Digital Media

Yahoo announced on Monday a new consumer tool called "Ad Interest Manager."

BoomTown is going to ignore the could-it-be-duller name for the feature, which--Yahoo said in a press release you can see below--gives users a "central place where Yahoo visitors can see a concise summary of their online activity and make easy, constructive choices about their exposure to interest-based advertising served from the Yahoo Ad Network."

What fortuitous timing, since the first of three of the Federal Trade Commission's "Exploring Privacy: A Roundtable Series" begins Monday in Washington, D.C.

And, of course, the bigger backdrop is the pending regulatory approval of the massive search and advertising partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft. The two companies announced Friday that they had completed the definitive agreement for the deal.

(Credit: FTC)

One of the key issues for regulators, of course, is the privacy implications of combining the search and online ad technologies of the No. 2 and No. 3 players.

The FTC's day-long agenda (PDF) is chock-full of academics and privacy group folks, but there is an Microsoft lawyer on a panel. (The next roundtable takes place at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law on January 28.)

Said the FTC on its site:

The Federal Trade Commission will host a series of day-long public roundtable discussions to explore the privacy challenges posed by the vast array of 21st century technology and business practices that collect and use consumer data. Such practices include social networking, cloud computing, online behavioral advertising, mobile marketing, and the collection and use of information by retailers, data brokers, third-party applications, and other diverse businesses. The goal of the roundtables is to determine how best to protect consumer privacy while supporting beneficial uses of the information and technological innovation.

There will surely be lots to discuss, since privacy groups are wary of self-regulation by the very companies that link consumer data to advertising.

And, they have a point.

Visiting my Ad Interest Manager page is kind of freaky, to be honest. It shows I am interested in entertainment, technology and travel, checking in most on the finance and television pages. Correctomundo!

Also, it has detailed data about my computer, including its color depth, as well as my age and gender.

If I want, it is pretty easy to opt-out of the whole "interest-based" ad completely or by category, with on-off switches, which is a good thing.

If you want to know more, here is the Yahoo press release:

YAHOO! INTRODUCES AD INTEREST MANAGER

PROVIDES CONSUMERS WITH GREATER TRANSPARENCY AND CONTROL OVER THEIR ONLINE ADVERTISING EXPERIENCE

Today Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) released a beta version of a new consumer tool called Ad Interest Manager, which takes transparency in online advertising to a new level for building user trust. Ad Interest Manager http://privacy.yahoo.com/aim is a central place where Yahoo! visitors can see a concise summary of their online activity and make easy, constructive choices about their exposure to interest-based advertising served from the Yahoo! Ad Network.

"Ads tailored to users' interests make online experiences more compelling and user-focused, and the new tool Yahoo! is launching today will provide transparency into how Yahoo!'s interest-based advertising works," said Yahoo! Vice President of Policy and Head of Privacy, Anne Toth. "Yahoo! is committed to providing consumers with increased transparency and control when they are online. Ad Interest Manager will show users what interests we think they have, and also let them edit and change those interests to reflect the most up-to-date information." Anne Toth also pointed out: "Importantly, users who don't want interest-based ads can turn them off completely."

Yahoo!'s new Ad Interest Manager tool:

• Provides a central point where Yahoo! visitors can assert even greater control over their online experience.

• Gives visitors an unparalleled view into the information used to deliver interest-based advertising.

• Shows the visitor both Yahoo!'s educated guesses about their interests and a summary of observations, along with other information they have provided.

• Provides a list of specific interest categories that Yahoo! has placed a user into and lets people turn those categories off.

• Allows people who don't want to see interest-based ads to turn them off entirely.

"Yahoo! has long provided its users with products and services for free, thanks to a business model based almost entirely on advertising, and we've found that consumers are more likely to click on advertising that speaks directly to them and their interests," said Yahoo!Vice President and General Manager of Display Advertising, David Zinman. "With the introduction of Ad Interest Manager, users can not only get a better understanding of how the process works, but they can also communicate better with Yahoo! and our advertisers about what most interests them."

