Upfront Digital:
• Apple has been “shopping around for TV parts,” reports AllThingsD, meaning an Apple-platform smart TV is inching toward reality. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote in a note to clients that Apple has been talking to TV component vendors. This following some January meetings in Asia, supposedly to scope out manufacturing facilities, which led Piper Jaffray to believe Apple is looking to manufacture large-scale LCD displays.
• Citing “inventory oversupply” in the mobile ad space, Digiday reports that during Q3 of 2011, only 18 percent of impressions were filled by the top 20 U.S. mobile ad networks, and 10 percent worldwide. This says Digiday makes it “increasingly difficult for publishers to generate revenues from their mobile audiences.”
• About.com (a New York Times company) with its evergreen content may not seem a serious ad outlet, but, it is serious enough for Charles Schwab and Procter & Gamble. Now the online outlet has launched Real Recipes, a free app for iPhone and iPod Touch, to deliver About.com’s “deep catalogue of culinary content” (more than 25,000 recipes and numerous menu-planning tools) to the digital space.
• Former “NBC Dateline” anchor will bypass television and anchor straight from the web, reports TV Newser. In a video message on the StonePhillipsReports.com website, Phillips declared that after 20 years in broadcast news, he will now report on stories important to himself. First out of the lineup—head injuries in youth football, in a story called “Hard Hits, Hard Numbers.” As yet, Phillips is not accepting advertising, just donations. Dateline NBC did not review Phillips’ contract in 2007, and he has not been on broadcast television since.
• In an attempt to promote its Bing search engine over Google, Microsoft has launched its “Putting People First” campaign in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today. As Social Times describes, Microsoft argues in the ad that Google sells out users to advertisers by using personal information to influence the type of advertising each customer sees. Microsoft products including Hotmail, Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer and Bing, are far safer and more private, the company claims.
IAB Opposes FTC on Child Privacy
Child privacy protection can go too far, complains the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). It believes a proposal by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that strengthens child privacy regulations “would have substantial negative effects for parents, children and companies alike.” The 10-year-old Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) bans website owners from collecting such “unique identifiers” from children, such as names, addresses and telephone numbers, without parental consent. The proposed changes would broaden the definition of a “unique identifier” to include tracking cookies, device serial numbers, and in some cases, IP addresses, reports MediaDailyNews. This, complains IAB, would render behavioral targeting (e.g., targeted advertising and demographic data) practically impossible.
Data Privacy at Home: One-Third Snoop on Partners
Personal data is not just the concern of large internet companies and government regulators. A recent Retrevo Gadgetology study found that there’s a lot of snooping and tracking going on among people who know each other. More than a third of respondents, -- 33% -- admitted to checking a boyfriend’s or girlfriends email or call history without their knowledge. Slightly more married couples snoop on their spouses (37%) and an even larger number of parents spy on their kids (39%). The number of parents snooping is highest among parents of teenagers with 60% snooping on their kids and possibly for good reason as 14% of those parents reported finding something they were concerned about.
Online Ad Industry Slow to Add Tracking Features | Local Ad Spending to Reach $136B in 2011
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The online advertising industry’s self-regulatory effort is going slowly, reports the Wall Street Journal from the Privacy Identity Innovation conference in Santa Clara, Calif., on Friday. Fewer than 10% of targeted ads contain icons that inform users that their personal data is being used. The icons are supposed to be placed on ads that are targeted at users based on their online behavior. The online ad industry agreed last year to post the icons into ads as an effort to forestall government regulation. As well, few users are activating the “do-not-track” tool that some browser makers have added to their browsers. Alex Fowler, head of privacy for Mozilla Inc., said only 1% to 2% of users have turned on the do-not-track tool that the company added to Firefox 4, which was released this year. Google is the only major browser maker that has not pledged to adopt the do-not-track tool. Google senior privacy counsel Keith Enright said at the conference that Google is “looking at” do-not-track, but “I don’t know what a do-not-track header is,” he said. “I don’t know what it means.”
