Internet advertisers say that the Federal Trade Commission is ”flouting“ the will of Congress and its own rules and say it would be “misguided” for them to start regulating the digital advertising and marketing industry as the regulator has proposed.

That came in comments from the Interactive Advertising Bureau on what the IAB says is the FTC's signal — via an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking — that it can use its authority over unfair and deceptive practices to declare "essentially all" consumer data use off limits.

And, if the end result was effectively that bad, IAB said, “it is likely that between “$32 billion and $39 billion of advertising and ecosystem revenue would move away from the open web by 2025.”

Also: IAB Report Calls Privacy Legislation Threat to Addressability

IAB pointed to the rulemaking proposal’s singling out of targeted advertising and personalized advertising as examples of “personal surveillance” that is potentially unfair and deceptive, which it called a “perplexing and unfounded” change from previous FTC policy.

The FTC also said targeted and personalized ads have only a “theoretical” potential benefit to consumers, while IAB said there is plenty of hard evidence, including that such advertising supports a "significant portion of the competitive U.S. economy" and "millions of jobs."

IAB says that would be a call for Congress to make, not the agency, and at any rate, the FTC has violated its rulemaking process by not providing a "reasonable alternative" to that blanket approach. "Based on procedural deficiencies alone, it would be unreasonable for the Commission to proceed in this rulemaking effort," IAB said.

The group said the FTC's proposed regulatory regime would do a number on the targeted advertising that supports internet content. "[T]he agency has previously supported the benefits of personalized advertising, and its efforts to restrict or eliminate it represent the true harm to consumers," IAB told the FTC. "Consumers desire free or low-cost access to the online services that data-driven advertising provides."

FTC chair Lina Khan is a long-time critic of Big Tech data collection and protection practices — or the lack of them — so there could be a thumb on the scale for new rules. "The growing digitization of our economy — coupled with business models that can incentivize endless hoovering up of sensitive user data and a vast expansion of how this data is used — means that potentially unlawful practices may be prevalent," Khan said back in August.

While the FTC has traditionally been an enforcement agency, suing parties — or securing settlements — over false or deceptive conduct, there is a move, particularly among Democrats, to beef up its rulemaking authority.

The concerns the FTC is looking to address through its potential rulemaking include:

“Lax Data Security: The immense volume of information that companies collect and use requires a commensurate level of data security to keep it safe. However, the FTC is concerned that many companies do not sufficiently or consistently invest in securing the data they collect from hackers and data thieves.“

“Harms to kids: Children of all ages are especially vulnerable to the deception and manipulation that can stem from commercial surveillance.“

“Retaliation: The FTC is concerned that many companies require people to sign up for surveillance as a condition for service.“

“Surveillance creep: Some companies reserve the right to change their privacy terms after consumers sign up for a product or service. Consumers who want to maintain access may have no choice but to accept those updated terms, even those that materially break previous privacy promises.“

“Inaccuracy: Very little is known about the automated systems and algorithms that analyze data.“

“Bias and discrimination: Some commercial surveillance practices may discriminate against consumers based on legally protected characteristics like race, gender, religion and age.“

“Dark patterns: Companies increasingly employ dark patterns or marketing to influence or coerce consumers into choices they would otherwise not make, including purchases or sharing personal information.“

IAB represents more than 700 media companies, marketers, ad agencies and tech companies. ■

The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s IAB Tech Lab has unveiled the Global Privacy Platform (GPP) to standardize U.S. and global privacy preferences for digital ads and wants input on the plan.

Getting the privacy part of targeted advertising right could be crucial to the continued health of what has been a booming online ad market. Statista.com predicted that digital ad spending in the U.S. alone will top $200 billion by 2025.

The fruits of Protect Rearc and two years in the making, the GPP is a single protocol for transmitting privacy, consent and consumer-choice preferences from websites and apps to advertising tech providers. The idea is to mitigate privacy risks and square those protections with Europe’s Transparency and Consent regime and the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) — the U.S. has no national privacy framework, but one of the reasons for coming up with GPP is the threat of a balkanized system of differing state (and international) approaches.

“Regulations are hitting the books faster than we can build individual solutions for,” said Andrea Giannangelo, CEO of Iubenda, which provides privacy compliance services.

“Privacy regulations such as the GDPR, CCPA, CPRA, PIPEDA and numerous new local privacy laws, create immense complexity and fragmentation in the market," IAB Tech Lab senior director Jason Raqueno said. "The GPP is intended to enable participants across the advertising supply chain to navigate the complexity of numerous overlapping global privacy laws through a single platform and consent signaling protocol."

Rearc was launched in 2020 in response to the limitations of third-party cookies and other targeted ad identifiers.