Yahoo!'s Ad Interest Manager is currently available in beta in the U.S. and will soon be made available to UK and European users. Planned future enhancements to the Ad Interest Manager will also let users add categories of interest that Yahoo! may have missed.

To see what the new Ad Interest Manager looks like and how it works, please visithttp://privacy.yahoo.com/aim.

Yahoo! was one of the first companies to implement a layered privacy center http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/details.htmlmodel more than eight years ago, which provides people with a central place to understand and control their privacy online, as well as their options when it comes to the use of personal data. This information is coupled with our industry-leading data-retention policy http://ycorpblog.com/2008/12/17/your-data-goes-incognito/, which anonymizes most Web log data within 90 days. The policy also strives to ensure that Yahoo! retains data only long enough to serve the business and create the highest-quality user experiences, while simultaneously maintaining the ability to fight fraud, secure systems, and meet legal obligations.

And here is the consumer privacy groups' press release on the FTC hearings:

Consumer and Privacy Groups at FTC Roundtable to Call for Decisive Agency Action

Washington, DC, December 6, 2009-On Monday December 7, 2009, consumer representatives and privacy experts speaking at the first of three Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Exploring Privacy Roundtable Series will call on the agency to adopt new policies to protect consumer privacy in today's digitized world. Consumer and privacy groups, as well as academics and policymakers, have increasingly looked to the FTC to ensure that Americans have control over how their information is collected and used.

The groups have asked the Commission to issue a comprehensive set of Fair Information Principles for the digital era, and to abandon its previous notice and choice model, which is not effective for consumer privacy protection.

Specifically, at the Roundtable on Monday, consumer panelists and privacy experts will call on the FTC to stop relying on industry privacy self-regulation, because of its long history of failure. Last September, a number of consumer groups provided Congressional leaders and the FTC a detailed blueprint of pro-active measures designed to protect privacy, available at: http://www.democraticmedia.org/release/privacy-release-20090901.

These measures include giving individuals the right to see, have a copy of, and delete any information about them; ensuring that the use of consumer data for any credit, employment, insurance, or governmental purpose or for redlining is prohibited; and ensuring that websites should only initially collect and use data from consumers for a 24-hour period, with the exception of information categorized as sensitive, which should not be collected at all. The groups have also requested that the FTC establish a Do Not Track registry.

Quotes from Monday's panelists:

Marc Rotenberg, EPIC: "There is an urgent need for the Federal Trade Commission to address the growing threat to consumer privacy. The Commission must hold accountable those companies that collect and use personal information. Self-regulation has clearly failed."

Jeff Chester, Center for Digital Democracy: "Consumers increasingly confront a sophisticated and pervasive data collection apparatus that can profile, track and target them online. The Obama FTC must quickly act to protect the privacy of Americans,including information related to their finances, health, and ethnicity."

Susan Grant, Consumer Federation of America: "It's time to recognize privacy as a fundamental human right and create a public policy framework that requires that right to be respected. Rather than stifling innovation, this will spur innovative ways to make the marketplace work better for consumers and businesses."

Pam Dixon, World Privacy Forum: "Self-regulation of commercial data brokers has been utterly ineffective to protect consumers. It's not just bad actors who sell personal information ranging from mental health information, medical status, income, religious and ethnic status, and the like. The sale of personal information is a routine business model for many in corporate America, and neither consumers nor policymakers are aware of the amount of trafficking in personal information. It's time to tame the wild west with laws that incorporate the principles of the Fair Credit Reporting Act to ensure transparency, accountability, and consumer control."

Story Copyright (c) 2009 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

Prominent users of Twitter and Facebook won't be exempt from controversial new Federal Trade Commission guidelines that keep tabs on blogger freebies and giveaways, according to Richard Cleland, associate director for the FTC's advertising division. The agency absolutely plans to keep tabs on social networks as well as blogs in accordance with revised regulations that could see violators fined up to $11,000, he said.

