June 2014

Trust In Advertising -- Paid, Owned And Earned

In a recent Nielsen global study, all forms of paid advertising -- TV, print, digital, radio -- showed a gap in the "trust factor," with a majority of respondents reporting that they don’t trust each type much or at all.

Conversely, and not surprisingly, “recommendations from people I know” scored highest on trust, with 92 percent of consumers trusting this source completely or somewhat. Owned media, such as brand websites, scored higher than paid advertising but lower than social recommendations. Yet advertising as a medium continues to thrive, with ad dollars on the rise globally and in many markets around the world.

Since trust in advertising lays along continuum that moves from earned (highest trust), to owned, then paid (lowest trust), it stands to reason that brands should want more earned and owned. But can paid be given up completely? We need to start thinking of how paid, owned and earned can work together to improve trust and deliver better results.

Marketers continue to discuss them as if they are mutually exclusive media. They’re not. And now technology is blurring the lines of paid, owned and earned media more than ever. Paid can now also be social, as social is often about paid. Owned can have paid embedded media in it. And sometimes, all three can exist in one consumer touchpoint.

Office of Engineering And Technology Seeks Comment On Measurements Of LTE Into DTV Interference

The Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) seeks to supplement the record in the incentive auction proceeding by inviting comment on measurements of wireless Long-Term Evolution (LTE) interference into digital television (DTV) receivers conducted by OET engineers. The OET seeks comment on this matter.

What if the FCC is the wrong agency to handle net neutrality?

Is the Federal Communications Commission the wrong agency to handle matters of net neutrality and Internet openness? That's what some in Congress and elsewhere are suggesting. Instead, they say, ensuring that Internet providers don't abuse their network operator roles should be a matter for the Federal Trade Commission and antitrust law.

In a hearing, members of the House Judiciary Committee grilled current and former federal officials over the possibility of letting the FTC take on the punishing of broadband companies that have harmed consumers.

"Do you believe the FTC would be effective at protecting the competitive interest?" asked Rep Jason Smith (R-MO). Former Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell and current FTC commissioner Joshua Wright told the committee that using the FTC to regulate companies after the fact would be enough and that the FCC does not need to regulate Internet service providers (ISPs).

So far, there's been no evidence of a market failure that would require the FCC's preemptive regulation, they said. But network neutrality advocate Tim Wu testified in the hearing that looking at Internet policy solely through the lens of antitrust law would ignore the non-economic harms that Internet providers could wreak on the Internet, such as suppressing speech and limiting diversity.

House votes to rein in NSA ‘back door’ surveillance powers

By an overwhelming margin, the House passed a funding bill that among other things would significantly rein in intelligence agencies' ability to search through data they have collected and stop them from placing secret "back doors" into software and hardware products.

The bill includes an amendment, sponsored by Reps Thomas Massie (R-KY), Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), that adds the new restrictions.

The bill passed on a 340-to-73 vote. The amendment was passed in a 293-to-123 vote that surprised even those who have supported greater limits on the National Security Agency's powers.

The 2015 defense appropriations bill still needs to get worked out with the Senate, where the amendment's prospects are uncertain. If passed as-is by the Senate, the bill would block the government from doing two things: search government databases for information on a US citizen without a warrant, and force an organization to build into its product any technical "back door" that would assist the CIA or NSA with electronic surveillance. The amendment would bar the use of funds for searching an American's communications under this authority without a warrant.

Government officials contend that they are not required to obtain a warrant to search on data acquired lawfully. To do so would be a burden that would impair intelligence investigations, they say. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2011 reversed a previous ban on such warrantless searches.

The amendment would also block the NSA and the CIA from asking or requiring a person to "alter its product or service to permit the electronic surveillance" of users -- essentially a ban on back doors in software and hardware.

Senate Dems to Obama: Don't wait for us on NSA

A trio of Senate Democrats says President Barack Obama should end contested National Security Agency (NSA) operations immediately, without waiting for Congress.

In a letter, the same day the agency’s legal authority to continue collecting Americans’ phone records comes up for court renewal, Democratic Sens Mark Udall (CO), Ron Wyden (OR) and Martin Heinrich (NM) said that President Obama should use the powers he has now.

“We believe the way to restore Americans’ constitutional rights and their trust in our intelligence community is to immediately end the practice of vacuuming up the phone records of huge numbers of innocent Americans every day and permit the government to obtain only the phone records of people actually connected to terrorism or other nefarious activity,” they wrote.

“More comprehensive congressional action is vital, but the executive branch need not wait for Congress to end the dragnet collection of millions of Americans' phone records for a number of reasons." The Obama Administration will likely ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to renew the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records for 90 days.

The Senate is currently debating legislation to end that program and require the government get a court order to search records held by phone companies.

Little privacy in the age of big data

[Commentary] In the era of big data, the battle for privacy has already been fought and lost -- personal data is routinely collected and traded in the new economy and there are few effective controls over how it is used or secured.

