PRIVACY BE DAMNED

As a practitioner in the world of big data I am reminded of Zuckerberg’s comment about the users of what is now Facebook as “They trust me” “Dumb F—ks” for giving up their personal data.
Contrary to Wall Street analysts’ suggestion that he has matured, I beg to differ. Analysts have an agenda to keep the stock price momentum going and have no clue (nor do they really care) about the nefarious practices behind the Facebook curtain.
For years I rallied against the intrusions, and yes, theft of the use of our data which most have blindly turned over to Facebook.
Let’s be clear. Facebook did not steal our data. The fine print in their terms allowed them to mine our information legally (if not surreptitiously). In return, we get to use the platform. Such fun!!!
As Facebook executives insist they don’t sell their data, they are correct. They DO sell the USE of our data, and then lose control as the buyer of the data usage integrates third party data to enhance profile targeting down to, yes, even a street address with a more complete profile of YOU …. anonymity be gone.
So what we end up with as the chickens come home to roost is a nest of lies, obfuscated with technical terms, apologies, lack of transparency and accountability and legislators who don’t have a clue how to pull the curtain aside and ask the right questions.
Zuckerberg will not go away as he has overriding voting rights on the business of Facebook. What needs to be done is for clueless legislators to clamp down hard on how this company is undermining the very foundation of what the definition of privacy is …. something Zuckerberg will never openly admit he believes doesn’t exist.

  
WAIT, WHAT?!
I laughed.
When Facebook first commented on the small number of Americans who saw the Russian prompted ads at 10 million, I laughed.
I laughed again last week when Facebook upped the number of Americans who saw the ads to 126 million.
Today, Facebook testified on Capitol Hill that the number is now 150 million.
Still laughing.
Facebook, Google and Twitter are compromised. And there is a reason....a lack of seasoned media professionals.
When Facebook first announced10 Million Americans saw the ads and the dollars they took to run them i held back.
Wait, What?!
The numbers simply did not add up and any traditional media pro could have figured that out.
When Facebook upped the number to 126 million and reasoned that it was a small insignificant number I paused and laughed some more. So .... Facebook is telling its advertisers that the millions reached was not a big deal and are taking money from clients to sell insignifigant performance.
Who's crazy here?
It's just the tip of the iceberg and numbers will rise yet again. It will not end well.

Note to Facebook. Google and Twitter .... get off your high horse and hire some seasoned traditional media pros who know the business of reach and math. You simply do not have the chops nor the required foundations to go it alone.

YOUR PAYPAL ACCOUNT IS WORTH $6.43

Online criminals are more interested in getting their hands on stolen Uber, PayPal and even Facebook accounts, than credit card numbers and other personally identifiable information.

 The price of these stolen identifiers on the underground marketplace, or “the Dark Web,” shows the value of credit cards has declined in the last year, according to security firm Trend Micro.

Last week, stolen Uber account information could be found on underground marketplaces for an average of $3.78 per account, while personally identifiable information, such as Social Security Numbers or dates of birth, ranged from $1 to $3.30 on average – down from $4 per record in 2014, reported CNBC.

Furthermore, PayPal accounts – with a guaranteed balance of $500 –were found to have an average selling price of $6.43. Facebook logins sold for an average of $3.02, while Netflix credentials sold for about 76 cents.

By contrast, U.S.-issued credit card information, which is sold in bundles, was listed for no more than 22 cents each,

“It’s an incredible underground ecosystem. There is a high level of competition for these criminal buyers and there are a lot of different types of forums. It’s incredibly diverse, but incredibly mature,”Said Ed Carbera, Trend Micro’s vice president of cyber security strategy.

Cyber criminals will often use stolen Uber credentials to book “ghost rides,” in which they create a fake driver account and charge nonexistent rides to stolen accounts, experts say.
Another way fraudsters leverage this information is to simply build a fuller picture of a victim for identify theft.

“They are doing their own market research or where they can find the data that’s most valuable in the criminal underground and they develop their attacks accordingly,” said Cabrera.

Meanwhile, Forrester research analyst Andras Cser adds these incidents highlight the need of these service providers to be more cognizant of sudden changes in user’s account behavior.

