Also speaking of trust, our friends at Facebook have announced plans to inject advertisements into virtual reality experiences on their Oculus mobile app. What’s entertaining, and a bit pitiful, is that most of the announcement is devoted to explanations of how Facebook will absolutely, sincerely, and completely respect users’ privacy. Raise your hand if you’re convinced. (I saw that.)
Much as consumers like personalization, they’re still highly suspicious about data collection. Tinuiti found that 79% think their phone listens to their conversations and makes product recommendations based on what it hears. While 46% say apps track their activity to make their experience better, even more say they do it sell their data to other companies (51%), and a substantial minority say the real purpose is cyberstalking (24%), finding their political views (22%), telling “Big Brother” (18%) and reading their minds (18%). (Speaking of trust, I never received the promised... Read More >
It may not rank with to-may-toe vs to-mah-to, but surely someone cares whether it’s spelled “cookieless” or “cookie-less”. The consensus among press release writers seems to be hyphenless, so I’ll report that data quality measurement firm Neutronian has launched a program to certify that suppliers of marketing data have followed a cookieless recipe. The certification covers consent standards, opt-in/out processes, privacy and compliance disclosures, sourcing transparency, dataset characteristics, methodology and processing, and performance.
Google is facing another antitrust lawsuit, this time in Canada, specifically focusing on anti-competitive practices in online advertising. The Competition Tribunal has been asked to order Google to sell two of its ad tech tools, prohibit future anti-competitive practices and fine the company billions of dollars. In response, Google points to a highly competitive market offering plenty of alternatives.