Ad Tech Primer: Anonymized Ad Tech vs. Platform Peeping Toms
This writer is a computer programmer, who worked in ad tech, who wants people to enjoy the open web. I wrote yesterday how surprisingly well-prepared the senate was in Tuesday's Zuckerberg hearings on Capital Hill. However one topic that could be better articulated among congress, the press, the public, is "ad tech."
Some terms are being conflated in a way that could cement legislation deeply injurious even to ethical internet commerce: "targeted ads" conflated with "dark ads" and terms we need to create now "anonymized ad tech" vs "personalized ad tech."
For interested readers, the end of this post defines two more terms "history wipes" and "boolean exclusions."
Ad Tech - What is Ad Tech: 3 Things
Impressions, click-throughs, and conversions are the three names in this ad tech game.
*Impression
An ad appearing once on a web page you load into your browser counts as one ad impression.
*Click Through
Rarely does a single ad impression lead to a user clicking on the ad, what online publishers bill as a click-through event, but it happens.
*Conversion
A conversion event is defined by the advertiser.
Some define a conversion event as "anonymous user who saw this ad visited my site in a separate browsing session in the same week."
An "anonymous user who saw this ad added my product to their shopping cart in a separate browsing session that same month."
A third advertiser may only count it as a conversion if the user "proceeded to check out." (How many of us "cart" a product, then are called away before we "purchase," an item on the internet?)
If a county is recruiting volunteer firefighters ahead of fire season this summer, to provide relief to Ladder 11 firefighters who just returned from fighting a big blaze in another state, that county could place ads through an "ad tech platform" company that will accept the graphics and ad copy the customer submits to them, and strategically place ads for the fairest price. The county government decides a "conversion" event is someone who was shown the ad in one browsing session, later visits the volunteer signup web page in another session that same week. This could be an urgent ad campaign; fire season approaches.
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'Targeted Ads' is Broad, 'Dark Ads' is Specific
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-Targeted Ads
Targeted ads have been around since Gutenberg's printing press and no doubt earlier. You want to advertise on television shows popular with persons likely to buy your products. Seinfeld in its early years had few viewers, but NBC executives noticed it was popular with a certain age demographic, men in their young working years. That metric kept it on the air until its viewership grew.
Readers who buy "New York" magazine from a Denver newsstand see ads for hipster music events in Brooklyn. Those are targeted ads.
Subscribers to the Marin Independent Journal may see ads for homeowner fireproofing clinics offered free at the Marin Civic Center. Those are targeted ads.
Internet users who reside in Columbus, Ohio visiting Los Angeles could see Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) recruiting ads on web pages those tourists load into their smartphones. Those are targeted ads. (That's not necessarily a case of wasted ad tech dollars; that tourist may be visiting college campuses with her parents, and may want to volunteer with LAFD in the fall.)
-Dark Ads
A large portion of ads appearing on the internet qualify as "dark ads." The name dark ads sound ominous but they're not always sinister.
But since ads that appear then disappear on social media or the open web -- dark ads -- are more able to fly under the radar, covert advertisers may choose to place dark ads instead of placing print radio or TV ads.
Senator Coons on Wednesday used the broad term "targeted ads" when he was really describing the more specific dark ads used by illegal wildlife traffickers advertising animal body parts for sale on the internet in that 45 second video clip.
Some dark ad examples are grim, but imagine: online publishers, and all ad tech companies that place dark ads in social media or on the open web could *cancel out* specified commercial categories through "boolean exclusions" described at the end of this post.
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Anonymized Ad Tech, Personalized Ad Tech
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-Anonymized Ad Tech
This writer worked as a programmer in ad tech in the 2000's, as Facebook was ascending in popularity. Some ad tech firms decide to obey opaque principles: "our tracking technology will not be used to record anything personal about the user." Our ad firm didn't record the name, nor the age, nor the address of the person browsing the web.
In some ways, choosing anonymized ad tech principles is altruistic. But altruism can't be the only reason. In other ways, anonymization is a practical cost trade-off: if a small ad tech firm starts recording user data, they'll then have to hire lawyers and extra staff to communicate with authorities requesting identified suspect tracking data.
Anonymized ad tech at smaller firms could be seen as a necessity, since smaller firms don't run enough "pipes" that capture a user's name or email address.
But strategically, deciding not to look at personalized shopper data could optimize an ad firm's priorities. Seeing other peoples' personal data is a huge distraction. Basing ad placement on personal data could be an opportunity cost - the student visiting college campuses in Los Angeles would not have seen the LAFD firefighting volunteer ads if we'd placed her ads based on where she lives.