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LivingSocial and Foursquare are fighting for their share of an expected $136-billion local ad spending in 2011. The local ad spending would come from small shops, neighborhood restaurants, and retailers as online social media companies set their sights on this untapped pool of revenue, according to Reuters. Foursquare currently has about 10 million users and about 400,000 merchants using its tools to drive traffic to their stores. With about 30 million members worldwide, LivingSocial is still far smaller than the No. 1 player in the market, Groupon, which has about 70 million users and is expected to file for a public offering this year. LivingSocial is on track to generate $1 billion revenue this year.
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New York Times social media editor Liz Heron at the BBC’s Social Media Summit said that the news group’s social media team has grown from one to three people, and the Times’ strategy has evolved over the last few months. Heron says she asks staff reporters who want to create social accounts to first explain their strategy for interacting with users, reports Lost Remote. Heron said that the social media team wants to start focusing on Facebook more, and to do more with its 1.3 million followers. As well, the Times plans to un-automate their main @nytimes Twitter account, which has 3.2 million followers.
PBS Launches Kids App | SEO Headlines Not Funny | Facebook Behind Anti-Google Campaign
- In step with the success of its iPhone, iPod touch and iPad content that has more than a million active users, PBS has launched a PBS KIDS Video for iPad App, reports Broadcasting & Cable. The app offer free video streaming of over 1,000 episodes from PBS KIDS and PBS KIDS GO! series, including The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That, Dinosaur Train, Super Why, Sid the Science Kid, Sesame Street and Wild Kratts. The app, available from the App Store, also has content for parents.
On the Hill, Apple, Google Defend Data Collection | DMA Against Rockefeller Bill
- Representatives of Apple and Google, makers of software used in millions of smartphones, appeared in Congress today as lawmakers consider new online privacy rules that could alter how they operate. The companies defended their use of user location data gathered from millions of smartphones in responding to questions. Both Google and Apple cited increased consumer demand for location-based services that help wireless users find nearby businesses, such as restaurants, reports businessweek.com. Makers of applications that customers download to their smartphones share information including location data with downstream advertising and analytics companies, said Ashkan Soltani, an independent researcher and consultant. Disclosure about those practices is often inadequate or absent, he said. Guy Tribble, Apple’s vice president for software technology said, “Apple does not track users’ locations -- Apple has never done so and has no plans to do so.” Apple does not share “personally identifiable information for their marketing purposes without our customers’ explicit consent,” Tribble told lawmakers. Outside developers of applications for Android bear responsibility for how their software “collects and handles user data and the privacy disclosures” to users who opt into the service, Alan Davidson, Google’s director of public policy, said in prepared testimony. “Google does not control the behavior of third-party applications or how they handle location information and other user information that the third-party application obtains from the device, even though Google strongly encourages application developers to use best practices,” Davidson said.
Sony: 24.6 Million More Users Affected | BrightRoll: Online Video Ads to be Bright Spot
- The news doesn’t get better for Sony. On the heels of their apology, announcement of resuming services, and their “Welcome Back” promotion, the company said that another 24.6 million users have had their personal data compromised – including 10,700 users in Austria, Germany, The Netherlands and Spain whose bank account number, customer name, account name and customer address in the hands on hackers since about April 16 or 17. An additional 12,700 non-U.S. credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates (sans security code) were confirmed breached as well. With the discovery of this additional information, the company shut down all servers related to SOE services while continuing to review and upgrade all of its online security systems. The additional millions of users affected was discovered was discovered by engineers and security consultants reviewing Sony Online Entertainment systems.
Retail Group Critical of New Privacy Bill
Epsilon Restarts Marketing Campaigns
Pandora: User Data Influences Revenue | LA Station, Just Jared Announce Deal
- The Pandora business model, writes radioink.com, could be impacted by a “Do Not Track” policy. The company reported its conversation under subpoena with the FTC in an update to its earlier IPO filing with the SEC -- and acknowledged that drastic changes to the way it's allowed to pass along user information could damage its revenue model, something that has to be spooking just a few people planning to invest in the company as it gears up to go public. One of the changes that has Pandora worried is a potential "Do Not Track" list. Such a list "could significantly hinder our ability to collect and use data relating to listeners.” Read the article here.