EMEA > Privacy

Stuart Colman is Managing Director, EMEA at Maxifier.

What an incredible decade it’s been for Big Data. Back in 2003, Tacoda (remember them?) was still pre-AOL, AudienceScience (then RevenueScience) had just launched in the UK with the Financial Times, and companies such as eXelate, AppNexus and MediaMath were years from being created, let alone becoming household names. We still did ’behavioural’ targeting, and RTB still stood for ‘raid the bar’.

Roll forward 10 years and we now have hundreds of companies whose entire existence is based on data-driven advertising. We have Goliaths such as Google and Adobe spending billions of dollars building end-to-end data-driven advertising stacks and (FYI) we have more acronyms describing our industry than you could shake a stick at (WTF? LOL). We know more about consumer behaviour, intent and interest than ever before and we have effective and efficient ways of actioning that insight to deliver bigger and better digital advertising campaigns. Isambard Kingdom Brunel himself would have been proud at the speed of our innovation and change.

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We witnessed a “gloves off” interview from Randal Rothenberg, IAB CEO, over on Adexchanger this week. He took aim at the Mozilla organisation, arguing that the open source browser was a fractional mess and couldn’t be reasoned with over the the blocking of third-party cookies. He even described privacy advocate, Jonathan Mayer, as a communist. Tough talking indeed. The fact remains that no amount of huff from the IAB CEO will change the mind of Mozilla.

Why Mozilla Couldn’t Care Less

Mozilla doesn’t care about about display. It has no skin in the game. Mozilla makes all of its revenue from a search deal with Google. Search accounts for all of Mozilla’s revenue. For those who contribute to the project, the concept of third party-tracking and retargeting is merely an irritation — and their focus remains on what they see as protecting user privacy. It is highly amusing to see the industry’s key lobby group trying to coerce a bunch of open source coders into accepting the whims of ad tech vendors, digital agencies and advertisers. It’s even more surprising that they managed to have so many meetings without realising sooner that a compromise would never be reached by two divergent groups of interests.

If Mr Rothenberg really wanted to bloody the nose of Mozilla, he could have a word with Google about its “unique” relationship with Mozilla — and apply pressure that way. The other thing the IAB could do is round up the biggest publishers and come up with some contingency plan around this. Perhaps the top 100 publishers could charge a toll for Mozilla users. If you can’t set third-party cookies using the browsers, make them pay for content. Simple economics. Someone needs to pay the bills. ExchangeWire already knows of several big publishers in Europe that are going to start blocking Mozilla users — and redirct them to download pages for “cookie-friendly” browsers. Difficult to pull off no doubt given that big sites and portals would never cut off 25% of their web traffic.

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“17 years ago, less than 1% of Europeans used the internet,” noted EU Justice Commission Vice President Viviane Reding. “Today, vast amounts of personal data are transferred and exchanged.” These comments were made in January 2012 and they introduced the Commission’s intention to reform the EU Data Protection Rules. In the time since those comments, the Commission has been working diligently to move forward with its General Data Protection Regulation. This vocal regulatory attention has kept online privacy squarely in the public eye and reason would suggest that such a close watch on the data collection industry would not make a fertile landscape for that industry’s growth.

However, despite impending legislation and public attention, the number of unique technologies encountered by individuals in the EU grew by over 40% in 2012. Even as increased requirements for disclosure and user control seem to be closing in, the data collection industry grows more complex, both through introduction of new companies and by the actions of the industry’s giants.

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Stephan Noller is CEO & Founder of nugg.ad AG

In a previous article, Nick Stringer from IAB UK explained how the EU wants to regulate the use of data on the Internet and why this might go too far when it comes to data-driven business models. My company is one of those data-driven businesses and we are helping many publishers and websites across Europe to deliver more relevant ads to their consumers in a privacy-friendly way – because we are working with a strong data-minimisation technology built in. The concept is called ‘Pseudonymisation’ and has been introduced to the policy-discussion at a relatively late stage – although it is carrying some of the core concepts of the proposed regulation as its principle.