One anonymized ad tech firm where I worked had high conversion rates compared to the competition. We kept our eye on conversions, not peoples' personal lives. We were later acquired by a Fortune 1000 company.
Anonymized ad tech could garner trust among users browsing the web. It's a way to set your own ad tech apart from the competition.
And regardless of medium, whether digital or analog, ad placement needs to stay fresh. As a Frontline documentary "Merchants of Cool" said, "consumers are like bugs" who grow immune to one ad strategy "you spray them and spray them" and soon your ad doesn't work anymore.
Some ad tech firms also perform data wipes on browsing trails older than 60 days or other specified time intervals. This also keeps the AI fresh.
-Personalized Ad Tech, "Platform Peeping Toms"
Many ad tech veterans looked askance at social media that forced certain data points from the user in registration. "They have my name, why do they need my birth date?" "Can I use an internet 'handle' instead of my 'real name'?" Other ad tech veterans were natural extroverts -- one coworker I had was a stage and commercial actor on nights and weekends -- who saw the Facebook data-sharing implications, and loved it.
Knowing the multiple data points that ad tech typically stores on each user in a browsing session caused some ad tech experts to grow more resistant to ads seen in a browsing session on a personalized ad tech platform. It kicks the creepy up a notch to know these 96 data points, as Senator Fischer asked about Tuesday, can be hashed & connected back to your identity.
Another encroachment point is added because the more intrusive, personalized ad tech companies -- what more modest internet users see as a nuisance at best, or a Peeping Tom at worst -- seem less likely to wipe the browsing trail when it reaches 60 or 90 days of age. They're data hoarders.
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Messages
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-Email-informed Ads & "Message"-informed Ads
In the early days of ad tech, seeing banner ads related to a discussion we conducted through gmail didn't bother us much. We assumed a non-intrusive, anonymized ad tech placed that ad based on our messages.
But Senator Blunt (R-MI) Senator Heller (R-NV) and Senator Schatz (D-HI) all asked about message content at Tuesday's hearing.
Zuckerberg revealed users opt in to expose their texting information to the "Messenger" app in one clip with Senator Blunt, and Zuckerberg revealed the Facebook Messenger app re-routes smartphone text messages through his company's app in another clip with Senator Heller.
Knowing more and more ad tech platforms are hashing our browsing trail back to our personal identity -- knowing more anonymized ad tech is becoming personalized ad tech -- creates a different browsing experience. Ads may raise neck hairs, instead of inspire commercial transactions, when users see an ad for Black Panther, as Senator Schatz said, whether or not the ad tech fed your private message into an anonymized algorithm to inform the ad.
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Data Wipes, Boolean Exclusions
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-Data Wipes
Ad tech "data wipes" will flush and delete browsing history when it ages 60 or 90 days to keep an ad tech firm's AI fresh and forward-looking. For the user, he should be allowed to grow and change. They've successfully quit smoking, they don't want tobacco ads stalking them for years after.
An ad psychologist would call historically-informed ads an advertiser attempting "object consistency" someone trying to keep you as you were. "You're a smoker and you'll always be one." No, I quit smoking, and want to spend that disposable income on something new!
-Boolean Exclusions
Ad tech provides publishers a means to exclude certain categories of ads. A survivor of a shooting doesn't want AR-15 ads displayed when they load their favorite social media platform into a browser.
Software can be an "arms race", and hacker-created ads that slip through a boolean exclusion will need to be brought to the attention through a publisher's customer service channel, and a publisher needs to address this within a reasonable rapid response time window, as Senator Leahy mentioned Tuesday.
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Is Privacy Possible?
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There isn't much hope for privacy in the internet age, but a sliver of possibility peaks through if users and voters and consumers demand it. New terms were thrown around this week. Even technically proficient reporters watching Tuesday's senate Zuckerberg hearings were driven punch-drunk with the combination of technical and legal jargon tossed back and forth for five hours.
With a wider understanding of distinctions, between "targeted ads" vs "dark ads", then discerning "anonymized ad tech" from "personalized ad tech" we could steer our lawmakers toward more lightweight, sensible privacy laws.
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Further Reading:
Prevention, Detection, and Response: Feasibility of Honest Ads Act in Digital Space: www.offlinereport.net
"Your personal data isn’t my business — it’s a liability. I want as little as possible. I don’t even log IP addresses anymore." macro.org
This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