“If a user suddenly takes a cross country ride versus following their usual movements, that should spark an alert,” notes Cser

To address the issue of fraudulent transactions, Uber is reportedly testing its version of two-step authentication, which would require users to enter additional credentials when logging in from an unknown device.

The time has come to move away from passwords.

“Firms should be looking at behavioral biometrics solutions to authenticate users — how the user actually behaves, how they hold a phone, how big their fingers are and how hard they press the touch screen."

Programmatic Transparency and Self-Driving Media

Oh how the ad business has changed.  Not so much the creative element, although I would argue that advertising was far and away more creative in the last two decades of the 20^th century. And now the rush to embrace a digital cascade of data and social media that waterfalls into an ocean of swirling confusion is impacting the CMO's ability to perform. 

When did it all start?

Could it have been with AOL when it first appeared on May 24, 1985?  After all, it was simply a communication tool and an online social gathering place. 

There was no useful search engine until 1990, when Archie (originally Archives) appeared as a database of searchable web file names.

By 1994, Yahoo (short for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle") launched to cobble together and categorized the community of searchable websites.

On September 4, 1998, Google (originally called “BackRub”) made its debut.  Today, Google argues that it has the “right to collect your most sensitive data, as long as it flows across an open WiFi network”

MySpace launched on August 1, 2003 as a more sophisticated social networking site.  But a fickle audience and the debut of FaceBook less than a year later, on February 4, 2004, contributed to its tortuous decline.

Then, the CEO of FaceBook declared “the age of privacy is over”.  And today, Google knows what you’re looking for and Facebook knows what you like and they both know where you are. 

The volumes of data that are collected via the digital pipeline we call the Internet, stretches the imagination.  According to SINTEF, a Scandinavian research organization, 90% of all of the data in the world has been gathered over the last two years, now classified as “Big Data”. 

 

What is Big Data and how does it act and integrate with programmatic media platforms?  

Big data is simply trillions or records of billions of people from a variety of sources to include the web search and surfing, sales, customer contact points, social media, mobile data and more.  It is a massive volume of structured and unstructured data that can be manipulated to predict the needs and wants of individuals. 

What is programmatic buying? 

In its simplest form, programmatic technology platforms allow for automated buying and selling of digital advertising via real-time bidding, akin to financial market trading.   

There are pros and cons to this emerging discipline, not the least of which is a seeming lack of transparency that tends to obfuscate the process. 

 

A recent study by Forrester Research for the Association of National Advertisers suggests there is deep concern and confusion by marketers with respect to cost, quality and real impact.   

But much like the unstoppable advancement of the self-driving car, self-driving media decisions will, in its early stages, suffer the cries of skeptics who mistrust the system to provide promised value.

The root of the problem is lack of trust …. not necessarily unwarranted as marketers and procurement officers pressure ad agencies and media buyers to reduce costs and service fees.  In turn, agencies consolidate into holding companies, utilize technology to reduce staff and increase productivity and, in many cases, act as intermediaries to purchase media and data in bulk, acting as resellers. 

As market evolution begins to demand the placement of enforceable standards for programmatic procurement , quarterbacked by contract guarantees, both marketers and agencies will win.

But both parties must come to the table with the knowledge that a fair and understanding view of business process for each will provide a rising tide to the benefit of all.  

FACEBOOK'S BAR CHART FROM HELL

I could not resist the opportunity to copy and paste this post from Bob Hoffman's Ad Contrartian blog.

Facebook has decided that it no longer wants to be in the business of selling clicks. Instead it wants to be in the business of selling reach and frequency, just like the grown-ups.

Of course, this is a cruel joke because reach and frequency mean nothing if the ads are invisible, which they are on Facebook.

This bar chart (to actual scale) does a pretty good job of explaining why they'd rather sell reach and frequency than clicks.




(C) 2012, The Ad Contrarian

For every 10,000 ads they deliver, Facebook gets 5 clicks. What would you want to sell?

What You Should Know About Social Media

Stay away.  As the current barbs about Facebook’s IPO fly and as GroupOn takes a dive with its stock closing in on single digits, the Social Media helium craze is drifting further away from the accountable reality of advertising performance.