Here's a sample scenario: a celebrity or other prominent figure with loads of friends on Facebook receives free hotel says from Hotel Chain X in exchange for running Hotel Chain X ads on his or her blog. If that person then signs up as a Facebook fan of Hotel Chain X--which, remember, could mean that the person's name can show up for his or her Facebook friends alongside Hotel Chain X display ads on the social network--he or she could be held liable by the FTC.

"It would be the same thing if you were going to pay the celebrity a thousand dollars to go register as a fan," Cleland said. "In that case, there wouldn't be any question about it."

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt told CNET News that the social network doesn't have anything concrete to say in reaction to the new regulations just yet. "I don't think we have anything to say other than that we've had an ongoing dialogue with the FTC and we'd love to talk to them more about what this means," Schnitt said. "I think we're already consistent with the spirit of it."

Schnitt added that some of the practices that may be encompassed by the new FTC guidelines are already banned by Facebook. "We say in our statement of Rights and Responsibilities, and people actually applauded this when we added it in a few months ago, that you will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain such as selling your status to an advertiser." This is contained in section 4.2 of the document, he said.

As for Twitter, the FTC isn't letting you get a pass with the excuse that 140 characters--Twitter's famous text limit--is simply too short. "There are ways to abbreviate a disclosure that fit within 140 characters," Cleland said. "You may have to say a little bit of something else, but if you can't make the disclosure, you can't make the ad."

The question still remains as to exactly how the new guidelines will be enforced, given the sheer scope of online media--not to mention the millions upon millions of active Twitter and Facebook users.

"As a practical matter, we don't have the resources to look at 500,000 blogs," Cleland said. "We don't even have the resources to monitor a thousand blogs. And if somebody reports violations then we might look at individual cases, but in the bigger picture, we think that we have a reason to believe that if bloggers understand the circumstances under which a disclosure should be made, that they'll be able to make the disclosure. Right now we're trying to focus on education."

That's worth highlighting. Small-time bloggers freaking out over whether the FTC will really crack down on them may be pleased to know that the FTC at least claims its aim is to make everyone aware of what's right and wrong rather than to hunt down every Twitter user who may have been given a free toaster or something. Unless, that is, somebody rats them out--and at least one blogger is already raising concerns that angry readers may use the regulations to attempt to get back at blogs they don't like.

Industry blogger Peter Feld of Brandchannel thinks he can see another outcome. "A safe prediction for 2010: some big scandal when the first celebrity to run afoul of the new rules, by promoting a product on Twitter or a talk show, gets fined by the FTC."

This post was updated at 5:13 p.m. PT with comment from Facebook.

Independent bloggers who fail to disclose paid reviews or freebies can face up to $11,000 in fines from the Federal Trade Commission, according to revisions to the agency's "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising" published Monday.

This marks the first time that the Guides document has been updated since 1980.

From an FTC-issued release:

"The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that 'material connections' (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers--connections that consumers would not expect--must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other 'word-of-mouth' marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service."

The FTC also has its eye on celebrities. "Celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media," the release explaining the revisions explained.

That means, theoretically, that if a celebrity gushes about a new car on his or her Twitter account and it turns out that the car was given away for free, the celebrity could be fined by the FTC.

Word of the FTC's crackdown on blogger endorsements first broke in June and set off a wave of chatter in communities of bloggers who are well used to receiving and keeping free products from marketers and PR agencies--most notably the thriving "mommy blogger" sector.

It's going to be hard to police--there are a lot of bloggers out there, not to mention a lot of different kinds of bloggers, and a lot of marketers. And as some media critics have pointed out, undisclosed endorsements of freebies have plagued some sectors of the magazine industry for decades now.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google shouldn't be surprised to face government scrutiny as it continues to grow.

