Tag: Advertising

Liked Twitter’s canny political ad ban costs it little – and piles pressure on Facebook (the Guardian)

The Twitter co-founder and chief executive, Jack Dorsey, has turned a weakness into a strength, cutting off a minuscule revenue stream in order to heap pressure on his main competitor. In the hours since Twitter’s announcement, support has come from voices as diverse as the US-based campaign group Muslim Advocates, the Open Knowledge Foundation thinktank and the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

Bookmarked GDPR will pop the adtech bubble by Doc Searls (Doc Searls Weblog)

The good news for both advertising and publishing is that neither needs adtech. What’s more, people can signal what they want out of the sites they visit—and from the whole marketplace. In fact the Internet itself was designed for exactly that. The GDPR just made the market a lot more willing to start hearing clues from customers that have been laying in plain sight for almost twenty years.

There has been a lot written about GDPR, especially in light of Cambridge Analytica. This post from Doc Searls stands out for its depth, especially in regards to his references and resources. He discusses what he sees as the eminent demise of ‘adtech’, technology such as analytics designed to support advertising.

Searls discusses what will be left of advertising — and what it supports — after the adtech bubble pops. This includes providing a picture of the current context, such as attempts by collectives to circumvent various changes. In conclusion he provides the following tips:

  • Don’t bet against Google
  • Do bet on any business working for customers rather than sellers
  • Do bet on developers building tools that give each of us scale in dealing with the world’s companies and governments
  • Do bet on publishers getting back to what worked since forever offline and hardly got a chance online: plain old brand advertising
Liked Google’s Facebook Copycat Moves Leave It More Exposed to Privacy Backlash by Mark Bergen; Ben Brody (Bloomberg.com)

Google is already buttoning up its data policies in anticipation of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which kicks in next month. The company restricted the number of third-party companies that can serve and track ads through its advertising exchange and on YouTube. Google is also requiring publishers to get user consent for targeted ads to comply with GDPR.

Liked Google and Facebook are watching our every move online. It’s time to make them stop by Gabriel Weinberg, CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo (CNBC)

Google, Facebook hidden trackers follow users around the web at alarming rates, says DuckDuckGo’s CEO Gabriel Weinberg. To make any real progress in advancing data privacy this year, we have to start doing something about them. Not doing so would be like trying to lose weight without changing your diet. Simply ineffective.