Tech stars Google and Apple haven’t escaped the hammering of late by the pundits that are blinded by the hope of social media or even mobile media.
 

They are all wrong.

The reality check that follows tracks the opening price for the above mentioned companies and the Dow Jones and NASDAQ averages.  It may not be a precise measure, but it points out the underlying value placed on these firms by analysts and the public at large.

Since the opening stock price on May 18^th (the first trading day for Facebook) and the closing price on May 30^th the result that follows sends a strong signal and a vote for value creation vs. value deterioration.
 

Apple: up 8.5%

Google: down 5.9%

Facebook: down 33.0%

GroupOn: down 11.1%

Dow Jones: down 1.9%

NASDAQ: up 0.8%

While the averages remain relatively unchanged, Google tries to keep pace while the pure play social media darlings are clobbered.  The clear winner in this “race” … Apple.

WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE

It's not a game any more.

From an article last week in The Wall Street Journal ...

"Some of the most widely used apps on Facebook—the games, quizzes and sharing services that define the social-networking site and give it such appeal—are gathering volumes of personal information.

A Wall Street Journal examination of 100 of the most popular Facebook apps found that some seek the email addresses, current location and sexual preference, among other details, not only of app users but also of their Facebook friends. One Yahoo service powered by Facebook requests access to a person's religious and political leanings as a condition for using it.

The popular Skype service for making online phone calls seeks the Facebook photos and birthdays of its users and their friends......a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app.

An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy. "

With thanks to Bob Hoffman at Hoffman Lewis for pointing this out in his blog, The Ad Contrarian.

IS IT TOO LATE?

Have we gone too far to trust the house of cards in whose hands we place our private lives?
Yesterday I was given to understand that banks are now scanning Facebook pages to qualify you for a loan. If they sense your activities through postings, comments and photos are questionable as a loan risk, you just might not get that loan or a great rate.

It is now standard practice for HR departments to do the same when applying for a job.

Unfortunately, what happens online stays online … forever. Online actions have consequences that can haunt from cradle to grave and beyond. The need to connect and share with “friends” is often so intense that it’s easy (especially for younger generations) to lose sight of what can become devastating consequences.

Cyber bullying has become all too common thanks to the Internet flaming and spreading hurtful posts faster than they can be stopped. The trend needs to be arrested before more kids follow in the footsteps of those we already lost.

The social networks have a responsibility to protect their user base on many levels. It’s unfortunate that the business of collecting our data (most often in circumventing ways) completely overshadows the need to protect us. Week after week we read that Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Verizon and others have overstepped privacy concerns in an effort to track our online movements and locations.

It will not stop. Data of every size, shape and form has become the currency of choice for all online services. The stakes are too high. Witness the current explosion of Big Data and Cloud computing companies chased by VCs like it was during the pre-bubble days. VCs are tripping over themselves to share the spoils.

In 1984, Big Brother was too far off to be a concern. Today, what we read in 1984 was child’s play.

LOSING FACE(BOOK)

The holidays have come and gone and new year resolutions are on the agenda of millions. My own began on Christmas day when I resolved to quit Facebook. Easier said than done.

Finding the option to delete an account is a formidable task in and of itself. Trawling through settings and management options I finally (simply) typed "Cancel A Facebook Account" into Google's search engine. Results pointed to a direct link for deletion. Several clicks later I was done .... Or was I?

Advisory: STOP! Do Not Pass Go, No U-Turns!

While a de-activated account cannot be accessed by the public at large, it takes 14 days to delete the account entirely. If, during the 14 day "waiting" period you interact with Facebook, the account is automatically reactivated. The simple act of checking to make sure your account was deleted withing the 14 day period will reactivate it. Sneaky? Ya think?!

On January 8th I will be (should be) faceless. In the short period since December 25th I haven't missed one message, one update, one friend request or photo opp. What was it's purpose anyway?

Because it's my business to know what's happening in the digital world, I felt obligated to be part of it. What I finally realized was that all my news feeds keep me up to date without the need to maintain a Facebook account. Want to reach me? Send me a text. E-mail me. Pick up a phone. Write me a note.