Also: IAB Says National Privacy Regime Is Job One

According to IAB Tech Lab, which is the digital ad industry’s standard-setting body, the GPP “enables advertisers, publishers, and technology vendors in the digital advertising industry to adapt to regulatory demands across markets," cuts the cost of managing privacy compliance, and helps reduce risk by "a single framework to encode and transmit consumer privacy preferences, which they can leverage globally and across all platforms and channels.”

IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur said the GPP is ready for global adoption, but IAB is first seeking comment (it will give interested parties 60 days). IAB is looking for input from “publishers, brands, media companies and legislative officials.” ■

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has taken aim at the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act, which would ban the use of personal information to target most online advertising, saying the bill would kill the commercial internet as we know it.

The bill was introduced this week by Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). IAB said they must not understand the degree to which the bill would "effectively eliminate internet advertising in the United States, jeopardizing an estimated 17 million jobs primarily at small- and medium-sized businesses."

“If the sponsors understood the devastating effects this bill would have, not only on the advertising industry, but also on our entire economy, they wouldn’t have introduced it,” said IAB CEO David Cohen in a statement.

Also: FTC Ponders Rules on Data Privacy

The bill prohibits advertisers or third parties from using personal data for most targeted advertising, the exceptions being ones that use broad location targeting to, say, a specific city.

The bill would prevent any targeting of ads based on race, gender, religion or any personal data purchased from data brokers. It would not prohibit so-called "contextual advertising," which are ads relevant to content a user is engaging with.

It also defines that personal information broadly, saying it comprises "data linked or reasonably linkable to an individual or connected device, including inferred and derived data, contents of communications, internet browsing history, and advertising identifiers."

Also: Digital Advertising Still Growing, But Faces Concerns, IAB Report Says

“Banning personalized ads would severely impact an increasingly important economic sector, stifling innovation and dramatically harming the small business community who use data-driven advertising to promote their goods and services and reach customers all over the world,” said Cohen. “This bill would make advertising less precise, more expensive, and raise costs for everyone.

“This terrible bill would disenfranchise businesses that advertise on the internet, and hundreds of millions of Americans who use it every day to find exactly what they need, quickly. It could eliminate the commercial internet almost entirely." ■

David Cohen has been named CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which represents digital media, effective Sept. 15.

Cohen joined the IAB as president in March. He had been a top media buyer, most recently as president of Magna. 

Since joining IAB, Cohen oversaw the IAB’s NewFronts, which were conducted virtually this year because of the COVID pandemic as well as the IAB Podcast upfront. He also took charge of the IAB’s Tele://Vision campaign seeking to change the way video is bought and sold and the News Saves Lives initiative supporting journalism by pushing advertisers not to abandon news content while pursuing brand safety.

"The bottom line in business is results, and David delivers,” said Peter Naylor, VP of Sales, Snap Inc., a longtime member of the IAB’s board of directors, and the founding chair of the IAB Video Center. “His buy-side experience and perspective, most recently as president of Magna, is invaluable. He has built organizations responsible for purchasing billions of dollars of digital media inventory annually. In just six months, that expertise already has made a difference for all of us in IAB’s membership.”

Cohen is replacing Randall Rothenberg. Rothenberg will be executive chairman of the IAB, working fulltime through the end of the year, and half-time through 2022 and reporting to Cohen.

“I knew that coming to IAB would give me the opportunity to leverage the experience and relationships that I have worked my entire career to develop. Bringing together publishers, brands, and agencies for the common good has been rewarding, and we are just getting started.  I continue to be energized by the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit of the media, marketing, and advertising industries,” said Cohen. “But what makes the IAB leadership position so meaningful is that the team here is not just helping individual companies - we’re helping to reshape and grow an entire sector of the economy.”

In his new role, Cohen said he will focus on increasing the presence of brands, agencies and across all IAB activities. "My buy-side experience has shown me that connecting all those dots is critical for industry collaboration, agenda-setting, and leadership," he said.

Prior to Magna, Cohen was chief investment officer at UM, where he made sure that digital innovation, data and technology acumen drove performance. From 2001 to 2011, he served as chief media officer, chief digital officer, and executive VP, U.S. director of digital communications.

The IAB represents more than 650 leading media companies, brands, and the technology firms responsible for selling, delivering, and optimizing digital ad marketing campaigns.

WASHINGTON — Some major ad trade groups are trying to get out in front of D.C‘s current wave of support for regulating data used for targeted advertising, including advocating for what they say are “significant restrictions on data use for advertising.”

One of the goals is to pre-empt state efforts to regulate data use by advertisers.

The American Association of Advertising Agencies (the 4A's), Association of National Advertisers, Interactive Advertising Bureau, and Network Advertising Initiative have launched the Privacy for America Coalition, with the avowed aim of working with Washington to "modernize" data privacy protections and enact "groundbreaking comprehensive federal consumer data privacy and security legislation."

