Behavioral Marketing Regulation

Online advertising has grown to become one of the most important forms of advertisement because of the easiness it gives to marketers to reach their intended target market. Marketers save money and time and consumers see more ads that interest them. Lately, consumers are complaining that personal information is being share and sold between companies without any control and many questions are raised regarding to how far companies will go in order to make a profit. All this questions are valid arguments consumers have the right to ask because is their information the one is being shared.

The question is who controls and regulates what companies are supposed to do and do not do? Many people talks about this issue without knowing about a regulatory program that the Department of Commerce and Federal Trade Commission together commended the DAA have been implementing since 2009 to the present. What is this regulatory program? The answer for this question was given by the FTC “FTC staff has proposed some governing principles for behavioral advertising and now seeks comment on the principles from interested parties. The principles are intended to address the unique concerns expressed about behavioral advertising and thus are limited to these practices. The purpose of this proposal is to encourage more meaningful and enforceable self-regulation to address the privacy concerns raised with respect to behavioral advertising. In developing the principles, FTC staff was mindful of the need to maintain vigorous competition in online advertising as well as the importance of accommodating the wide variety of business models that exist in this area.

This self-regulatory program is based in these principles:

1. Transparency and consumer control: It basically says that companies should be transparent about the information collected and use. Companies should have and easy to read privacy policy and available at the right time for consumers. They also have to specific what they do with the data recollected.

2. Reasonable security and limited consumer data retention: companies that recollect, store, or use consumer information for behavioral advertising have to provide enough security to protect user information.

3. Affirmative express consent for material changes to existing privacy promises and Affirmative express consent to (or prohibition against) using sensitive data for behavioral advertising: consumers should be able to accept or decline company’s policy for data sharing and data using. Companies cannot use users’ information for behavioral advertising unless approved by them. Information related with health condition and financial information should not be recollected of use without consumer’s approval.

4. Using tracking data for purposes other than behavioral advertising: the FTC commission is still investigating the use of personal information recollected used with any purpose other than behavioral advertising.

In reality not only the companies but marketing associations have been trying to control and protect consumer’s information from being misused. Online behavioral advertising is beneficial for companies and consumers if the information recollected is used for the intended purpose. We cannot complain nothing is being done to regulate and hold companies accountable for the use of information but it is an universal truth not all companies fallow this program and there is where the conflict starts.

More information about this topic :

http://www.dmaresponsibility.org/privacy/oba.shtml
http://www.ftc.gov/os/2007/12/P859900stmt.pdf
http://www.dmaaction.org/

Why is Online Marketing important ?

In the past year online advertising has become the focus for many companies. Not only big companies but also mid-size and small businesses are using the internet to reach their target market and possible customers. There is a reason behind this new orientation and it has a lot to do with the fact that people spend many hours on the internet.

At the beginning people could access the internet from a desktop computer only; then wireless connections open a new opportunity for people and everybody was able to connect not from desktops but from a laptop too. Times are different now because most of the people have internet connection always available. New devices such as smartphones and tablets are taking over the market giving consumers the benefit to be connected at any time. The Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project released its findings that “in the United States alone smartphone adoption rates had jumped 11 percent – 35 percent to 46 percent – from May 2011 to February 2012. And with 88 percent of U.S. consumers owning a smartphone or standard phone, the percentage of smartphone-touting Americans rose to 53 percent.” Another study done by Chitika shows that from July 2011 to until the last week of February 2012, mobile Web traffic surged 35 percent.

What does this information means for marketers? It gives clear visibility of future trends and consumers habits. People are connecting more from their mobile devices and companies need to design interactive campaigns that allow them to reach customers. It is not an easy task to accomplish but it is necessary for any company that wants to grow and increase revenue. These campaigns need to be comprehensive meaning focus on all aspects of the marketing. Customers want to see ads that may be interesting for them and want to be able to communicate if they need more information about it. They also would like to be able to purchase the product online, pay for it, and if they have any claim or concern they need to have interactive customer service.

In conclusion online marketing is a must on this new era of communication and any company who wants to stay up to date and grow their business need to have an interactive online marketing strategy to be successful in this mission.

Some info:

http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/12415.html
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/opinion/columns/12428.html

Political Online Campaigns: The new tool

The last presidential elections gave to US not only a new president but also a new tool to politicians. Before, television and the newspaper where the only mediums available for politicians to transmit their political messages but now the internet is being used as an important resource for politicians to reach their voters in a faster an efficient manner.