I don't want Facebook to be my communication tool. Frankly I find the lazy and evasive, jibber-jabber attitude towards privacy a bit too corporate ... good for Facebook; not good for you.

The jury is also still out on the value of Facebook as a marketing tool for your business. Rushing like so many lemmings to the edge and over, into an abyss of corporate waste, is epic. There have been no real success stories that carry over into sustainable and profitable marketing efforts.

You can e-mail me at pbenjou@gmail.com

A SPYING CONSPIRACY

LIKE IT OR NOT ...

Obfuscate: To darken, To make obscure. To be evasive, unclear or confusing. To make so confused or opaque as to be difficult to perceive or understand.

Guilty: Facebook, Twitter and Google.

A recent investigation by the Wall Street journal into the use of "LIKE" buttons and widgets placed on thousands of major sites, signaled yet another serious breach of ethics that will surely have the privacy police up in arms.

It appears these buttons capture a user's visit to the site and feeds it back to the originator. The kicker is that you need not click on the button. Your visit is automatically logged by the likes of Facebook.

Their explanations obfuscate. Do we really believe when they tell us they don't use the data? If so, why are the visits tracked in the first place.

Their real response should be .... We know you're too stupid to understand what we do and we don't want to tell you why we're doing it but we're going to do it anyway.

Gotcha!

Read the story here.

ABOUTFACEBOOK

While Facebook may extol the virtues of its privacy policies they will not hesitate to release personal information to law enforcement authorities if pressed to do so.

What kind of information are they willing to give up?

• All your contact information including your phone number,residential address and e-mail address.


• Status updates and posts.


• Everything you ever shared or liked.


• All your notes.


• All your friends.


• Groups you belong to.


• Events.


• Your photos and all your videos.


• All messages sent and received.


• Where and when you logged in.


• Your user number.


• The date you joined.

Scary?

Not if you're an upstanding citizen. But there are elements that deal with law enforcement that can, if willing, misuse this information. Consider, for example, the millions of homeowners who are defaulting on their underwater mortgages. The extent of the information provided seems a "bit" overboard and is potentially damaging on a financial and emotional level.

Best advice: Remember 1984. Watch your "Wall".

EVERYTHING POPULAR IS WRONG

The headline is a quote borrowed from Oscar Wilde. In the context of this blog post it reflects on the often misguided and mass movement of special interest and demographic groups to tilt the needle on the sanity scale towards hysteria.... and that's not good.

Let me explain.

As marketers we believe our job is to inform the consuming public about a product or a service and to make a sale. We are charged with listening to them in order to understand their needs and then fill those needs as best we can. If we are smart marketers, we seek to connect and stay connected. Again .... make the sale, and then another.

We would like to believe we accomplish this is spades. We do not. We are not even close.

To a large (very large) degree we somehow managed to shift away from filling a need, moving instead towards creating a need. Some might call these creations fads. Others grasp them and market the hell out of them only to eventually concede to the definition of fad or phase or meme.

As the fad becomes "popular" and is collectively followed by an enthusiastic population, driven by emotional excitement and often peer pressure, it eventually succumbs as a faded novelty.

Social interaction, now defined and monitored as social "media", is a trend that has been tracking time over centuries. The Agora was a marketplace that encouraged social interaction and in some manner is believed to exists today in the form of Myspace, Twitter, Facebook or China's RenRen.

It is not.

These channels, or open air markets, are simply fads that have not yet recognized the true dynamics of a social marketplace. MySpace failed. AOL is gasping. Twitter struggles to find a workable model and Facebook may soon be approaching a privacy tipping point that forces a reversal of growth.

The market channels that will survive the test of time, innovating as they move forward, are best defined by Apple, Microsoft and Google ... companies that create lasting trends ... not fads.

Let's not be marketers consumed by the emotionally young chatter that disguises itself as "the future". That market represents a disproportionately small segment of consumer spending today. And I promise you that their behavior and attitudes will change as they mature.

SOCIAL NOTWORKING

As a managing director for Morgan Stanley, Mary Meeker is the firm's global lead for the technology research unit. In 1995, she co-authored an industry report "The Internet Report" which would become a landmark during the internet boom era.

