GOOGLE BEGGING FOR TROUBLE

It was revealed this week in a front page headline story in The Wall Street Journal that for the past year Google has been engaged in a secret project that has thus far yielded them the health records of tens of millions of people in 21 states.

According to the Journal..."The data involved in the initiative... amounts to a complete health history, including patient names and dates of birth... Neither patients nor doctors have been notified. At least 150 Google employees already have access to much of the data on tens of millions of patients...."

Keep in mind...

   - Google owns YouTube which recently paid $170 million to settle a case concerning the illegal collection of data about children to use in ad targeting.

   - Google intentionally hid a flaw in its now defunct Google+ platform that allowed the leakage of personal information on hundreds of thousands of their subscribers. The Journal claims they hid the flaw to avoid regulatory scrutiny.

It seems unlikely that consumers will be happy to find that a company with Google's record of irresponsibility and exploitation is in possession of their most personal health records. As for regulators, the fact that this program was done at all is alarming. The fact that it was done in secret is likely to be toxic.

The person who blew the whistle on the secret program had this to say..."With a deal as sensitive as the transfer of the personal data of more than 50 million Americans to Google the oversight should be extensive...Two simple questions kept hounding me: did patients know about the transfer of their data to the tech giant? Should they be informed and given a chance to opt in or out?

Perhaps the most disturbing part of this story is that everything was done in secret. Why in secret? Because it's Google.

Let's not forget what business Google is in. About 85% of their revenue and probably over 90% of their profit comes from advertising. As an obdurate blogweasel once said, "Advertising has gone from a minor annoyance to a major menace."

 Adweek reports that in a recent Pew survey four out of five people said that the risks of data collection by marketers outweigh the benefits.

Oh, and has all the relentless prattle about privacy and security by the marketing industry made consumers feel better? "70% of respondents said they believe their personal data is less secure than it was five years ago."

This happened despite the platform crashing because of exceptionally high demand.

What the "TV is dead" imbeciles don't seem to understand is that there's a difference between industry internals and consumer behavior. Regardless of cord-cutting and network share erosion, people still love to sit on their asses and watch television.

The fact that new and old delivery systems keep playing whack-a-mole with audience shares may be interesting to us, but is of no concern to real people. Distribution methodologies mean nothing to consumers. They want it simple, cheap, and entertaining. How the signal gets to their TV set is of no interest to them.

New streaming services are being born and re-organized every day. According to CNBC, here is the current line-up of major streaming services: Netflix, Hulu, HBO, CBS All Access, ESPN+, DAZN, Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime, and Disney+. Meanwhile, NBC is preparing to launch its ad-supported "Peacock" streaming service by selling $25 million ad packages to advertisers. Yup, that TV thing sure looks dead to me.

The marketing war over streaming TV is just beginning. It's gonna be fun. We'll all be dead long before TV is.

According to a piece in AdAge this week, "agencies are increasingly questioning its worth and its role as their public defender..."  The article cites McCann as one of the agencies that is balking at re-upping in 2020.

When I was an agency ceo I found the 4As to be a valuable resource that I called on frequently. It's disheartening to see what's happened.

As far as I'm concerned for the past few years the 4As has been on the wrong side of every major issue -- privacy, transparency, and ad fraud.

   - When the current administration set out to kill a proposed FTC regulation that would limit the ability of telecom companies to collect personal information about subscribers without informed consent, the 4As supported killing the regulation.

   - Their response to the ANA's accusations of "pervasive" agency kickbacks was pathetic and unconvincing.

   - They have been mostly invisible on the issue of ad fraud, supporting the delusional reports of the IAB and the ANA.

This will go down as an era of important issues of integrity in which the 4As punted.

Turning now to other unpleasant 4As news, earlier in the week I wrote about a mean-spirited, self-serving article written by 4As Chair Greg Stern that appeared in Campaign. You can read the piece here.

I'm headed off to Warsaw and London to do some yapping in a couple of weeks. More about this next time.

For Bob's website go here. For info on having Bob speak, go here.
For all previous newsletters go here.  For Bob's blog go here.