CEO Eric Schmidt held court on a wide range of topics Thursday at Google's annual meeting.

(Credit: Google)

At least, that's what CEO Eric Schmidt thinks. In a wide-ranging discussion with reporters prior to Google's annual meeting at the company's headquarters, Schmidt deflected questions about reported government inquiries that have surfaced in past weeks by saying "we should expect governments around the world to pay attention to what we do, and hold us to the principles that we've articulated."

The Department of Justice is reportedly looking into Google's settlement with publishers over the rights to display book content online, which Schmidt called a "historic" agreement. And Google confirmed that the Federal Trade Commission wants to talk to Google about Schmidt's role on Apple's board of directors, which could be seen as a conflict of interest given Apple's iPhone business line and Google's Android project.

Schmidt said such scrutiny is to be expected as Google expands its reach into areas that were previously the domain of other interests.

"We continue to believe the mission of the company is important, even if there is pressure from other industries. (But) we are more careful about when and how we do things that are going to raise the concerns of any party," he said. Rachel Whetstone, Google's vice president of public policy and communications, has been leading efforts in this area, he said.

Other items discussed during the day:

• Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management, said Google is looking hard into ways to make money off social-networking services, as there there has been an "explosion" in potential ad inventory. "We believe there are ways to monetize it over time, but it will be different from search because the nature of intent is different."

• Fresh off her trip to Washington, D.C. to testify before a House subcommittee, Marissa Mayer, vice president for search products and user experience, said Google is looking at how news coverage will evolve in the future, including possible changes to the way news stories are presented. Mayer is also in charge of thinking of ways to improve the relevance of "microblogging" (read: Twitter) into both Google's regular search results and blog search, she said.

• Speaking of Twitter, Schmidt said that Google was "waiting for the right opportunities at the right price" when it comes to making acquisitions. Twitter, of course, has been the subject of countless rumors regarding acquisitions from the likes of Google and, most recently, Apple.

• Schmidt declined to comment on the possibility of Android Netbooks, such as appeared to surface earlier this week with regards to Dell. But he did say that he believes "the Netbook phenomenon looks very real," and that it fits well into Google's notions of cloud computing.

The federal government and four states are suing satellite television provider Dish Network for violating laws regarding the national Do Not Call registry.

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday said Dish Network has been calling consumers on the Do Not Call list, either directly or through marketing dealers working on its behalf, to promote its services since 2003.

The agency also said the company's "robocalls," or automated messages, are in violation of the federal Telemarketing Sales Rule. The agency's complaint was filed jointly with attorneys general from California, Illinois, Ohio, and North Carolina.

"Because a few bad actors still don't get it, we want to make it crystal-clear," Eileen Harrington, acting director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. "If you call consumers whose numbers are on the Do Not Call registry, you're breaking the law."

The government is seeking a permanent injunction against Dish Network, prohibiting it from violating robocall and Do Not Call restrictions, and requiring that it monitor the marketing dealers it works with to prevent future violations. It is also seeking monetary civil penalties for every Telemarketing Sales Rule violation.

Dish Network said it has not violated the law and should not be held responsible for Do Not Call violations made by other companies.

"An independent audit demonstrates that Dish Network is in compliance with Do Not Call laws, has proper controls in place, and is well within the safe-harbor provisions of the law," the company said in a statement. "We also believe that the FTC is equating merely doing business with an independent retailer to 'causing,' or 'assisting and facilitating,' violations by that retailer, which creates a strict liability standard that does not exist in the law and was not intended by Congress."

The government is also filing complaints against two of the marketing dealers with which Dish works, Vision Quest and New Edge Satellite, for allegedly calling consumers on the Do Not Call list.

The FTC filed similar complaints against two other Dish Network partners in 2008--Planet Earth Satellite and Star Satellite. Those charges were settled, with the companies paying a total of $95,000 in penalties.