RELATED: DelBene Introduces Privacy Bill

There is bipartisan support from virtually all quarters for some type of federal privacy legislation, so advertisers are looking to put a stake in the ground for their "type" of such protections.

A key to gaining support from some privacy advocates and Democrats will be defining that data and determining how restrictive the restrictions will be. Most everyone agrees sensitive personal data, social security numbers, health and financial records, etcetera, should be restricted. But whether that extends to other types of less sensitive info, and how much control consumers have, are key points of contention in the ongoing privacy debate.

They say their goal is to make “personal data‘ less vulnerable to breaches and misuse.

The coalition outlined what it says should be ”clear, enforceable and nationwide“ consumer privacy protections.

RELATED: Dems Call for Privacy Bill of Rights

Advertisers are looking to preempt a ”patchwork“ of state efforts at privacy regulation, so nationwide is important. In fact, the coalition said it had already commissioned a study that found that ”63% of registered voters believed letting the federal government pass a national data privacy law would be the most effective approach to protect consumer data, compared to only 17% of registered voters who believed letting individual states pass their own data privacy laws would be most effective.”

The key elements of the proposal are:

• “Prohibiting a variety of specific data practices, including using a person’s data to deny them a job, credit or healthcare, unless specifically permitted under existing federal or state laws;

• “Using personal characteristics like race or color to discriminate against a person in setting prices or determining eligibility for products or services; or sharing consumer data with third parties without enforceable contracts to ensure their lawful use of the data;

• “Creating a new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Data Protection Bureau, to enhance the FTC’s longstanding expertise in overseeing privacy matters; granting strengthened rulemaking authority to the FTC; and authorizing strict penalties for companies that engage in prohibited privacy practices – to increase substantially privacy oversight and enforcement;

• “Imposing significant restrictions on data use for advertising — including banning certain types of data from being collected and used for advertising, limiting the purposes for which advertising data may be used, and allowing consumers to identify their preferences regarding what advertising they do or do not wish to receive; and

• “Requiring strong data security protections to guard against data breaches.”

RELATED: IAB Offers Privacy First Principles

Among other key issues in the success of the ad-backed plan is how consumers "identify their preference," by opting out or opting in, or perhaps some combination of the two depending on the type of information.

Leading the coalition will be Stuart Ingis, co-chair of Venable LLP’s eCommerce, Privacy, and Cybersecurity Group, and Jessica Rich, former director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

“Consumers should be confident that rules are in place to protect their privacy when they enjoy benefits like loyalty programs and savings, the convenience of a personalized experience, or ready access to the wide variety of freely accessible content,” said Marla Kaplowitz, CEO of the 4As, in a statement. ”Harmful data practices should not be subject to choice — they should be prohibited. That’s exactly what this new framework does.“

Almost 60% of the digital ad budgets of marketers are allocated to video, and more than half of buyers plan to increase digital and mobile video spending over the next year, according to a new study from the Interactive Ad Bureau.  

Per the Digital Content NewFronts: 2018 Video Ad Spend Study, advertisers are poised to raise spending on digital video and mobile by 53% compared to two years ago, to an average of more than $10 million annually.  

Of that spend, there’s a growing emphasis on original digital video programming, with the vast majority (more than 8 in 10) agreeing that the category is an essential part of their media buy. The biggest drivers there are quality of programming (45%), attractive costs/CPMs (40%), and effective audience reach and quality of environment (38% each).   

About half of buyers plan to spend more on social video advertising in the next 12 months. 

The study’s findings are based on an online survey of 353 marketer and agency execs conducted from March 6-16. To qualify, those execs had to be involved in digital video ad decision-making at a company responsible for $1 million-plus total ad spend in 2017.  

“Marketers’ commitment to digital video—especially original digital video—has been skyrocketing over the past few years,” Anna Bager, executive vice president, industry initiatives, IAB, said in a statement. “These findings reflect consumers’ enthusiasm for the dynamic storytelling which original video programming delivers in spades, and the power of the medium to deliver strong ROI. There is no question that we will see buyers out in full force throughout this week’s NewFronts presentations, as they look to invest more and more of their budgets in the latest original digital video programming opportunities.” 

The study also found that 83% of advertisers believe that cross-platform measurement has improved versus a year ago, and that 44% of advertisers had strong interest in buying interactive ads on connected TVs.  

It's that time of year again: The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released its annual Consumer Usage Digital Trend Report.

A conclusive analysis of how Americans spend their time on both computers and mobile devices, the IAB report breaks down digital consumption for entertainment, ecommerce, social media and a dozen or so other areas.

Of particular interest to us at TVRunway are the statistics it shares surrounding streaming and digital media.

For starters, the report reveals that people use their phones for different stuff than they do their computers. Now, that's no surprise. I personally hate checking email on my phone, but good luck getting me to listen to Pandora on my computer. But those are both behavior-driven decisions. I don’t like emailing on my phone because I want to proofread what I’ve written before I hit send. I don’t listen to Pandora on my computer because I like to listen to music while I walk. Real-life decisions drive digital consumption statistics.

