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Press Release
Press Statement regarding today’s FTC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Regarding the Commercial Surveillance and Data Security
Press Statement regarding today’s FTC Notice(link is external) of Proposed Rulemaking Regarding the Commercial Surveillance and Data SecurityKatharina Kopp, Deputy Director, Center for Digital Democracy:Today, the Federal Trade Commission issued its long overdue advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) regarding a trade regulation rule on commercial surveillance and data security. The ANPRM aims to address the prevalent and increasingly unavoidable harms of commercial surveillance. Civil society groups including civil rights groups, privacy and digital rights and children’s advocates had previously called on the commission to initiate this trade regulation rule to address the decades long failings of the commission to reign in predatory corporate practices online. CDD had called on the commission repeatedly over the last two decades to address the out-of-control surveillance advertising apparatus that is the root cause of increasingly unfair, manipulative, and discriminatory practices harming children, teens, and adults and which have a particularly negative impact on equal opportunity and equity.The Center for Digital Democracy welcomes this important initial step by the commission and looks forward to working with the FTC. CDD urges the commission to move forward expeditiously with the rule making and to ensure fair participation of stakeholders, particularly those that are disproportionately harmed by commercial surveillance.press_statement_8-11fin.pdf -
Considering Privacy Legislation in the context of contemporary digital data marketing practices Last week, the leading global advertisers, online platforms and data marketers gathered for the most important awards given by the ad industry—the “Cannes Lions.” Reviewing the winners and the “shortlist” of runners-up—competing in categories such as “Creative Data,” “Social and Influencer,” “Brand Experience & Activation,” “Creative Commerce” and “Mobile”—is essential to learn where the data-driven marketing business—and ultimately much of our digital experiences—is headed. An analysis of the entries reveals a growing role for machine learning and artificial intelligence in the creation of online marketing, along with geolocation tracking, immersive content and other “engagement” technologies. One takeaway, not surprisingly, is that the online ad industry continues to perfect techniques to secure our interest in its content so it can to gather more data from us.A U.S.-based company that also generated news during Cannes was The Trade Desk, a relatively unknown data marketing service that is playing a major role assisting advertisers and content providers to overcome any new privacy challenges posed by emerging or future legislation. The Trade Desk announced last week a further integration of its data and ad-targeting service with Amazon’s cloud AWS division, as well as a key role assisting grocer Albertsons new digital ad division. The Trade Desk has brokered a series of alliances and partnerships with Walmart, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Gannett, NBC Universal, and Disney—to name only a few.There are several reasons these marketers and content publishing companies are aligning themselves with The Trade Desk. One of the most important is the company’s leadership in developing a method to collect and monetize a person’s identity for ongoing online marketing. “Unified ID 2.0” is touted to be a privacy-focused method that enables surveillance and effective ad targeting. The marketing industry refers to these identity approaches as “currencies” that enable the buying and selling of individuals for advertising. There are now dozens of identity “graph” or “identity spine” services, in addition to UDID, which reflect far-reaching partnerships among data brokers, publishers, adtech specialists, advertisers and marketing agencies. Many of these approaches are interoperable, such as the one involving Acxiom spin-off LiveRamp and The Trade Desk. A key goal, when you listen to what these identity brokers say, is that they would like to establish a universal identifier for each of us, to directly capture our attention, reap our data, and monetize our behavior. For the last several years, as a result of the enactment of the GDPR in the EU, the passage of privacy legislation in California, and the potential of federal privacy legislation, Google, Apple, Firefox and others have made changes or announced plans related to their online data practices. So-called “third party cookies,” which have long enabled commercial surveillance, are being abandoned—especially since their role has repeatedly raised concerns from data-protection regulators. Taking their place are what the surveillance marketing business believes are privacy-regulation-proof strategies. There are basically two major, but related, efforts that have been underway—here in the U.S. and globally.The first tactic is for a platform or online publisher to secure the use of our information through an affirmative consent process—called a “first-party” data relationship in the industry. The reasoning goes is that an individual wants an ongoing interaction with the site—for news, videos, groceries, drugs and other services, etc. Under this rationale, we are said