I’d hate to think that any company did the right thing just to curry favor with consumers. This report from research company GfK should help prevent that by showing that “purpose ads” are actually less likely to grab viewers’ attention than non-purpose ads, by a margin of 74% vs 65%. GfK doesn’t advise against purpose advertising but does call for patience in waiting for results.
Are you concerned about bias in AI systems and adtech? IBM is leading the charge against that with a free Advertising Tookit for AI Fairness 360, which contains 75 fairness metrics and 13 algorithms to identify and mitigate biases. They’ve also created an Advertising Fairness Pledge and signed up companies including Delta Air Line, WPP, Mindshare, and industry groups.
The anti-disinformation code to protect against false information has been released by the EU Commission. It is designed to protect against the social media and search engine algorithms that amplify click-bait messaging and proliferate false beliefs. Hopes were high this EU rule would force Facebook, Google, Microsoft and others to rein in the dangerous practice, but NewsGuard, which researches veracity of sites, and other privacy advocates fear that compliance is optional. The concern is many companies can’t be trusted to place the public good over their own profit. NewsGuard noted that so far Microsoft is the only major player that has committed to the measure.
A U.S. district court judge has ruled that Google acted to create illegal monopolies in online advertising technology in a way that blocked competition and allowed higher ad prices to be charged. Google will appeal; meantime, the government will decide what to ask the court to do to remedy the monopoly. Google also faces a new U.K. antitrust lawsuit over its dominance of search.