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Content Type: Examples
In 2018, the British army used paid Facebook messages to target 16-year-olds around the day GCSE results were announced to suggest that an army career might still be open to them if their grades were sub-par. The move was criticised for targeting teenagers at their most vulnerable and stressed moment in order to fill the army roles that require are least popular and hardest to recruit. The answer to a written parliamentary question revealed that the army spent £1.7 million advertising on social…
Content Type: Examples
In 2018, a Duke University medical doctor who worked with Microsoft researchers to analyse millions of Bing user searches found links between some computer users' physical behaviours - tremors while using a mouse, repeated queries, and average scrolling speed - and Parkinson's disease. The hope was to be able to diagnose conditions like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's earlier and more accurately. Other such studies tracked participants via a weekly online health survey, mouse usage, and, via…
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In 2018, the chair of the London Assembly's police and crime committee called on London's mayor to cut the budget of the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime, which provides oversight, in order to pay for AI systems. The intention was that the efficiencies of adopting AI would free up officers' time by helping spot crime patterns to identify potential suspects, and examine data on seized devices. The time saved could put greater numbers of police on the streets to counter London's rising crime…
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In 2017, the head of China’s security and intelligence systems, Meng Jianzhu, called on security forces to break down barriers to data sharing in order to use AI and cloud computing to find patterns that could predict and prevent terrorist attacks. Meng also called for increased integration of the footage from the country's surveillance cameras and suggested that AI could "improve the predictability, accuracy and efficiency of social management". China is investing heavily in AI, expecting to…
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In 2018, documents obtained by a public records request revealed that the Los Angeles Police Department required its analysts to maintain a minimum of a dozen ongoing surveillance targets identified using Palantir software and a "probable offender" formula based on an LAPD points-based predictive policing formula. The Palantir software, which LADP began using in 2011, analyses data from myriad police sources that LAPD says helps target chronic offenders and lower crime rates. Critics such as…
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In 2017, the Massachusetts attorney general's office reached an agreement under which Boston-based Copley Advertising agreed to eschew sending mobile ads to patients visiting Planned Parenthood and other health clinics. In 2015, Copley's geofencing technique used location information from smartphones and other internet-enabled devices to target "abortion-minded" women and send them ads for alternatives to abortion in a campaign it conducted on behalf of a Christian pregnancy counselling and…
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In 2018, the digital marketing company Tell All Digital began marketing technology to personal injury law firms to enable them to send mobile ads to patients they know are waiting for treatment in an emergency room and for up to a month afterwards. The technology relies on geofencing, a technique for targeting people in a specific location using a phone ID derived from wi-fi, cell data, or GPS apps. Under the US Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, this type of targeting is…
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By 2018, gene studies involving more than 200,000 test takers had found correlations between 500 human genes and academic success. Based on these results, the behavioural geneticist Robert Plomin claimed that parents would be able to use consumer tests to enable "precision education", built around accurate predictions of their children's mental abilities. Even though DNA variations linked to test scores explained less than 10% of the difference in intelligence among the Europe-descended…
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Canada began experiments introducing automated decision-making algorithms into its immigration systems to support evaluation of some of the country's immigrant and visitor applications in 2014. In a 2018 study, Citizen Lab and NewsDeeply found that AI's use was expanding despite concerns about bias, discrimination, and privacy breaches, along with other human rights issues such as due process and procedural fairness. Residents lacking citizenship often have less access to human rights…
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By August 2018, the UK government's "hostile environment" policy, as set out in the 2014 and 2016 Immigration Acts and other measures, was extending the national border into the heart of services such as banking, education, health, and housing where landlords and staff have been forced to implement immigration checks. Students are a particular focus; it is harder to apply to UK universities and work after graduation, and international students must comply with stricter rules on attendance and…
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In September 2018, the US Department of Homeland Security proposed to add credit scores and histories to the list of information immigrants are required to submit when applying for legal resident status. The stated purpose of the proposed rule is to bar those who might become a "public charge" from acquiring legal residency, extending their stay, or changing their status. While credit reports do reveal information about an individual's debt, payment, and work history, they were never designed…
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In May 2018, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement abandoned the development of machine learning software intended to mine Facebook, Twitter, and the open Internet to identify terrorists. The software, announced in the summer of 2017, had been a key element of president Donald Trump's "extreme vetting" programme and expected to flag at least 10,000 people a year for investigation. ICE decided instead to opt for a contractor who could provide training, management, and human personnel to do the…
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Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the New York City Police Department installed thousands of CCTV cameras and by 2008 in partnership with Microsoft had built the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center to consolidate its video surveillance operations into a single command centre that also incorporated other sensors such as licence plate readers and radiation detectors. In 2010 as part of its Domain Awareness System, the NYPD began integrating cutting-edge video analytics software into…
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In 2011, the US Department of Homeland Security funded research into a virtual border agent kiosk called AVATAR, for Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real-Time, and tested it at the US-Mexico border on low-risk travellers who volunteered to participate. In the following years, the system was also tested by Canada's Border Services Agency in 2016 and the EU border agency Frontex in 2014. The research team behind the system, which included the University of Arizona, claimed the…
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In 2018, at least five British local authorities began developing systems intended to use predictive analytics to identify families needing attention from child services on the basis that algorithmic profiling could help them target their scarce resources more efficiently. Data about at least 377,000 people were incorporated into predictive systems managed by a variety of private companies: Xantura (used by Hackney and Thurrock) or by systems they developed internally (Newham and Bristol). IBM…
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In 2018, the EU announced iBorderCtrl, a six-month pilot led by the Hungarian National Police to install an automated lie detection test at four border crossing points in Hungary, Latvia, and Greece. The system uses an animated AI border agent that records travellers' faces while asking questions such as "What's in your suitcase?". The AI then analyses the video, scoring each response for 38 microexpressions. Travellers who pass will be issued QR codes to let them through; those who don't will…
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Police in the German state of Hesse are using a bespoke version of Palantir's Gotham software system, specially adapted for the police force. Palantir CEO Alex Karp sits on the board of the German mega publisher Axel Springer.
Publication: WorldCrunch, Jannis Brühl
Date: 20 November 2018
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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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 "…