to understand and approve how platforms and publishers will use our information as part of the value exchange. First-party data is becoming the most valuable asset in the global digital marketing business, enabling ongoing collection, generating insights, and helping maintain the surveillance model. It is considered to have few privacy problems. All the major platforms that raise so many troubling issues—including Google, Amazon, Meta/Facebook—operate through extensive first-party data relationships. It’s informative to see how the lead digital marketing trade group—the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)—explains it: “ “first party data is your data…presents the least privacy concerns because you have full control over its collection, ownership and use.”The second tactic is a variation on the first, but also relies on various forms of identity-resolution strategies. It’s a response in part to the challenges posed by the dominance of the “walled garden” digital behemoths (Google, etc.) as well the need to overcome the impact of privacy regulation. These identity services are the replacement for cookies. Some form of first-party data is captured (and streaming video services are seen as a gold mine here to secure consent), along with additional information using machine learning to crunch data from public sources and other “signals.” Multimillion member panels of consumers who provide ongoing feedback to marketers, including information about their online behaviors, also help better determine how to effectively fashion the digital targeting elements. The Trade Desk-led UDID is one such identity framework. Another is TransUnion’s “Fabrick,” which “provides marketers with a sustainable, privacy-first foundation for all their data management, marketing and measurement needs.” Such rhetoric is typical of how the adtech/data broker/digital marketing sectors are trying to reframe how they conduct surveillance.Another related development, as part of the restructuring of the commercial surveillance economy, is the role of “data clean rooms.” Clean rooms enable data to be processed under specific rules set up by a marketer. As Advertising Agerecently explained, clean rooms enable first-party and other marketers to provide “access to their troves of data.” For Comcast’s NBCU division and Disney, this treasure chest of information comes from “set-top boxes, streaming platforms, theme parks and movie studios.” Various privacy rules are supposed to be applied; in some cases where they have consent, two or more parties will exchange their first-party data. In other cases, where they may not have such open permission, they will be able to “create really interesting ad products; whether it's a certain audience slice, or audience taxonomy, or different types of ad units….” As an NBCU executive explained about its clean room activity, “we match the data, we build custom audiences…we plan, activate and we measure. The clean room is now the safe neutral sandbox where all the parties can feel good sharing first party data without concerns of data leakage.”We currently have at least one major privacy bill in Congress that includes important protections for civil rights and restricts data targeting of children and teens, among other key provisions. It’s also important when examining these proposals to see how effective they will be in dealing with the surveillance marketing industry’s current tactics. If they don’t effectively curtail what is continuous and profound surveillance and manipulation by the major digital marketers, and also fail to rein in the power of the most dominant platforms, will such a federal privacy promise really deliver? We owe it to the public to determine whether such bills will really “clean up” the surveillance system at the core of our online lives.
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Deal reflects Big Tech move to grab more data for omnipresent tracking & targeting Microsoft is rapidly expanding its surveillance advertising complex—first acquiring AT&T’s powerful Xandr targeting system last December, and adding a few weeks later the online gaming and eSports giant Activision Blizzard. The combination of Microsoft, AT&T and Activision assets raises a set of concerns regarding competition in the gaming and eSports marketplaces; privacy/surveillance protections, given the pervasive data gathering on users; and consumer protection, such as the methods that Microsoft and Activision (and other gaming services) implement to monetize players (including youth) through in-stream advertising and other marketing efforts. It also has implications for the ways we protect privacy in streaming media as well as in the evolving “metaverse.”The FTC must review this proposed deal, with the agency’s privacy and consumer-protection roles at the fore. This proposed Microsoft/Activision combination is emblematic of the ongoing transformation of how Big Tech companies track and target people across all their devices and applications. In order to continue its surveillance-advertising-based model, the online industry is undergoing a massive shift in tactics. It is pivoting to what’s called a “First-Party” data use strategy, claiming that it is obtaining our permission to continue to follow us online and deliver personalized ads and marketing. Getting our consent is the Big Tech plan to undermine any privacy legislation in the U.S. and elsewhere. For example, if this merger goes through, users of Activision games will likely be asked to consent to data collection and tracking on all of Microsoft’s services—such as Bing and LinkedIn. Given that Microsoft and Activision have already baked into its ad services relationships with Google and Meta/Facebook, this acquisition also illustrates the numerous deals that are aligned in all of these digital giants. Owning Xandr will bring a host of additional surveillance advertising resources to Microsoft’s already robust consumer-profiling and marketing infrastructure (including information contributed by AT&T’s own data practices). As explained in the data marketing newsletter AdExchanger, the Xandr and Activision acquisitions, if approved, will enable the leveraging of Microsoft’s already “strong first-party data set and monetize inventory across its wide portfolio of platforms, including its video game business, LinkedIn, Bing, Edge, Office 365, Skype and more.” Microsoft was already working with AT&T’s Xandr surveillance ad targeting apparatus, including for its gaming division. For example Xandr explains that its enables marketers to “Access real users in immersive and engaging environments” via its current ability to target people thru the Microsoft Advertising Exchange.Microsoft’s data targeting currently involves its “Microsoft Search Network,” which “sees 14.6 billion monthly searches globally across nearly 700 million users. Its Audience Network engages in an array of targeting tactics, including via leveraging a person’s identity, location, use of LinkedIn or other sites and a variety of “custom” approaches. Advertisers are able to “target audiences…across more than 1 billion Window devices.” Microsoft also offers its “Dynamics 365 Customer Insights” data platform to help marketers package their own data to use on its ad platform. Activision engages in an array of ad practices that raise concerns about unfairness and privacy, from in-stream ads to “rewarded videos” to product placement. As it explains, “Activision Blizzard Media connects brands and players with fan-first integrated advertising experiences across gaming and esports…. We create user-initiated in-game advertising experiences that allow brands to reward 245M+ players at key moments of gameplay to drive reach, frequency and engagement…. In-game User-initiated video ads allow brands to reward players at key moments of gameplay.”In this context, the FTC needs to review all the third-party tracking YouTube-related companies serving ads to Activision Blizzard Esports, including Google Campaign Manager 360, Flashtalking, Adform, Innovid and Extreme Reach. For example, Flashtalking explains that it helps gaming services “drive customer lifetime value…, understand who bought your games, how they interact with your brand, and which touch points drove engagement.” Innovid helps marketers create “accurate, persistent identity across devices.” For measurement, which is also a privacy issue long overlooked by previous FTC commissions, we have Activision partners that include Oracle’s MOAT, Kantor, Google Campaign Manager, and others. Everything from potato chips, candy and toilet paper is pushed via its gaming services. Activision uses neuromarketing and other research-related online ad industry tactics to figure out how best to deliver marketing to its users (including teens)—all of which have privacy and consumer protection implications. For decades, the Federal Trade Commission has approved Big Tech mergers without examining their impact on consumer protection and privacy (and also on competition—think of all the Google and Facebook takeovers the commission has okayed). This is unacceptable. Gaming is a hugely important market, with a set of data-gathering tactics that impact both consumers and competition. We expect this FTC to do much better than what we have witnessed for the past several decades.
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Microsoft's further expansion into gaming, data gathering, digital marketing must trigger close scrutiny, inc. impacts on gamers, youth Microsoft’s 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 consumers’ and independent business’ right to repair game consoles, and lead to union busting and wage suppression, the groups said.“If the FTC clears this merger, Microsoft will become the third largest gaming company in the world,” the letter reads. “The proposed merger fits an alarming pattern of concentration in the gaming industry over the past several years. Microsoft’s 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.”In 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 that’s 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 workers’ rights and suppress wages.Microsoft’s move also has negative implications for data privacy and surveillance advertising. Adding Activision’s 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 Microsoft’s power to impinge on consumers’ right to repair their own video game equipment or to have it repaired by a service provider of their choice. Microsoft’s Xbox platform is already notoriously difficult to independently repair.
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The European Union’s 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
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Blog
The Big Data Merger Gold Rush to Control Your “Identity” Information
Will the DoJ ensure that both competition and consumer protection in data markets are addressed?
