Controversial adware firm Zango was sold last week, following a bank foreclosure after its failure to honor over $44 million worth of debts.
The company launched over a decade ago as 180solutions, after which it changed its moniker several times: 180solutions and Hotbar, before concluding its trajectory as Zango. Security firms — to which it often conveyed threatening letters, and the...
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In a symbolic stance against its business model, Amazon has stated it will not permit behavioral ad firm Phorm to scan its webpages for targeted ads.
U.K.-based Phorm works directly with ISPs to build profiles of user interests, based on their overall web surfing behavior, and serve relevant ads to them across participating websites.
The company suffered hard times last year after a series...
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With aspirations to set a new industry standard on privacy and gain more trust from its users, Yahoo has executed a global 90-day data retention policy.
According to the company, this stance “strengthens Yahoo’s relationship of trust with its 500 million users world-wide and enhances its longtime leadership on privacy.” Yahoo’s new policy will anonymize user log data in three months, “with...
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Location-based services that allow marketers to connect with consumers wherever they are have long been considered the ideal in advertising. eMarketer is predicting that the opportunity will grow significantly in coming years, with the number of consumers using such services growing to 486 million by 2012, up from 18.9 million in 2007 and 63 million this year.
The growth in location-based...
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Most Americans are very concerned about their internet privacy and many are taking steps to limit the information that is being collected and shared about them online, according to a poll from Consumer Reports, MarketingCharts reports.
To combat what they view as encroachment on personal online privacy, 35 percent of respondents say they use alternate email addresses to avoid providing real...
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Google is testing ads that target user behavior, reports The New York Times. Ads a person sees on a given Google search may be influenced by what s/he queried minutes earlier.
According to The New York Times (via MarketingVOX), securities analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray discovered this change in Google’s ad targeting methods, shortly after launching a series of tests that examine ads in...
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Following an article in The New York Times about billboards with facial-recognition-based tracking systems that caused a stir in regards to privacy issues, TruMedia Technologies sent a letter to the paper explaining that the company would never record or store any video from the billboards.
The technology behind the billboards only analyzes the images its cameras take. No individually...
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North Oaks, a suburb in St. Paul, Minnesota, has demanded that Google remove images of its streets from Google Maps.
The city of North Oaks, which houses 4500 residents, says the search giant trespassed when Google employees visited the town by car to photograph streets for the Google Maps StreetView feature, according to Search Engine Land (via MarketingVox).
The city’s website says the...
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Technology inspired by Israeli surveillance has led to camera-equipped billboards that can track viewers’ faces to gather reliable viewing data for digital displays and screens.
The technology comes from TruMedia, which is testing the cameras in about 30 locations nationwide. Adspace Networks is testing the TruMedia technology system at malls in Chesterfield, Mo., Winston-Salem, N.C., and...
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Consumers prefer email as a primary method of personal and business communication - and will continue to do so the foreseeable future, despite online threats and the emergence of other channels and Web 2.0 applications, according to a Habeas study, MarketingCharts writes.
Users want more control over their online interactions with businesses and have an increasing level of concern over spam...
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