About real-time bidding (RTB) in web marketing

Sectoral law again. I wish the US would get over this.

A short case study covering what happened with Raspberry Pi on the Fediverse.

Meta may have to rethink its ad model (again) in the next month.

Botmasters have created a Kafkaesque system where companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots. And everyone is fine with this.

Ad exec with his head on straight. Rare.

A new research paper written by a team of academics and computer scientists from Spain and Austria has demonstrated that it’s possible to use Facebook’s targeting tools to deliver an ad exclusively to a single individual if you know enough about the interests Facebook’s platform assigns them. The paper — entitled Unique on Facebook: Formulation […]

We know targeted political adverts contribute to polarisation, but commerical ones leave us fragmented too.

Companies like Facebook aren’t building technology for you, they’re building technology for your data. They collect everything they can from FB, Instagram, and WhatsApp in order to sell visibility into people and their lives.This isn’t exactly a secret, but the full picture is hazy to most – diml...

Let’s just say it leaves a lot to be desired

Just two months after running a full-page ad decrying Apple’s impending updates, Facebook is rolling out another campaign meant to defend the targeted ads that make up about 98% of its multi-billion dollar revenue stream.

We may be in the middle of a  process of redesigning how the web economy functions. Considerations include web advertisements. Such works involve many actors. Some big platforms. Some web browser vendors. Some ads companies, with a modest list of analysts or researchers keeping a close eye. I believe it’

Facebook is worried that users won't opt in to tracking when given the choice.

On adtech.

Twitter says this helps it "continue operating as a free service."

One firm promised to “use every tool and take every advantage available in order to change reality according to our client's wishes.”

If you don’t protect your users’ data, they’ll find a company who will.

The scheme, dubbed “DiCaprio,” shows how common ad fraud has become in the connected TV industry.

No one likes being stalked around the Internet by adverts. It’s the uneasy joke you can’t enjoy laughing at. Yet vast people-profiling ad businesses have made pots of money off of an unregulated Internet by putting surveillance at their core. But what if creepy ads don’t work as claimed? What if all the filthy lucre […]

Understanding how the largest technology companies collect, use, and share user information across the internet.

I don't mind letting your programs see my private data as long as I get something useful in exchange. But that's not what happens. A forme...

They’re shaping our market, our democracy—our entire reality. If we’re going to fix them, we need to understand them.

Seemingly simple mobile games made us all way too comfortable with giving away our personal information.

Everything you watch, everywhere you go.

Two sample algorithms reached the same conclusion naturally: They should collude.

He said Facebook users want tailored ads. According to our research, that’s not true.

Device fingerprinting.

Ad fraud, fake news, etc.

Tech companies say consumers prefer being shown ads that are relevant to them. But a professor’s research shows they trade data for those ads not because of convenience but resignation.

In the 1990s, Silicon Valley promised a global virtual community that would level hierarchies and empower individuals. Instead, we wound up with a habit-forming outrage machine that spies on us. What went wrong?

Facebook has always sold data to advertisers, and it probably always will.

Takes on the "but it's conVEEEEEEEEEnient!" argument head-on.

It's not just Facebook: Android and iOS’s App Stores have incentivized an app economy where free apps make money by selling your personal data and location history to advertisers.

How Questionable Data-Sharing Practices And A Healthy Dose Of Hubris Helped Bring Down One Of The Most Well-Known Players In Ad Tech The Rocket Fuel brand is dead and buried, the founders long gone, its tech sold off to Sizmek for a song and the code completely rewritten. An ad tech unicorn that courted top... Continue reading »

Interviews with over a dozen current and former Google employees highlight a commitment to privacy—and the inherent tensions that creates.

Connected cars produce tons of raw data, and advertisers want it all.

In The Big Short, investor Michael Burry says “One hallmark of mania is the rapid rise in the incidence and complexity of fraud.” (Burry shorted the mania- and fraud-filled subprime mor…

The privacy tool used by millions of people doesn’t actually protect your privacy.

Companies want access to more and more of your personal data — from where you are to what’s in your DNA. Can they unlock its value without triggering a privacy backlash?

It’s the best way to avoid the heaviest hand of regulation.

Google's data-tracking practices are the subject of a study that found even private web browsing leaves a trace and consumers are being watched everywhere.

Biometrics are moving way beyond fingerprints: To fight fraud, companies are building databases on people’s behaviors and movements.

For 20 years, privacy advocates have been sounding the alarm about commercial online surveillance, the way that companies gather deep dossiers on us to help marketers target us with ads. This pitch…

Injured in an accident? Law firms may already know.

Using a menstruapp can mean telling the app regularly if you went out, drank, smoked, had an orgasm, what your poop looked like, if your skin is clear, how you feel, and if your vaginal discharge has a strong odor or looks like cottage cheese.

How to get off of people search sites like Pipl, Spokeo, and WhitePages.

Using apps to get at friend data.

Among the companies we found doing it: Amazon, Verizon, UPS and Facebook itself. “It’s blatantly unlawful,” said one employment law expert.

It’s not just the advertisers who can track you

The tactics of carefully targeted, data-driven manipulation—though innovative and destabilizing—are not entirely new. They predate the existence of Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook, and the contemporary notion of “fake news” itself. For decades, digital marketers—working in both commercial and political domains—have been perfecting models for using consumer data to identify and manipulate decision-making vulnerabilities.

From person-to-person coaching and intensive hands-on seminars to interactive online courses and media reporting, Poynter helps journalists sharpen skills and elevate storytelling throughout their careers.

By generating automated targeted ads, “The Infinite Campaign” exposes the bizarre rubrics Twitter uses to render users legible

Javascript keylogging, mouse tracking, and similar tricks.

How Thousands of Companies Monitor, Analyze, and Influence the Lives of Billions. Report + Web Publication.

Google's holding its annual conference for marketers today in San Francisco, and to kick it off they're announcing some new tools advertisers can use. One of them promises to tie…

Will you pay more for those shoes before 7 p.m.? Would the price tag be different if you lived in the suburbs? Standard prices and simple discounts are giving way to far more exotic strategies, designed to extract every last dollar from the consumer.

Is digital privacy a right or a privilege? That's the most recent raging debate among consumers, and it could spur a new era of digital misinformation.

The escalating fight over users’ data and targeted ads

A new ruling passed by the Federal Communications Commission states that broadband companies, including Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T, can only use certain users' data with explicit consent.

In a win for privacy advocates, the FCC voted this morning to place new restrictions on internet providers that limit the information they can share about their subscribers. When the rules go into...

Google is the latest tech company to drop the longstanding wall between anonymous online ad tracking and user’s names.

Facebook is going to start using technology to disguise ads on its desktop website to make them considerably more difficult for ad-blocking software to detect.

Every move you make. Every click you take. Every game you play. Every place you stay. They’ll be watching you.

No, it's not only you—some user interfaces today intentionally want to confuse and enroll.

New York Times CEO Mark Thompson caused a minor stir a couple weeks ago when he gave a speech at an advertising conference declaring that “No one who refuses to contribute to the creation of high quality journalism has the right to consume it.” He went on to say that while the Times is “not […]

As the number of people who are downloading ad-blocking software has grown, so has the volume of the debate about the ethics of ad-blocking.

How close does personalized online advertising get to us as our real persons? Technology ... #schirn #SchwerpunktICH

Changes in technology like ad blocking, and the dominance of platforms like Facebook leave many publishers unsure of how they will make money.

Job decisions, college admissions, health care decisions: All are now being fundamentally altered by your big data, and you might not even know.

New malvertising campaign may have exposed tens of thousands in the past 24 hours.