There is a digital data “gold rush” fever sweeping the data and marketing industry, as the quest to find ways to use data to determine a person’s “identity” for online marketing becomes paramount. This is triggered, in part, by the moves made by Google and others to replace “cookies” and other online identifiers with new, allegedly pro-privacy data-profiling methods to get the same results. We’ve 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 “powerful digital identity capabilities.” This is the latest in TransUnion’s 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, it’s 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, “identity is an actionable understanding of who or what is on the other end of every interaction and transaction.” Neustar’s “OneID system provides a single lens on the consumer across their dynamic omnichannel journey.” 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 “the average person has approximately 15 distinct identifiers with an average of 8 connected devices” (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 “Customer Scoring and Segmentation” system enables advertisers to identify and classify targets so they can “reach the right customer with the right message in the right markets.” Neustar has a robust data-driven ad-targeting system called AdAdvisor, which reaches 220 million adults in “virtually every household in the U.S.” AdAdvisor (link is external) “uses past behavior to predict likelihood of future behavior” and involves “thousands of data points available for online targeting” (including the use of “2 billion records a month from authoritative offline sources”). Its “Propensity Audiences” service helps marketers predict the behaviors of people, incorporating such information (link is external) as “customer-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 households”; and “credit information and household-level demographics, used to build profiles of the buying power, disposable income and access to credit a given household has available.” Neustar offers its customers the ability to reach “propensity audiences” 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 “level of investable assets,” including whether they have a pension or other retirement funds. One also can discover people who buy a certain kitty litter or candy bar—the list of AdAdvisor possibilities is far-reaching.Another AdAdvisor application, “ElementOne,” (link is external) comprises 172 segments that can be “leveraged in real time for both online and offline audience targeting.” 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 “Segment 058—high income rural younger renters with and without children—or “Segment 115—middle income city older home owners without children; or any Segment from 151-172 to reach “low income” Americans who are renters, homeowners, have or don’t 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 “10 billion daily location signals from 250+ million opted-in consumers.” 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 it’s not just consumers who Neustar tracks and targets. Companies can access its “HealthLink 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.”TransUnion 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 “TruAudience Marketing Solutions (link is external)” is built on a foundation of “insight into 98% of U.S. adults and more than 127 million homes, including 80 million connected homes.” Its “TruAudience Identity” product provides “a three-dimensional, omnichannel view of individuals, devices and households… [enabling] precise, scalable identity across offline, digital and streaming environments.” It offers marketers and others a method to secure what it terms is an “identity resolution,” (link is external) which is defined as “the process of matching identifiers across devices and touchpoints to a single profile [that] helps build a cohesive, omnichannel view of a consumer….”TransUnion, 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 isn’t the only company expanding what is called an “ID Graf (link is external)”—the 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 Justice—as opposed to the Federal Trade Commission—there isn’t 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, “It 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.”We 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 FTC—especially under the leadership of Chair Lina Khan—to play an important role evaluating this and similar transactions. There’s 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 “Pushing” Your Online Shopping Cart as You Buy Groceries? It’s Big Data, Machine Learning and Lots of Cash from Advertisers
The FTC and States Should Investigate “Grocery Tech”
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 “record” (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 it’s not a surprise that Instacart’s new (link is external) CEO comes from Facebook (link is external), and the company has also just hired that social network’s 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 Albertson’s (involving Google (link is external)) (link is external) and Hy-Vee (link is external) (also with Google). Albertson’s (link is external) (which includes the Safeway, Vons and Jewel-Osco divisions) deal with Google is designed to include “shoppable digital maps to make it easier for consumers to find and purchase products online; AI-powered conversation commerce” technologies for shopping, and “predictive grocery list building….” Similarly, Hy-Vee’s work with the Google Cloud will help enable “predictive (link is external) shopping carts,” among other services. (Hy-Vee is also one of the supermarket chains participating in the USDA’s 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 “featured products” 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 “chocolate ice cream” or just “ice cream,” and you have bought such ads, “your product can appear as one of the first products in the search result.” And even after “consumers place an order, we’ll 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.”But it’s all the data and connections to their consuming customers that is the real “secret sauce” for Instacart’s ad-targeting and influence operations. The company knows what’s in and out of everyone’s shopping carts, explaining that “Instacart tracks (link is external) the source or ‘path to cart’ for all items purchased through Instacart marketplace, differentiating between three main groups—items bought from search results, browsing departments, aisles, and other discovery areas of Instacart, or from a list of previous purchases, which we call ‘buy it again.’” As it explains, the “Instacart Ads solution (link is external)” offers “a full suite of advertising products that animate the entire customer journey—from search through purchase.” These include opportunities for marketers to become part of “the ‘buy it again’ 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 they’ve made before and items they tend to stock up on. Our brand partners can leverage Instacart Ads products to appear on ‘buy it again’ lists so they stay top of mind with their customers and aid in retaining valuable customers.”The company’s advertising blog discusses its use of what is increasingly the most valuable information a company can have—known as “first-party” data, where (allegedly) a consumer has given their consent to have all their information used. Instacart explains (link is external) this data “encompasses intent and purchase signals… from users signed up to an online grocery app,” and that it can be leveraged by its brand and advertising clients. The online ordering company explains that its “rich and diverse data sources” include “access to millions of orders over time from over 600 retail partners, across 45,000 stores, involving millions of households…. [A] tremendously valuable data set…this data is updated every night….” 