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Content Type: Long Read
It’s 15:10 pm on April 18, 2018. I’m in the Privacy International office, reading a news story on the use of facial recognition in Thailand. On April 20, at 21:10, I clicked on a CNN Money Exclusive on my phone. At 11:45 on May 11, 2018, I read a story on USA Today about Facebook knowing when teen users are feeling insecure.
How do I know all of this? Because I asked an advertising company called Quantcast for all of the data they have about me.
Most people will have never heard of…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Privacy International notes a recent ruling issued by Italy’s Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione) that addresses the need to limit government hacking powers for surveillance purposes and articulates required safeguards when hacking is conducted as part of a criminal investigation.
The ruling addresses the appeals of several individuals involved in a case of corruption; the appeals challenge irregularities in the collection of data as part of the criminal investigation, which resulted in the…
Content Type: Examples
In 2016, Tapad launched a partnership with the location-based ad targeting firm Placed to provide a service measuring the impact of digital advertising on in-store sales. Tapad sends anonymous campaign data to Placed, which has a panel of more than 500,000 users who have opted in. Placed measures store visits among those who have been exposed to advertising on any combination of internet-connected devices, and compares the results to the store visits made by a control group that hasn't been…
Content Type: Examples
In 2016, Tapad and Acxiom's LiveRamp announced an expanded partnership to make Tapad's proprietary Device Graph accessible to LiveRamp's more than 400 adtech and marketing technology platforms. Device Graph enables marketers to track customer engagement across all digital channels. LiveRamp will use it to reach consumers on digital channels and measure the performance of advertising campaigns; Tapad provides probabilistic matching for consumers LiveRamp can't match through deterministic methods…
Content Type: Examples
In 2013, companies like Tapad developed new "cross-screen marketing" techniques to allow them to expand from tracking desktop computer users across the web to targeting them as they moved to smartphones and tablets. Cookies - small bits of code deposited on computers - do not work as well on mobile devices. Tapad solved this by analysing usage data such as which apps have been downloaded, visited websites, and items people have bought within mobile apps to create groups of people who may be…
Content Type: Examples
In 2014, Tapad claimed its system for matching consumers across multiple devices protected privacy because it relied on probabilistic matching rather than a deterministic approach that builds on personally identifiable information. The deterministic approach relies on logins - for example, an individual who logs into Facebook from several different devices provides all the information Facebook needs to link the devices together. By contrast, Tapad claims to be nearly as accurate by analysing…
Content Type: Examples
In 2018, Tapad announced it would offload its media business to Brand Networks, refocusing instead on its data business and identity products, primarily its cross-device graph. A particular target for its new focus was the telecommunications industry, starting with Telenor, which acquired Tapad in 2016. Tapad's goal was to deliver personalisation at scale.
https://adexchanger.com/data-exchanges/tapad-getting-media-services-game/
https://www.tapad.com/press-release/tapad-redefines-business-to-…
Content Type: Examples
In 2018, Tapad announced a partnership with Twine Data intended to integrate Tapad's probabilistic cross-device tracking capability with Twine's deterministic identity graph. The two companies intend to create one of the largest portable identity graph and customer relationship management onboarding services in the US.
https://www.tapad.com/press-release/tapads-proprietary-graph-now-integrated-with-adobe-audience-manager
tags: Tapad, Twine Data, cross-channel linking, CRM, advertising…
Content Type: Examples
In 2015, the advertising startup Tapad launched TV Pulse, a measurement platform that added linear TV data to its existing cross-device platform. The company claimed that its technology could detect devices such as smartphones being used by the same consumer who had viewed the company's TV ads, to an accuracy level of over 90%. Once the platform has matched the individual, it can track actions such as downloading an app to measure the effectiveness of the ads.
http://www.mediapost.com/…
Content Type: Examples
In 2013, the New York-based startup Tapad was growing fast based on its claim to be able to track and target individual consumers across many devices - desktop and laptop computers, TVs, smartphones, and tablets. The technique goes well beyond cookies, which enable sites to track individuals across the web on a single device by tagging them with unique codes. To track people across all these devices, the company's software analyses billions of data points including cookies, cellphone IDs, wifi…
Content Type: Examples
In 2015, Norwegian telephone company Telenor announced it was acquiring Tapad, a five-year-old New York-based advertising startup for $360 million. Tapad focuses on cross-device "retargeting"; that is, it claims to track billions o dfata points across mobile devices, PCs, TV, and watches, and, going forward cars and other newly connected devices. The information is then repackaged to help media buyers and advertisers more precisely target specific groups of consumers. Tapad counted 160 top US…
Content Type: Examples
The key claim of retargeting, the business of companies like Paris-based Criteo, is that it can match long-tail advertisers with long-tail publishers and retailers. Ad exchanges enable these connections by identifying the specific group of people who need what smaller brands have - products such as specific light bulbs or replacement parts. By 2017, retargeting had become a $10 billion business.
