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WIRED: "BAN TARGETED ADVERTISING"
This week, Wired published a provocative article entitled "Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising?" The article makes a pretty good case for the awfulness and dangers of "microtargeting." But the problem with the article is its premise.
We can't "just ban targeted advertising." All advertising is targeted. Long before the internet was invented Clairol targeted women, Old Spice targeted men, and Taco Bell targeted imbeciles. Anyone who buys a spot on an NFL game, an ad in Vogue, or a banner on Oprah's website is targeting.
Banning targeted advertising is simply not reasonable or possible. But the good news is that remedying Wired's assertion that "targeted advertising is at the heart of everything wrong with the internet" does not necessitate the banning of targeted advertising.
The real issue isn't targeting. The issue is tracking -- the collection and exploitation of personal, private information about individuals without their knowledge or informed consent. If legitimate privacy rights were being defended and protected, and tracking (online surveillance) were banned, the type of dangerous advertising Wired is railing against would not be possible. Neither would a lot of other dangerous activities. Don't ban targeting, ban tracking.
The other mistake the article makes is giving credence to the utilitarian argument made by advocates for the current system of online spying. They claim that tracking makes advertising more efficient and more effective.
As I said in (Plug Alert) Advertising For Skeptics, "So what? Since when did the convenience of marketers become more important than the privacy rights of citizens?"
Privacy? Gloom And Doom On Zoom
There's more bad news on privacy. One of the big winners and, to their credit, one of the most useful apps for businesses during the Covid-19 crisis has been the video conferencing app Zoom. But there's a big problem.
In a piece this week, the great Doc Searls explains how Zoom reserves the right to monetize everything it learns about your behavior from your video conferences. As Doc says, "...Zoom is in a position to gather plenty of personal data, some of it very intimate (for example with a shrink talking to a patient) without anyone in the conversation knowing about it."
Doc goes on to say, "What Zoom’s current privacy policy says is worse than 'You don’t have any privacy here.' It says, 'We expose your virtual necks to data vampires who can do what they will with it.'"
And speaking of data vampires, Vice says, "the iOS version of the Zoom app is sending some analytics data to Facebook, even if Zoom users don't have a Facebook account."
I highly recommend you read Doc's piece. Not just for info about Zoom, but for a general feel for what's going on in the dangerous world of online surveillance.
Watching Porn? Your Boss Is Watching You
And then there's this... Not that you'd ever actually watch porn, but for those sick bastards that do, here's a tip. According to Bloomberg News, "Bosses Panic-Buy Spy Software to Keep Tabs on Remote Workers."
So if you're jerking from home...sorry, working from home...be careful. According to the CEO of a surveillance software company, “Companies have been scrambling...” to buy spyware to keep track of employee online activity while they're supposed to be working.
Bloomberg reports that one financial company told its employees, "We’re capturing your keystrokes. We’re logging the websites you visit. Every 10 minutes or so, we’re taking a screen shot."
Cartoon of the Week
From the great Tom Fishburne...
SAYING NO TO GOOGLE
Last week I wrote about how the pathetic ad industry was being bullied by Facebook and Google into abandoning decades of reasonable integrity by accepting the duopoly's unaudited (and sometimes ludicrous) metrics without independent third party verification.
According to Digiday, some advertisers are starting to fight back. This week they reported that "the head of display at a U.S. based retailer recently decided they would not buy ads from the world’s largest online ad marketplace...They wanted granular log-level data about the programmatic bids they won and lost ...but Google said no."
The executive charged that Google is "not willing to give us any transparency or data" on certain of its activities. They moved their programmatic advertising outside of Google's network. The result? "We benefited from much stronger CPMs...It doesn’t make sense to continue pumping money into Google when we could reach our top publishers through other exchanges...”
According to the article several big advertisers including P&G, the world's largest advertiser, are moving programmatic buys out of the Google network. One tech exec said, “There are several big programmatic spenders that are saying to Google if you don’t share more granular data with us then I’m going to take my money elsewhere to someone who will."
Tweet of the Week
From the great Rory Sutherland, here's an observation that reminds us of the amazing but widely taken-for-granted miracle that biological adaptation has bestowed on us.
Brand Purpose Update
OK, marketing and advertising people, here's a chance to do some good. As we know, hundreds of thousands of people have been laid off across the country because of the effects of Covid-19 on the economy. There's not much we can do about that.
But there is something we can do to help our industry, and our democracy. Local news is one of the backbones of a democratic society. According to CNN hundreds of reporters from local news organizations have been laid off in the past few weeks because of falling revenues.
How about taking some of the advertising dollars you're lavishing on Facebook and Google and spreading them around the local media - newspapers, radio, television - in your market? It will do your business good, do our industry good, and do your country good. Car dealers, you listening?
Second Best Tweet of the Week
Sorry, (Plug Alert) sometimes I can't help myself.
Sheltering-In-Place
I know some bosses who have been practicing social distancing for years -- locking themselves in their offices and never getting within 6 feet of an employee.
Yawn...
I have way too much time on my hands... What's amazing is that all the things I couldn't get myself to do when I was really busy are the same things I can't get myself to do now that I have all the time in the world.
Would someone please start the baseball season?
