Advertising

A broadcasting organization backed by the federal government has used Facebook to target ads at United States citizens, in potential violation of longstanding laws meant to protect Americans from domestic propaganda. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which typically broadcasts to audiences in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, bought several ads on Facebook in recent days that were targeted at users in the United States. The ads included several human-interest stories about Russia and a graphic about NATO’s popularity.

Longtime John Bolton adviser Mark Groombridge says that Bolton needed billionaire Robert Mercer’s attention and support — so badly, Bolton spent more than $1 million of his John Bolton Super PAC’s money on “comically bad” data from Mercer’s now-defunct voter profiling firm, Cambridge Analytica, which Mercer backed financially.. Mercer pumped $5 million into the John Bolton Super PAC from 2014 to 2017, the largest sum of any single donor.

 AT&T now owns an internet service provider, a cellular service provider, a satellite cable TV provider, and Time Warner media properties including CNN and HBO. With AppNexus, AT&T controls a programmatic advertising network it can use to plaster ads on the web, within mobile apps, and on television. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson put it plainly: “AT&T has an amazing amount of data,” but he added that his company didn’t have a “very targeted advertising approach.” Tapping into customer insight from media properties in combination with its telecom business could be the key.

DC Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s appellate court decisions and public comments suggest that he will accelerate the trend toward a political system dominated by wealthy elites — often operating in the shadows, without any form of disclosure. At a March 2016 event at the American Enterprise Institute, Kavanaugh was asked point-blank if he believes that “money spent during campaigns does represent speech, and therefore deserves First Amendment protection.” His answer: “Absolutely.” In 2009, Kavanaugh authored an opinion in a case called EMILY’s List v.

Secret donors financed more than four out of every 10 television ads that outside groups broadcast in 2018 to influence November’s high-stakes congressional elections. Leading the way: organizations affiliated with billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, whose conservative donor network plows hundreds of millions of dollars into politics and policy debates each election cycle.

Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) hosted a press conference July 11 to call for the Federal Communications Commission to convert its children's television notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) into a notice of inquiry (NOI) so it can collect more data on the impact of its proposals. He was joined by Sen Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and other children's TV advocates.

Mail.Ru Group, a Russian internet company with links to the Kremlin, was among the firms to which Facebook gave an extension which allowed them to collect data on unknowing users of the social network after a policy change supposedly stopped such collection. Facebook said apps developed by Mail.Ru Group were being looked at as part of the company's wider investigation into the misuse of Facebook user data in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Mail.Ru Group developed hundreds of Facebook apps, some of which were test apps that were not made public.

When AT&T officially closed its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, it spun up advertising as one of four core pillars of its newly expanded business. Over the next few years, that business could grow into a beast tough enough to fight off the digital ad giants of the world. Though linear television is experiencing some secular decline, it’s still a massive advertising magnet. Before the merger, AT&T had access to a modest amount of ad inventory through its DirecTV platform.

Change is coming to HBO, now that it is part of the AT&T corporate family. John Tankey is a longtime AT&T executive who now oversees HBO in his new role as chief executive of Warner Media. He told employees that HBO would have to become more like a streaming giant to thrive in the new media landscape. Stankey described a future in which HBO would substantially increase its subscriber base and the number of hours that viewers spend watching its shows.

Privacy policies from companies including Facebook, Google and Amazon don’t fully meet the requirements of th European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), according to the pan-European consumer group BEUC. An analysis of policies from 14 of the largest internet companies shows they use unclear language, claim “potentially problematic” rights, and provide insufficient information for users to judge what they are agreeing to.