In her most recent presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, "Ten Questions Internet Execs Should Ask & Answer" , you can find the chart that follows. It represents share of online display units along with corresponding CPM rates.

Click on the graph to enlarge

The report should be unnerving for the likes of Social Networks and especially Facebook. At the same Summit, Mark Zuckerberg brushed off advertising as "it's not necessarily about advertising".

Insanity?

It certainly isn't about advertising when faced with a dismal display rate. It also illustrates how weak the site is when it comes to ROI. With the exception of a few mega-efforts by major marketers (supported by even larger TV budgets), Facebook falls flat on its own face.

And it is becoming a potential detriment to sustaining business models supported by advertising.

DRINKING FACEBOOK'S KOOL-AID

That I have been questioning Facebook's efforts to manage the privacy of their users comes as no surprise to my readers. Facebook's survival is inexorably tied to the data it collects on users to "make the user experience more meaningful". In turn it collects targeting fees from its advertisers.

Facebook can't help itself. It is addicted to data collection, often sidestepping and overrunning privacy constraints.

In July, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook hit a milestone with 500 million active users. Frankly, I don't believe the self reported numbers.

At the end of 2009, Facebook reported 350 active million users. The time-line looks like this ....

100 million : August 26, 2008
150 million : Jan 7, 2009 (134 days)
200 million : April 8, 2009 (91 days)
250 million : July 15, 2009 (98 days)
300 million : September 15, 2009 (62 days)
350 million : December 1, 2009 (77 days)
500 million : July 2010 (242 days)

It appears that Facebook added 150 active million users or roughly 42% of its 12/1/2009 base in just eight months. Really? Who's auditing the numbers?

Consider the following reported numbers...

In the second quarter of 2009 there were 444 million broadband users globally. Factoring global broadband usage increases and mobile access, Facebook would need to include almost every global broadband connection as an active user. Really?

Seventy percent (70%) of Facebook's active users are outside the United States.

There are approximately 250 million people over the age of twelve in the US. A user needs to be thirteen to register on Facebook. Facebook claims sixty percent of the US population (150 million) over the age of twelve that are active registered users. Really? Please define "active".

User growth should be petering out as will revenue. Self reported annual revenue of $800 million suggests Facebook earns an unimpressive one dollar and sixty cents ($1.60) per user.

How much hype and Kool-aid will we continue to swallow?

WATCHING FACEBOOK

That I have been casting a watchful eye on the ever expanding Facebook tentacles, often cautioning users on privacy issues, is no secret. The exponential, albeit unaudited, growth of its user base closing in on one half billion and the questionable collection and use of the data it collects from its users continues to pop up like a bad penny.

This week's gaff, exposing tens of millions of its users' personal identity to advertisers, should be a wake up call for Facebook to finally clean up their act.

But it won't.

If we were to trace the "gaffs" back to revenue produced for Facebook, the picture could morph from Pollyanna to the greed of big business. No doubt the overzealous digerati would come up with blinded observations and poorly manufactured statistics, never losing site of self centered and self serving arguments .... drinking the Koolaid they mixed themselves.

The Internet provides us with a treasure trove of new and exciting options for entertainment, information and productivity platforms to enhance the world around our personal space. However social networks, moving in the direction of Facebook with total abandon and disregard for the sake of "advertising" revenue may, in the end, do more harm than good for the future of the Internet.

Simply, Facebook cannot seem to come up with a business model that does not deal with the discreet (and seemingly illegal) distribution of, or access to, personal data. The conversations and arguments center around "a better Internet experience", serving ads and content that THEY THINK .... make that THEY KNOW.... you want to see.

Give me a break!

It's about time we put the cards on the table and re-think the social network models before the house of cards collapses on itself. Let's begin the challenge by removing "advertising" from the equation.

And to those individuals that "don't care about their personal data being collected" ... please keep those empty arguments to yourselves .... you just don't get it.

FACEBOOK "NOSE" BEST

As Facebook grows to a reported 500 million users globally, its privacy policies and the management of information their users post is coming under more intense scrutiny. On the heels of the movie release, Social Network, Facebook announced new tools for its users to manage that information across personal groups of people they "trust".

