do not align, with improvements to protect people from the individual and societal impacts of tracking content consumption over time.â Its participants (link is external) are another âWhoâs Whoâ in data-driven marketing, including Google, AT&T, Verizon, NYT, IAB, Apple, Group M, Axel Springer, Facebook, Amazon, Washington Post, Verizon, and Criteo. DuckDuckGo is also a member (and both Google and Facebook have multiple representatives in this group). The sole NGO listed as a member is the Center for Democracy and Technology. W3Cs ad business group has a number of documents (link is external) about the digital marketing business that illustrate why the issue of the future of privacy and data collection and targeting should be a publicâand not just data industryâconcern. In an explainer (link is external) on digital advertising, they make the paradigm so many are working to defend very clear: Marketingâs goal can be boiled down to the "5 Rights": Right Message to the Right Person at the Right Time in the Right Channel and for the Right Reason. Achieving this goal in the context of traditional marketing (print, live television, billboards, et al) is impossible. In digital realm, however, not only can marketers achieve this goal, they can prove it happened. This proof is what enables marketing activities to continue, and is important for modern marketers to justify their advertising dollars, which ultimately finance the publishers sponsoring the underlying content being monetized.â Nothing Iâve read says it better. Through a quarter century of work to perfect harvesting our identity for profit, the digital ad industry has created a formidable complex of data clouds (link is external), real-time ad auctions, cross-device tracking tools and advertising techniques (link is external) that further commodify our lives, shred our privacy, and transform the Internet into a hall of mirrors that can amplify our fears and splinter democratic norms. Itâs people, of course, who decide how the Internet operatesâespecially those from companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and those working for trade groups as the IAB. We must not let them decide how cookies may or may not be used or what new data standard should be adopted by the most powerful corporate interests on the planet to profit from our âidentity.â Itâs time for action by the FTC and Congress. Part 1. (1)For the uninitiated, TURTLEDOVE stands for âTwo Uncorrelated Requests, Then Locally-Executed Decision On Victoryâ; FLEDGE is short for âFirst Locally-Executed Decision over Groups Experimentâ; SPARROW is âSecure Private Advertising Remotely Run On Webserverâ; and FLoC is âFederated Learning of Cohortsâ). (2) In January 2021, the UKâs Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opened up an investigation (link is external) into Google privacy sandbox and cookie plans. -
Press Release
Press Statement RE FTC Announcement on New Study into the Data Collection Practices of Nine Major Tech Platforms and Companies
Press Statement, Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), 12-14-20 Today, the Federal Trade Commission announced (link is external) it will use its to 6(b) authority to launch a major new study into the data collection practices of nine major tech platforms and companies: ByteDance (TikTok), Amazon, Discord, Facebook, Reddit, Snap, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube. The Commissionâs study includes a section on children and teens. In December, 2019, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and their attorneys at Georgetown Lawâs Institute for Public Representation urged the Commission to use its 6(b) authority to better understand how tech companies collect and use data from children. Twenty-seven consumer and child advocacy organizations joined that request. Below are statements from CDD and CCFC on todayâs announcement. Josh Golin, Executive Director, CCFC: âWe are extremely pleased that the FTC will be taking a hard look at how platforms like TikTok, Snap, and YouTube collect and use young peopleâs data. These 6(b) studies will provide a much-needed window into the opaque data practices that have a profound impact on young peopleâs wellbeing. This much-needed study will not only provide critical public education, but lay the groundwork for evidence-based policies that protect young peopleâs privacy and vulnerabilities when they use online services to connect, learn, and play.â Jeff Chester, Executive Director, CDD: "The FTC is finally holding the social media and online video giants accountable, by requiring leading companies to reveal how they stealthily gather and use information that impacts our privacy and autonomy. It is especially important the commission is concerned about also protecting teensâ who are the targets of a sophisticated and pervasive marketing system designed to influence their behaviors for monetization purposes." For questions, please contact: jeff@democraticmedia.org (link sends e-mail) See also: https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senator-markey-stateme... (link is external) -
General Comment submission Childrenâs rights in relation to the digital environment ⢠Professor Amandine Garde, Law & Non-Communicable Research Unit, School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool ⢠Dr Mimi Tatlow-Golden, Senior Lecturer, Developmental Psychology and Childhood, The Open University ⢠Dr Emma Boyland, Senior Lecturer, Psychology, University of Liverpool ⢠Professor Emerita Kathryn C. Montgomery, School of Communication, American University; Senior Strategist, Center for Digital Democracy ⢠Jeff Chester, Center for Digital Democracy ⢠Josh Golin, Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood ⢠Kaja Lund-Iversen and Ailo Krogh Ravna, Norwegian Consumer Council ⢠Pedro Hartung and Marina Reina, Alana Institute ⢠Dr Marine Friant-Perrot, University of Nantes ⢠Professor Emerita Wenche Barth Eide, University of Oslo; Coordinator, FoHRC ⢠Professor Liv Elin Torheim, Oslo Metropolitan University ⢠Professor Alberto Alemanno, HEC Paris Business School and The Good Lobby ⢠Marianne Hammer, Norwegian Cancer Society ⢠Nikolai Pushkarev, European Public Health Alliance 13 November 2020 Dear Members of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, We very much welcome the Committeeâs Draft General Comment No25 on childrenâs rights in relation to the digital environment (the Draft) and are grateful for the opportunity to comment. We are a group of leading scholars and NGO experts on youth, digital media, child rights and public health who work to raise awareness and promote regulation of marketing (particularly of harmful goods, services and brands) to which children are exposed. We argue this infringes many of the rights enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and other international instruments and should be strictly regulated. Based on our collective expertise, we call on the Committee to recognise more explicitly the fundamentally transformed nature of marketing in new digital environments, the harms stemming therefrom, and the corresponding need to protect children from targeting and exposure. Without such recognition, children will not be able to fully enjoy the many opportunities for learning, civic participation, creativity and communication that the digital environment offers for their development and fulfilment of their rights. Facilitating childrenâs participation in this environment should not come at the price of violations of any children's rights. Before making specific comments, we wish to highlight our support for much of this Draft. In particular, we strongly support the provisions in the following paragraphs of the General Comment: 11, 13, 14, 52, 54, 62, 63, 64, 67, 72, 74, 75, 88, 112, and 119. We also note concerns regarding provisions that will require mandatory age verification: e.g., paragraphs 56, 70, 120, 122. We call on the Committee to consider provisions that this be applied proportionately, as this will certainly have the effect of increasing the processing of childrenâs personal data - which should not happen to the detriment of the best interests of the child. The rest of this contribution, following the structure of the Draft, proposes specific additions / modifications (underlined, in italics), with brief explanations (in boxes). Numbers refer to original paragraphs in the Draft; XX indicates a new proposed paragraph. Hoping these comments are useful to finalise the General Comment, we remain at your disposal for further information. Yours faithfully, Amandine Garde and Mimi Tatlow-Golden On behalf of those listed above [See full comments in attached document]
-
CONSUMER AND CITIZEN GROUPS CONTINUE TO HAVE SERIOUS CONCERNS ABOUT GOOGLE FITBIT TAKEOVER Joint Statement on Possible Remedies (link is external)