Advertising

Here is a nice summary article. 

Apparently, Alphabet’s Google has proposed overhauling its shopping search results so that rivals can bid for space to display products for sale, as part of the company's efforts to comply with the European Union’s antitrust order. Under the proposal, Google would bid against rivals to display products for sale in the space above its general search results, apparently. Google would set itself a price cap that it wouldn’t be able to bid above, but competitors could do so if they wished. Rival shopping sites have hit back, saying an auction-based remedy wouldn’t assuage the EU regulator’s demands that the company treat its competitors’ offerings and its own shopping service equally.

Until the week of Sept 11, Facebook enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History of ‘why jews ruin the world.’”

To test if these ad categories were real, ProPublica paid $30 to target those groups with three “promoted posts” — in which a ProPublica article or post was displayed in their news feeds. Facebook approved all three ads within 15 minutes. After ProPublica contacted Facebook, it removed the anti-Semitic categories — which were created by an algorithm rather than by people — and said it would explore ways to fix the problem, such as limiting the number of categories available or scrutinizing them before they are displayed to buyers.

A group of digital advertising and marketing organizations has come together to condemn Apple for what the coalition says is a “unilateral and heavy-handed approach” to user privacy on Mac. The group fears that Apple, which has started taking more extreme measures to reduce ad tracking on both the mobile and now desktop versions of Safari, is unfairly exercising its muscle in a way that could snuff out an entire segment of the ad industry.

The open letter, published by six leading advertising trade groups, is in response to a new macOS feature Apple calls Intelligent Tracking Prevention, or ITP. Introduced back at WWDC in June, ITP uses machine learning algorithms to identify tracking behavior on the company’s Safari browser, like the presence of persistent cookies from third-party ad networks, and imposes a strict 24-hour time limit on those tracking tools’ lifespans. Apple unveiled the new feature by saying, “It’s not about blocking ads, but your privacy is protected.”

[Commentary] The Sept. 9 Digest item “Ex-IRS official won’t be charged in scandal” noted that the ex-Internal Revenue Service official will not be charged in the “mistreatment of conservative groups during the 2010 and 2012 elections.” However, the real big scandal here is the undermining of our democratic process by the IRS fostering a tsunami of “dark money” in our elections.

With the decision in Citizens United, our elections have been swamped by an increased flood of money, but the Supreme Court’s decision was based on the premise that the electorate would be informed as to who was trying to influence it and could then make its own decision. That is not the case with the IRS procedure here, which does not require any transparency as to the identity of the true donors. The names given, such as Crossroads GPS and Organizing for Action, lack such transparency. While the Communications Act and long- established Federal Communications Commission rules require disclosure of the identity of the sponsors in political or controversial-issue ads, the FCC has failed to enforce the act or rules. That is the scandal, and it applies to the FCC under its present chairman and his predecessor.

Facebook’s enormous audience has long been catnip to advertisers. But the company’s vast ecosystem has come under scrutiny in 2017 from major brands, which are increasingly sensitive to the possibility of inadvertently showing up next to objectionable content. In response to those concerns, Facebook released a new set of rules that outline the types of videos and articles that it will bar from running ads. It also said it would begin disclosing new information to advertisers about where their messages appear on the platform and on external apps and sites it is partners with.

The rules, which will be enforced by a mix of automation and human review, restrict ads from content that depicts, among other topics, real-world tragedies, “debatable social issues,” misappropriation of children’s show characters, violence, nudity, gore, drug use and derogatory language. Facebook is extending the guidelines immediately to videos — which the company hopes will become an increasingly lucrative part of its business — and, in the coming months, to articles.

We now know that a Russian organization spent two years trying to influence American voters using Facebook. Here are the questions Facebook has yet to answer and why it matters:
What were the demographics of the users who saw the ads, and how were they targeted?
What were the 470 accounts connected to the ad campaign?
What was in the ads, and what types of ads were they?
Was there any overlap between the content used by the Russian campaign and other known campaigns?

Russian operatives hiding behind false identities used Facebook’s event management tool to remotely organize and promote political protests in the US, including an August 2016 anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rally in Idaho. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the social-media giant “shut down several promoted events as part of the takedown we described last week.” The company declined to elaborate, except to confirm that the events were promoted with paid ads. (This is the first time the social media giant has publicly acknowledged the existence of such events.)

The Facebook events—one of which echoed Islamophobic conspiracy theories pushed by pro-Trump media outlets—are the first indication that the Kremlin’s attempts to shape America’s political discourse moved beyond fake news and led unwitting Americans into specific real-life action.

[Commentary] Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg should publicly testify under oath before Congress on his company’s capabilities to influence the political process, be it Russian meddling or anything else. If the company is as powerful as it promises advertisers, it should be held accountable. And if it’s not, then we need to stop fretting so much about it. Either way, threats to entire societies should be reckoned with publicly by those very societies and not confined to R&D labs and closed-door briefings. If democracy can be gamed from a laptop, that shouldn’t be considered a trade secret.

[Commentary] Facebook revealed that during the 2016 presidential campaign it sold more than $100,000 in ads to a Kremlin-linked “troll farm” seeking to influence US voters. An additional $50,000 in ads also appear suspect but were less verifiably linked to the Russian government. In the grand — at this point, far too grand — scheme of campaign spending, $150,000 doesn’t sound like much. It’s a minor TV ad buy, perhaps, or a wardrobe makeover for one vice-presidential candidate. But in the context of Facebook, it matters quite a bit. Not just for what it might have done to the election but also for what it says about us.

Russia spent at least $100,000 on Facebook ads because of Americans’ known susceptibility to partisan division, our willingness to outsource the work of analysis to social-media algorithms and our tendency to not think too hard about what we see. No, the money isn’t minor. But the real problem is us.