Why the internet has become such a popular tool in political campaigns?

The internet is a free service that millions of Americans use in a daily basis and politicians are taking advantage from it. One of the main objectives in a political campaign is to reach people to share ideas and thoughts to convince voters to vote for a specific candidate. This process can be very expensive because TV advertising is very expensive and it has to be done for relatively long period of time but the internet has opened a new door. President Obama is one of the pioneers in the use of internet to reach voters when running for president. His campaign was mainly online and it was very successful since he used different online marketing techniques including social networking, search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, email marketing, mobile marketing between others. He created a YouTube channel that was watched for 14.5 million of hours before the elections and has 25,069,318 of views. He also opened his own social networking site www.my.barackobama.com which helped him raise $200 billion that came from small contributions of people to support his campaign making it one of the most profitable campaigns in the history.


Even though president Obama’s campaign is a demonstration of perfect online marketing and show how useful the internet is for politicians, we also have to mention that online information can be sometimes misleading for voters because everybody can publish their opinions and there is not control over who publish information or what is published. To find more accurate information it is recommended to go to official sites rather than just “Google” a candidate. Also, when reading an article about candidates make sure you verify the name and the reference of the person who wrote it. Do not believe everything you read online instead validate the source first. Remember you will find opinions from everybody and does not mean they are true or false but they are just opinions not facts.

One more time we confirm Mktingiseveywhere.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-internet-campaign-changed-politics/

http://www.webprofits.com.au/blog/6-lessons-we-can-learn-from-barack-obamas-online-marketing-strategy/

His Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/BarackObamadotcom
His social page: www.my.barackobama.com

Are Facebook and Google sharing data with marketers?

Why do companies such as Facebook and Google share data? We have to remember that Facebook and Google offer their services for free to hundreds of thousands of users all around the world. One way to make profit and not having to charge a fee to users is trough advertisement in their web pages. It is a fact that this two companies share user data with marketing companies creating a new way of target customers. It is easier and more accurate to discover customers taste and interest by analyzing what they do on the web and what online pages they spend most of the time. Marketers can rapidly create a profile of a specific market by knowing what they “like” on Facebook, what they research on Google, or what videos they look at YouTube.

At the end of 2011, The Federal Commission ruled that Facebook and Google had unfair and deceptive practices regarding privacy user data: they changed privacy defaults and made private information public without notifying users. Facebook has changed their privacy settings many times using a very difficult language for users to understand how these changes allow the company to sell information to third party advertising companies (If you want to read the complaint click here http://ftc.gov/os/caselist/0923184/111129facebookcmpt.pdf ). This is the main reason for the changes we can see now on Facebook and Google privacy settings; every time you open Google you will find pop up explaining how they are changing their privacy settings. In reality, these companies will keep doing the same they were doing before because they need it to stay in business but know users are more aware about their data sharing policies.

There are few things internet users can do to prevent personal information to be share. One recommendation is to turn on the cookies notices will alert you when a cookie is being place and the ability to block it. Also,use a different email account for social networking sites from the one used for personal information. Change passwords constantly, do not set easy security questions with answers available in social networking sites, and always clear the history after using a public computer. But the most important social networking users have to do to prevent data sharing is always read privacy policies before accepting them.

More Reading:

http://digg.com/newsbar/Technology/from_google_to_facebook_online_privacy_concerns_aren_t_going_away_infographic
http://ftc.gov/os/caselist/0923184/111129facebookcmpt.pdf

How SOPA affects E-Marketing?

In the last few years E- Marketing has grown faster than any other form of marketing. Companies use the internet to promote their products and services around the world. The new bill the senate is trying to pass known as SOPA will affect not only big online companies but small and large size
businesses that use the internet as a form of effective marketing. The act gives the power to government to censor and remove content that is seen to be as illegal, but this criterion is not that clear because the law is not well define. Companies will have to spend many hours reviewing all information and links on their pages to make sure they are not infringing the law. Online webpages will stop making an important amount of revenues coming from foreign ads. They could be seen as illegal to sponsor in the United States and the page will be probably banned. In conclusion, SOPA not only will affect Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, Google, it also will affect all the small and large companies that use the internet as marketing tool to promote their products and services.

http://www.optimum7.com/internet-marketing/sopa/how-will-sopa-affect-your-internet-marketing-and-seo.html