AT&T Vs. Google On BT Battleground

Interesting inquiry that is worth following...

AT&T and Google have been battling each for years on net neutrality issues. Now, that feud is extending into a Congressional inquiry about behavioral targeting.
"Advertising-network operators such as Google have evolved beyond merely tracking consumer web surfing activity on sites for which they have a direct ad-serving relationship," AT&T stated to Congress in response to an inquiry about behavioral targeting and privacy. "They now have the ability to observe a user's entire web browsing experience at a granular level, including all URLs visited, all searches, and actual page-views."

In the letter, made public today, AT&T attempts to cast itself as a privacy champion compared to Google and other Web companies. "The largely invisible practices of ad-networks raise even greater privacy concerns than do the behavioral advertising techniques that ISPs could employ, such as deep-packet-inspection," AT&T wrote.

At the same time, AT&T also said that if it deploys behavioral targeting, it will first seek subscribers' affirmative opt-in consent. While that sounds like a big concession, AT&T obviously knows that at least some Congress members are heading there anyway; Rep. Ed Markey, at any rate, is on record as supporting an opt-in standard for ISP-based targeting.

Of course, AT&T, like other Internet service providers, has every reason to want to sell information about subscribers' Web-surfing activity to companies like NebuAd, who will then serve ads to users based on their history.

Google has every reason to want to prevent this from happening, as the company only stands to lose ad revenue to startups like NebuAd. If ISPs know which users are conducting searches for particular products, at least some marketers might decide they want to reach those users on sites other than Google -- which could result in a direct shift of ad dollars from AdWords to NebuAd and its ISP partners.

ISPs apparently have been waiting for an opportunity to get a share of online ad dollars for a long time. Two years ago, a Verizon executive complained publicly that Google was getting a "free lunch," on the theory that the company's profits from online advertising were only made possible by networks such as Verizon's.

So it makes sense that Google would try to frame the policy debate underway in Washington as solely about ISP-based targeting, while AT&T would try to characterize it more broadly, as about consumer privacy overall.

At the same time, there are some real differences between network-based targeting, which only operates across a limited number of sites, and ISP-based targeting, which operates everywhere. No matter how much information Google has about a particular user, an ISP will always have more.

EU Ready To Approve Google/DoubleClick Deal

THE EUROPEAN AUTHORITIES REPORTEDLY ARE poised to approve Google's $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, without imposing any restrictions.

The European Commission, which has antitrust oversight in Europe, is expected to announce Tuesday that it has cleared the deal, according to Bloomberg. The Federal Trade Commission approved the deal without conditions late last year, but Google couldn't complete the merger without also securing the European authorities' approval.

News of the imminent approval disappointed some privacy advocates, who had urged the authorities to limit Google's use of DoubleClick data about consumers. "EC regulators--as with the FTC--ignored how the deal threatens both privacy and the diversity of online publishing," said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "Consumer advocates will continue to press, in the U.S. and in the EC, for Google to operate in a competitive and privacy-respectful manner."

The Center for Digital Democracy and Electronic Privacy Information Center had argued that the deal poses a threat because Google could combine its knowledge of users' search history with DoubleClick's data about people's Web-surfing activity to create highly detailed user profiles.

Regardless of the EC's expected approval of the deal, another set of regulators in Europe--the Article 29 Working Group, which oversees privacy matters--might still limit Google's use of data about consumers. That group recently indicated that it considers Internet Protocol addresses personal data, meaning that search engines have to follow Europe's privacy rules if they collect such addresses.

That group is expected to issue a full report outlining new measures in April. While any rules would only be binding in Europe, privacy advocates are optimistic that search companies would respond by revising their practices worldwide. "We do hope the Europeans will propose some privacy rules that will have a trickle-down effect in the United States," Chester said.

Google currently keeps logs of both search queries and the IP addresses they came from for 18 months. The company has said it will "anonymize" the IP addresses after that time period by masking the last two digits of the address. But privacy advocates say that 18 months is too long to retain such information and that Google should delete the IP addresses rather than attempting to anonymize them.

Google chief economist Hal Varian this week defended the company's data retention practices in a blog post arguing that Google uses data it collects to improve the quality of its search results. "We're constantly experimenting with our algorithm, tuning and tweaking on a weekly basis to come up with more relevant and useful results for our users," Varian wrote. "But in order to come up with new ranking techniques and evaluate if users find them useful, we have to store and analyze search logs."

Google Expands AdSense For Video, Sets Deals With Tremor, YouMe, Others

IN A BID TO ACCELERATE its role in the burgeoning online video advertising marketplace, search giant Google this morning is announcing a slew of deals expanding its AdSense for video beta. To date, the AdSense program has focused mainly on enabling Web publishers to serve text-only ads. The video beta version, enables publishers to serve targeted, contextually-relevant video graphical ads and text overlays, and is seen as an alternative to the pre-roll an post-roll advertising clips that have become the industry's default standard advertising format.

Google has been working on ways to expand its reach into video ever since its $1.65 billion acquisitions of YouTube in 2006, and recently began accelerating its role in TV advertising sales, as well, via its AdWords For TV program, which enables advertisers to buy addressable TV advertising on cable and satellite TV systems.

Early this morning, Google announced deals with the Tremor Media and YouMe video advertising networks, two of what are expected to be several partnership deals for its AdSense for video expansion (Both American sites).

Tremor said it has incorporated "one-click integration" of Google's contextually targeted ads into its dynamic ad insertion platform, Ad-inStream, for publishers in Tremor Media's network to accept targeted Google AdSense for video advertising formats with only a check-box.

According to comScore, Tremor Media provides access to consumers through their network of more than 800 aggregated sites that reach 94 million unique users every month. Publishers across Tremor Media's network can now support traditional text overlays through Google's AdSense for video beta, providing contextually targeted advertising by leveraging a video's metadata.

In addition, Tremor will also support InVideo graphical and rich media overlays that aid advertisers with a consistent brand message across their traditional display advertising as well as emerging video ad formats.