Pseudonymisation describes a process in which recorded data is limited in such a way that it is no longer possible to link it to the individual from whom it originated. However, the granularity of those individuals is retained – which is not the case with the more familiar process of anonymisation – so that if one person is recorded as having an interest in sports, and two people in culture, once the data has been pseudonymised it still registers as three people and three data records. Anonymisation, on the other hand, would convert that information to something like a 33% interest in sport.

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Erich Wasserman is Co-Founder and General Manager EMEA & APAC for MediaMath. Here he sits down with ExchangeWire to breakdown their acquisition developments and what this means for their expanding platform offering.

How do you think the recent acquisitions by MediaMath, in video, mobile, and data solutions, have changed MediaMath’s position in the market?

MediaMath’s vision is to be the operating system for digital marketers. By analogy, we are the OS that runs the device you are using to read this Q&A: That device provides a software environment and runs first-party applications (Apple iOS and Safari, for example.) It further provides an environment on which to use other third-party applications (Chrome, for example). The OS needs to be flexible and interoperable to ensure it remains central to how you communicate with the world.

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Nick Stringer is Director of Regulatory Affairs at IAB UK. Here he addresses the European Commission’s draft data protection proposals: what you need to know — and do.

In a rapidly evolving sector, such as digital marketing, there will always be challenges from legislators as they seek to ensure consumer safeguards keep pace with technological innovation. Collectively, it is our job to inform them that this needs to be balanced without throttling innovation and the commercial models that underpin the internet. Self-regulation – where privacy-enhancing approaches are built into product cycles – has a very important role to play, as it can move faster with markets than a statutory approach.

The approach by Brussels

However, a year ago in January 2012, the European Commission proposed changes to the way personal data is protected and regulated across EU markets. The proposals were driven by a need to update the law in light of technological changes since 1995 (when the current law was framed in Europe – the 1998 Data Protection Act in the UK) as well as to streamline the rules to make it easier and more efficient – particularly in a digital world – for businesses operating across territories, hopefully saving millions of pounds in administrative burdens. Above all, the proposals were aimed at providing European citizens with a strong level of data protection and accountability, fostering a new climate of trust in the services we all use.

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Ad tech is a funny business. Experts and onlookers alike have been hammering the concept of ad networks for the better part of three years, yet when Facebook seem poised to launch one, it has many salivating over the prospect. Just last week, we saw GigaOm fuel the speculation that the great FB ad network is imminent, but what can we expect? What will it look like? Why will it be valuable? More importantly, why will publishers want to participate?

Exporting Native?

Much discussion has centred around what would the FB ad network’s ads look like? There has been huge speculation about whether or not there will be a ‘native’ solution. Many believe the rise of consumer web monetisation has been predicated by native solutions, and many are investing in its future. But how can Facebook export a native solution? Would sponsored stories sitting within an MPU be a strange user experience? Would it outperform standard ad units? Perhaps as Facebook becomes more and more synonymous with the user’s general internet experience, then these ‘native’ solutions would not look out of place?

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Damian Scragg, Managing Director for Evidon UK discusses the ePrivacy Directive, what impact the European initiative will have on the APAC region and what’s in store for mobile privacy.

Evidon’s ad and site notice is now available in 40 countries and 39 local languages. What has been key to this growth? What is differentiating Evidon in all these markets? Or is a lot of this driven by global deals?

Enhanced notice on websites is becoming the commercial standard globally. This was first driven by our global clients, who wanted to comply with self-regulatory standards in the US and the ePrivacy Directive here in Europe. However, increasingly, web publishers and brands are beginning to see this as a clear best practice everywhere, including in markets where the standard has not become a requirement.

Working with the largest publishers and brands has certainly helped us to engage in these conversations on a global level, but we’ve also invested heavily in local markets to help us understand, and where possible, help shape what is required. There is no single solution that works across markets, even within Europe, as we’ve seen vividly this year.

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