Data researchers and analysts now say that it’s time for legislation to reclaim some of that privacy and ensure that any data that is collected remains secure.

“We have become the product,” says Rob Livingstone, a fellow of the University of Technology and the head of a business advisory firm.

However, Livingstone says the dilemma facing regulators is how they can regulate the collection, storage and trading of personal data on the on the Internet, when all of these activities, and the corporations themselves, operate across multiple continents and jurisdictions. The task of reclaiming some semblance of privacy is all the more urgent because the rate at which personal data is being collected is accelerating.

The buzz around big data is attracting millions of dollars of from investors and brands hoping to turn a profit, while intelligence agencies are also furiously collecting information about our online activities for much different purposes. And alongside these, there’s also the black market operators that make millions of dollars a year out of things like identity theft and matching disparate data sets across the web to help identify people who might be suitable targets for a scam.

[Porter is an award-winning freelance journalist, editor of PC Mag Australia]

Local cops can track your phone, and the government doesn’t want you to know how

[Commentary] Police departments around the country increasingly are using sophisticated technology to surveil American citizens by monitoring cellphone data, in many cases carefully hiding those activities from the public and the press.

The American Civil Liberties Union, along with The Associated Press and USA Today, have all done important work recently to shine a light in the surveillance shadows. Local news outlets, including some here in Florida, have also done valuable reporting on the use of the technology, which offers investigative benefits but also raises constitutional concerns. It’s vital that a close look at these surveillance practices continues.

Local journalists in particular have an opportunity to serve their readers by building on the work that’s been done -- work that has raised serious questions about an area of high public interest, and already has had demonstrated impact.

But it’s vital, too, to understand the government secrecy that has surrounded these techniques --and how the relationships between local police and state and federal agencies, which sometimes supply the equipment, challenge public records laws. It’s going to take a multipronged media attack to get around that secrecy and learn more about what law enforcement agencies at all levels are doing.

German publishers want Google to pay 11 percent for quoting them

Several of Germany's largest newspaper and magazine publishers have instituted legal proceedings against Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

They're seeking an order that would make the search engines pay them an 11 percent portion of their "gross sales, including foreign sales” that come “directly and indirectly from making excerpts from online newspapers and magazines public." That's according to new media pundit Jeff Jarvis, who published a blog post calling the demands "as absurd as they are cynical and dangerous" and part of a German "war on the link."

The move appears to be an attempt to achieve in courts what the publishers were not able to get through the German legislative process in 2013.

Google Buys Alpental to Gain Fast Wireless Technology

Google bought wireless-communications startup Alpental Technologies in its bid to extend fast Internet service to more places. Alpental was started by former Clearwire engineers including Michael Hart and Pete Gelbman.

The company was developing a cheap, high-speed communications service using the 60GHz band of spectrum, according to a letter the Alpental engineers wrote to the Federal Communications Commission in 2013.

The 60GHz band has been used for high-capacity networking indoors and to extend fiber-optic Internet service from one commercial building to others nearby. The Federal Communications Commision loosened some rules governing this band of spectrum in 2013, saying that it could be used to provide wireless connections of up to a mile at speeds up to seven gigabits per second. That could extend service without the cost of building new wireline networks in some areas, the FCC said in August. Most broadband Internet services offer much slower speeds, below one gigabit per second.

Annual Wireless Industry Survey

How much do you know about the wireless industry's tremendously important impact in our lives, whether it's through the economy, innovation, competition, environmental and other societal benefits?

We've assembled numerous facts from a variety of sources in our Resource Library, but here are some quick facts that provide an overview of the importance of the US wireless industry:

1. The economic impact of bringing 500 MHz of spectrum (per the FCC's National Broadband Plan) to market by 2020 is $87 billion increase in US GDP; at least 350,000 new US jobs; additional $23.4 billion in government revenues; and $13.1 billion increase in wireless applications and content sales.

US providers invested $94 per subscriber while the rest of the world spent $16.
For every $1 invested in wireless broadband, it will create an additional $7-10 for US GDP.
The US wireless industry is valued at $195.5 billion, which is larger than publishing, agriculture, hotels and lodging, air transportation, motion picture and recording and motor vehicle manufacturing industry segments. It rivals the computer system design service and oil and gas extraction industries.
The wireless industry directly/indirectly employs more than 3.8 million Americans, which accounts for 2.6% of all US employment. In addition, wireless employees are paid 65% higher than the national average for other workers.
The app economy employs 519,000 developers and related jobs and grew into a $10 billion industry.

2. Thanks to the US wireless companies constant innovation and competition to remain the world's mobile industry leader, America's users benefit.

While US consumers represent only 5 percent of the world’s wireless connections, we comprise 50 percent of the world’s 4G/LTE connections. This number is more than double the share of second ranking Japan and almost triple the share of third ranking South Korea.
More than 89 percent of US inhabitants have mobile broadband subscriptions compared to 62 percent in all OECD countries.
US wireless consumers use five times more voice and almost twice as much data with 75 percent faster data speeds than our counterparts in the EU.

Benton

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