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 goal—to enable its advertisers to better understand and take advantage of what it terms “basket affinities.” In a webinar, Instacart defined (link is external) that concept:Basket affinities helps Instacart, and its brand partners, to create consumer ‘types’, discover product interactions, understand mission-dominant baskets, and identify trigger products — 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 ‘basket affinity’ 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 “aggregates and anonymizes” 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 “closed loop” service “where ads are served to consumers in the same ‘space’ any resulting sales occur.” 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 ‘discovery surface’ 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 — meaning it’s 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 “optimize” 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 what’s 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) Albertson’s (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 don’t want to have to “drop” our privacy and autonomy when we shop in the 21st Century. -
Blog
Surveillance Marketing Industry Claims Future of an “Open Internet” Requires Massive Data Gathering
New ways to take advantage of your “identity” 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 “privacy-friendly” approaches to ad targeting, which include ending the use of what are called “third-party” 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 “end” 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 EU’s 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) don’t 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 are—our “identity”—including through the use of AI, machine learning and data clouds (link is external). “Unified ID 2.0” 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 “Open (link is external) Internet” be preserved. His argument, of course, is a digital déjà vu version of what media moguls have said in the U.S. dating back to commercial radio in the 1930’s. 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 1990’s 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 happen—and 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 2.0—called Solimar (see video (link is external) here). Solimar uses “an artificial intelligence tool called Koa (link is external), which makes suggestions” 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 “Koa Identity (link is external) Alliance,” a “cross-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.” This system, they say, creates an effective way for marketers to develop a data portrait of individual consumers. It’s useful to hear what companies such as The Trade Desk say as we evaluate claims that “big data” consumer surveillance operations are essential for a democratically structured Internet. In its most recent Annual Report (link is external), the company explains that “Through 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 (‘CTV’)…. 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.” And here’s how The Trade Desk’s Koa’s process is described in the trade publication Campaign (link is external) Asia: …clients 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 ‘active UID2s’, 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 “identity solutions”—including 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 significant—how will the Internet evolve in terms of privacy, and will its core “DNA” be ever-growing forms of surveillance and manipulation? How do we decide the most privacy-protective ways to ensure meaningful monetization of online content—and 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. That’s why it’s 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 “first-party” data). A key question, given today’s 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 “clean” 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, discrimination and privacy violations. Information about what we like, our purchases, mental and physical health, sexual orientation, location and political views are collected, combined and used under the guise of targeting advertising. In a new report, the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC) sheds light on the negative consequences that this commercial surveillance has on 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. In the US, legislators should seize the opportunity to enact comprehensive privacy legislation that protects consumers. - The collection and combination of information about us not only violates our right to privacy, but renders us vulnerable to manipulation, discrimination and fraud. This harms individuals and society as a whole, says the director of digital policy in the NCC, Finn Myrstad. 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. For example, The European Parliament and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) have already called for phasing out and banning surveillance-based advertising. A coalition of consumer and civil rights organizations in the United States has called for a similar ban. Significant consequences The NCC report ’Time to ban surveillance-based advertising’ exposes a variety of harmful consequences that surveillance-based advertising can have on individuals and on society: 1. Manipulation Companies with comprehensive and intimate knowledge about us can shape their messages in attempts to reach us when we are susceptible, for example to influence elections or to advertise weight loss products, unhealthy food or gambling. 2. Discrimination The opacity and automation of surveillance-based advertising systems increase the risk of discrimination, for example by excluding consumers based on income, gender, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation, location, or by making certain consumers pay more for products or services. 3. Misinformation The lack of control over where ads are shown can promote and finance false or malicious content. This also poses significant challenges to publishers and advertisers regarding revenue, reputational damage, and opaque supply chains. 4. Undermining competition The surveillance business model favours companies that collect and process information across different services and platforms. This makes it difficult for smaller actors to compete, and negatively impacts companies that respect consumers’ fundamental rights. 5. Security risks When thousands of companies collect and process enormous amounts of personal data, the risk of identity theft, fraud and blackmail increases. NATO has described this data collection as a national security risk. 6. Privacy violations 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 may be used. - It is very difficult to justfy the negative consequences of this system. A ban will contribute to a healthier marketplace that helps protect individuals and society, Myrstad comments. 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.