But things may not be what they seem.

What follows are excerpts from Facebook's commentary ... what they are saying, followed by our interpretation of what they may be thinking.

"We use your information to make your experience better"
Interpretation: We want to know what you've been up to so that we can direct more relevant ads and search results .... so that we can sell you stuff.

"When a group member posts to a group, everyone in that group will receive a notification about that post"
Interpretation: But what your friends do with it we can't control. It's your problem.

"The whole experience is organized around spaces of the people you care most about"
Interpretation: We want to confuse you to the point of exasperation and give up control of your information.

"You can quickly download everything you ever posted on Facebook"
Interpretation: Because we don't want to be responsible for your garbage.

Most comments post on the Huffington Post review were overwhelmingly negative which leads one to assume that there are many more users abandoning the social network than meets the eye.

DON'T MESS WITH THE PICKLE

First it was the pickle. Now it's the tomato. It was subtle, but timely.

Since 1876, the Heinz Ketchup bottle pictured a pickle on their label. In 2009 the pickle was dropped and replaced by a vine tomato. Makes sense, right? After all, Heinz is the largest user of tomatoes in the world and there is no hint of pickles in their ketchup.

Ketchup lovers all over were disturbed by this move .... from an iconic label to an average, inconsistent marketing gimmick!

But now Heinz crossed the line. Catchy phrases on the labels like "Can't Help Broccoli" and, OMG!, an in-your-face call to action to fan them on Facebook!

This cannot be happening! But it is.


From Hefty Trash Bags to Ticonderoga Pencils, marketers are driven to find "friends" on Facebook.

When was the last time you were passionate about trash bags or pencils and who are these so called marketers that have no clue? In many cases, Facebook can be leveraged to the benefit of some brands. In many many more cases it is a huge waste of time, effort and money.

"You like tomatoes and I like tomatoes .... let's call the whole thing off."

PUBLISHERS BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL

As digital publishers came together at a panel hosted by OMMA's PUBLISH conference today, trying to desperately figure out how to migrate to a digital landscape, I could not help but wonder.

What if offline publishing properties that are both non-native to the online environment and not time sensitive never migrated to the online world. Would they be better off today from a revenue perspective?

For those publishers that did make the leap (and made many mistakes along the way) do they regret the move? Chances are they would not admit they would "go back to the future".

The delicate balance between the reader and his/her engagement with a publication is likely not interrupted by the absence of a digital version. Many pubs missed the benefit they provide their offline readers .... the benefit of an exclusive interaction that is not available online. Unfortunately they followed the crowd.

This theory would not hold for news sites that are time sensitive. The internet created a "want it now, want it fast" culture that dictates the need for speed. They belong online .... as do native digital brands the likes of eBay, Monster, Huffington Post and Facebook.

As the traditional publishers scrambled to "go digital" with no vision for a sound business model, they gave away their content and are now waging an epic battle for their survival.

Comments welcome.

NOT FOR SQUARES

In just over one short year Foursquare, a location based, mobile driven social networking site caught fire in over one hundred metropolitan areas, quickly generating as many as one million users. Today, it's a worldwide service catching the eye of Yahoo! and a reputed offer of $125 million for the service.

Is Foursquare just another novel use of social networking that will fade away in a couple of years? What benefits does the service provide its users? Why bother?

Foursquare may just be another application searching for a user base but is, despite its somewhat hokey attempt at gaming, providing useful localized information on a variety of venues.

A user for several months now I can see the potential for the service .... as long as the founders recognize the need to limit input to useful information.

It needs to clean up its act a bit.

Awarding "badges" may be cute, but it just becomes an annoying "side dish". As users "check in" to venues they visit, the service then posts the venue for all to see. Not limited to restaurants or retail venues, there are "check-ins" for street corners, user apartments, etc. .... a sort of wild west listing with some offering no redeeming value.

The tie to the mobile ecosystem offering mobile "coupons" is the key to Foursquare's success. Building an opt-in mobile database will secure their future as they tie themselves to venues focused on local advertising and build relationships with online and offline media industry partners.

With a little clean up and smart strategic positioning I would give Foursquare a better chance of long-term survival and success than Facebook.