https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/311653/a-tale-of-two-tails.html
tags: Criteo, cross…
Content Type: Examples
In 2016, the French company Criteo, which uses website tags to collect information about the products visitors see, noted that it keeps such data for 13 months. The company creates user profiles based on each visit to a website to view content or a product, and also uses the data for retargeting ads - that is, to display the same ads on subsequent sites consumers visit.
https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/290565/criteo-creates-tech-that-optimizes-dynamic-ads-in.html
tags: Criteo,…
Content Type: Examples
In 2016, when data scientist Fred Benenson investigated why he had received an email from Sears asking if he was still interested in a product shortly after he had browsed for it on the Sears website, he discovered that Sears had contracted the French company Criteo to make this type of connection. Although Benenson had never given Sears his email address, Criteo could use the cookie it placed on his machine to match other information held about him in advertising partners' databases and sign…
Content Type: Examples
In 2010, customers of the online shoe retailer Zappos, which was acquired by Amazon in 2009, began noticing that recommendations for products they had viewed on the site were following them around the web. The culprit was a then-new practice known as "retargeting", which uses cookies to identify users as they move around the web. The source was quickly - via links on the ads themselves - identified as the French company Criteo, which tells retailers its personalised banners will help them "…
Content Type: Examples
In 2017, the French retargeting company Criteo admitted that Apple's Intelligent Tracking Prrevention - changed default settings that prevent ad networks and other technology companies from tracking users - would cut its revenues by 8% to 10%. Although Safari had blocked such third-party cookies previously, the updated settings would actively delete some publishers' cookies after 30 days. In a filing with the SEC, Criteo claimed to have found a "solution" that would approximately halve the…
Content Type: Examples
The French company Criteo is struggling to conform to the requirements of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, which came into force in May 2018. Critics believed that Criteo's practice of opting visitors to European retail sites into first-party cookies and tracking even if they ignored the message will attract legal challenges. Criteo is working on methods to use opt-ins on one site to recognise users across the web and exempt them from further requests for consent; however, this…
Content Type: Examples
In 2018, the French company Criteo unveiled its new €20 million AI lab, dedicated to researching and developing machine learning. The company intends the lab to shape industry standards for measurement and best practices in this area, and lead the international conversation on responsible data use.
https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/criteo-ai-lab-machine-learning-research-centre-paris-france
Tags: Criteo, AI, research, advertising, big data, analytics, ethics
Writer: Tyrone Stewart…
Content Type: Examples
In 2018, the French company Criteo announced it would link up with the ecommerce company Shopify to enable retailers and merchants of all sizes to use its technology to target users across channels and devices and scale up their businesses. Retailers will not need to expand their IT resources.
https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/criteo-shopify-plus-technology-partner-program
tags: Criteo, Shopify, retailers, SMEs, cross-channel linking, advertising
Writer: Tyrone Stewart
Publication:…
Content Type: Examples
In 2012, when the French company Criteo filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public, it cited its data assets and the accuracy of its algorithms as a crucial part of its valuation. The company said that every day it was presented with billions of opportunities to connect individuals browsing the internet with its advertising customers, and makes these matches by analysing massive amounts of data to predict users' intent and deliver ads that are likely to result in sales for…
Content Type: Examples
In 2018, the French company Criteo formed a partnership with AgilOne to identify and link customer behaviour across multiple online and offline channels. The service is intended to make the ads consumers see more relevant, but also stop showing them ads for products they've already bought in offline stores. AgilOne provides the feed of customer data to Criteo; Criteo's platform uses the information to decide to target or suppress ads.
https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/323465/…
Content Type: Examples
In 2015, Quantcast CEO Konrad Feldman explained his purpose in starting up the company in 2006: "to manufacture data to make advertising more relevant for consumers". By 2015, as display advertising on the web was beginning to use the targeting techniques previously preserved for search advertising, the company was evaluating 2.5 million transactions a second and processing 30PB of data per day - a year's worth of data for the CERN hadron collider. The company both sells ad inventory to…
Content Type: Examples
In 2018, a week before the General Data Protection Regulation came into force in the EU, Quantcast and several other publishing industry groups complained that Google in an open letter that Google was imposing GDPR risks on publishers and consumers. Under the system Google proposed for GDPR compliance, Google would impose limits on the number of technical vendors publishers could work with, thereby limiting innovation and competition, had yet to commit to joining the IAB Europe's Transparency…
Content Type: Examples
In 2013 and 2014, Quantcast's CEO, Konrad Feldman, claimed that real-time bidding, the latest trend in advertising technology, was providing a new way to game advertisers. RTB, also known as "programmatic" advertising, uses cookies to track what users have looked at and then retarget them through ads on other services. IDC expected RTB to command about $5 billion in ad spending in 2014. Feldman's complaint was that the last ad a customer sees before making the purchase gets all the credit when…
Content Type: Examples
In 2010, Quantcast and Clearspring agreed to settle class action lawsuits brought against them over their use of Flash cookies. Flash cookies are "Local Storage Objects" stored by Adobe's Flash player plug-in; unaffected by browser privacy settings, they can respawn HTTP cookies after a user finds and deletes them. The lawsuits cited the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Video Privacy Protection Act, and state laws, although it was not clear that the…