So how do we explain why NBC, for example, fares better than CBS on mobile but on computers CBS comes out on top? In December, 63.28 million people watched CBS.com via computer compared with 55.33 million watching NBC.com. Mobile NBC numbers were 37.197M, and CBS's were 34.211 million. Both networks’ OTT offerings let you access longer-form television shows that also air linearly. And both provide full episodes as opposed to just clips.

Of course, CBS makes you purchase All-Access to watch by phone, whereas you can watch on your computer for free. I love The Good Wife -- don’t get me wrong -- but why would I pay $5.99 plus tax to watch it on my phone if I can open up my laptop and watch it for free? I’m an at-home, Saturday binger, so I don’t need the phone option for on-the-road mobility. I like to view by phone because I sleep beside my phone and I don’t have to get out of bed to watch first thing in the morning.

For this reason, I’ve gotten hooked on a lot of CW shows lately. In IAB’s report, The CW network didn’t even rank on the top 10 list of streaming sites or TV apps visited. So my behavior obviously does not mirror that of the masses. What this shows, though, is that it’s not enough to look at the statistics around a thing — you have to think about why those statistics exist. I am a viewer ratings point for all things CW. But am I, a 39 year-old woman who’s never bought a comic in her life, DC Legends of Tomorrow’s target audience? Probably not. But unlike CBS, The CW doesn’t make me get out of bed and put on pants.

In business, it’s very tempting to allow statistics to control our decisions. Statistics are reliable. Statistics help us understand and predict things. But were we to go by statistics alone, The CW would have every reason to think that 39 year-old non-comic readers are a future growth market. And CBS would think I didn’t own a phone.

Nova Spivack, CEO of Bottlenose, a company that identifies trends in live TV and other areas, is a big proponent of futurecasting. Forecasting — what we do now — takes the statistics that measure our present and our past, and uses those numbers to predict what will happen in the future. Futurecasting, though, looks at the behavior that drives those statistics and predicts what will happen based on those real-life trends.

So while the IAB report is stocked to the moon with interesting data, what I really want to know — and how TVRunway provides data — are the micro-factors that caused those statistics to come to be. And that’s what really matters — getting down deep to the causation behavior that we never really measure because, even though it monitors macro-trends, every individual is motivated differently and because sometimes people themselves don’t even know why they do what they do. And also because nobody wants to measure the number of Saturdays I put on pants.

Terena Bell is CEO of TVRunway, the industry's first OTT commerce platform that doesn't edit, tag or alter the original video in any way.

Programmatic advertising may be the future, but the extension of automated processes to the premium digital video world, including video delivered over the top, continues to lag well behind the digital display advertising industry.

That’s the consensus from a fresh PricewaterhouseCoopers study on the topic, sponsored by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The study, which based its findings on a mix of survey results, corporate and industry data and interviews with senior ad executives, found that programmatic revenues reached $10.1 billion in 2014, and comprised about 20% of total Internet advertising revenues ($49.5 billion), a figure that factored in mobile-related advertising.

Programmatic revenues made up about 52% of display ads ($19.6 billion) last year, outpacing nonprogrammatic display-related revenues. The majority (70%) of programmatic inventory was bought and sold through “Open Auctions,” though PwC expects other types of approaches, including private auctions, unreserved fixed rate and automated guaranteed, to absorb more share in the next few years.

Broken down further, programmatic revenues from ad tech companies (55%) outweighed those from the publishers themselves. Display banner ads made up about 80% of programmatic revenues in 2014, but more advertisers and publishers are expected to shift their budgets and inventory toward mobile and OTT/digital video formats over time.

Programmatic video advertising remains a small-but-growing sector as more viewing occurs on mobile and other IP-connected devices.

“[T]he adoption of programmatic video in 2014 was hindered partly due to the scarcity of available premium-video inventory,” PwC noted. “As eyeballs have shifted away from traditional TV viewing to newer forms of video consumption, including online and mobile devices, brands want to connect with their audiences at the right time and right place. For video that often means through premium publisher inventory, but it is often not available for advertisers via programmatic channels.”

However, what little premium video inventory there is tends to sell out through more traditional digital direct sales channels.

“As a result of this demand, premium video publishers are able to sell their inventory directly and can negotiate deals with advertisers at a premium price. Inventory that goes unsold (remnant) on premium video publishers, which is often less valuable, is then pushed to the programmatic channels,” PwC said.

The study also took a stab at the somewhat controversial definition of the programmatic term itself, centering it on “machine based buying and selling of digital media, including auction based methods like RTB [real- time bidding] and private marketplaces, as well as the automation of direct sales, sometimes called programmatic direct.”