Advertising

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), a massive trade group that represents companies on all sides of the digital ads ecosystem, is about to get a whole lot more involved in tech policy discussions on Capitol Hill. IAB has tapped Lartease Tiffith, an Amazon public policy executive and former aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, to lead its policy shop. And Tiffith plans to make the group’s presence known.

Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) sent a letter to United States Attorney General Merrick Garland and Gary Gensler, Chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), urging the Department of Justice (DOJ) and SEC to open criminal and civil investigations into Facebook to determine if the company or its executives violated US wire fraud and securities laws.

The Strategic Organizing Center (SOC) submitted a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission "alleging [Amazon] is unlawfully deceiving millions of consumers." According to the complaint, Amazon is doing so by "failing to 'clearly and conspicuously' disclose which of its search engine results are paid advertisements rather than 'organic' search results." SOC stated it has conducted an analysis of over 130,000 Amazon product search results and found that the company was "substantially or entirely out of compliance with all the FTC's specific guidelines for the visual identification of online

Newspapers all over the country have been quietly filing antitrust lawsuits against Google and Facebook for the past year, alleging the two firms monopolized the digital ad market for revenue that would otherwise go to local news. What started as a small-town effort to take a stand against Big Tech has turned into a national movement, with over 200 newspapers involved across dozens of states.

The lead committee in the European Parliament writing new tech rules passed measures that could impact major US and European tech companies. Lawmakers voted to approve measures in the draft Digital Markets Act that could mean: 

Reps Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Peter Welch (D-VT), and John Yarmuth (D-KY) introduced the Fair and Clear Campaign (FCC) Transparency Act (H.R.5897) to require the Federal Communications Commission to modernize reporting requirements related to political advertising aired by broadcasters by making reports machine-readable. The FCC currently requires TV and radio broadcast stations to publicly report broadcast time sold or given away for political advertising.

Investment bank Morgan Stanley published the results of its ninth annual broadband and wireless survey on Oct 18. Among the findings were that only 4% of respondents cited “innovative technology” such as 5G as an important factor in their choice of service. That number was unchanged from the previous year’s survey—despite an unremitting onslaught of marketing from wireless carriers and device makers for the next-gen wireless standard. Customers appear to be driven more by old-fashion promotions than cutting-edge technology.

Facebook is struggling to detect and deal with users’ creating multiple accounts on its flagship platform, according to internal documents that raise new questions about how the social-media giant measures its audience. An internal Facebook presentation in spring 2021 called the phenomenon of single users with multiple accounts “very prevalent” among new accounts. The finding came after an examination of roughly 5,000 recent sign-ups on the service indicated that at least 32 percent and as many as 56 percent were opened by existing users.

This study, commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and led by a researcher from Harvard Business School, assesses the impact of the internet on US gross domestic product (GDP). Key findings: