An elaborate system is in place designed to influence our behavior by taking advantage of our use of digital media. Social media sites collect your habits, delivering you and your network of friends and relationships to advertisers and marketers. You are a product, sold to corporations: food, credit, entertainment, alcohol, apparel, and even political campaigns. CDD closely tracks this industry, bring their activities to the attention of the public, the media, and policymakers.

 

  • CDD Statement on FTC Commissioner Julie Brill

    By: Jeff Chester | Mar 22 2016

    Julie Brill faces a formidable task as she tries to balance what she knows are industry-wide practices that undermine privacy with the intense commercial pressures to financially harvest our data.  Whether Julie can successfully act as a one woman privacy truth squad is to early to tell.  She recognizes all the ways that companies take advantage of consumers today, including tracking them on every device and wherever they are.

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  • CDD, EPIC, Privacy Groups files Brief in Support of Apple in FBI iPhone case

    By: Jeff Chester | Mar 4 2016

    This brief is submitted on behalf of several Consumer Privacy Organizations who seek to protect consumers from data breach, financial fraud, and identity theft. The Consumer Privacy Organizations associated with the EPIC amicus brief believe that a court order to compel Apple to develop a technique to break security features designed to keep out third parties will result in an increase in crime against consumers. 

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  • Forever Beta & Crowdtap + Pernod-Ricard Partner to Create Absolut Reality Experience

    By: Staff | Nov 23 2015

    ABSOLUT threw a party at Brooklyn's trendiest music club, but wanted to invite people nationwide. Pernod-Ricard partnered with Forever Beta & Crowdtap to create the Absolut Reality experience by creating a 360-degree trailer of a 17-minute virtual reality concept. Thousands of free Google Cardboard VR headsets allowed technology-lovers to participate in the event. The event lit up social networks. Ongoing conversations provided feedback to the brand. The campaign made the party accessible to an additional 600 virtual livestream parties hosted across the United States. 

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  • Promoting Beer using out-of-home digital targeting

    By: Staff | Nov 23 2015

    Coors Light, Attract Media (TouchTunes), Kinetic, Initiative and Common Ground collaborated to develop and implement the “reFRESH” music campaign, creating a fully interactive user experience across multiple screens that drove brand awareness, engagement and on-premise sales at thousands of targeted social venues. The custom-designed full-screen touchscreen experience placed users in control, enabling them to take and share real-time photos with friends and embark on a digital tour through the history and culture of hip-hop while experiencing its regional flavors and unique features.

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  • Ten Questions that the Federal Trade Commission Should Answer on Cross-Device Online Tracking of Individuals.

    By: Jeff Chester | Nov 16 2015



    1. Why has the FTC waited so long to review this serious threat to our privacy?

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  • Safe Harbor on Data Declared Illegal: Message to U.S.—Time to Enact Privacy Law that Protects Americans and Supports Global Data Protection

    By: Jeff Chester | Oct 6 2015

    Today’s historic decision by the European Court of Justice, which overturned the purposely ineffective “Safe Harbor” deal enabling data to flow to the U.S., is very welcome.  As one reads the court’s findings, it’s clear that for the EU, fundamental and human rights include the right to have your personal privacy protected.  That means from both governmental surveillance (such as the NSA and other intelligence agencies) and also with commercial Internet companies—as Google or Facebook.

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  • U.S. Public Interest Group and Center for Digital Democracy Urge FTC to Protect Consumers from Unfair Lead Generation Practices in Comments filed for Oct. workshop

    By: Jeff Chester | Sep 19 2015

    The FTC requested that comments for the upcoming October 30, 2015 workshop on lead generation be submitted by September 20th so that issues could be addressed during the sessions.  USPIRG and CDD submitted initial comments, which are attached below and also summarized.  One of our findings from a recent analysis of the online "lead gen" marketplace was that digital industry leaders--including Google and Facebook--engage and support online lead generation in ways that raise substantive consumer protection concerns.  USPIRG and CDD have been working for the last several years to encourage pol

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  • Internet as a Commons: Public Space in the Digital Age

    By: Jeff Chester | Sep 18 2015

    The Internet as a whole has become an important part of our global public sphere. Internet provides access to a wealth of information and knowledge, and the possibility to participate, create and communicate. This public space made up of internet infrastructures is increasingly threatened from two sides; by the centralization and commercialization through the dominant positions held by giant telecom and Internet companies, as well as by an increasing trend in state regulation and censorship of the net.

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  • Cross Device Targeting

    By: Staff | Jul 31 2015

    Chango lets you target and retarget users wherever they spend their time on-the-go. Our intent data — to find users on desktop and reach them on mobile. 

    Our Approach 

    Our cross-device solutions can be used in a variety of ways, depending on your set of goals. Highlighted below is our approach to these different cross-device solutions.

    Scenario 1, Facebook:

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  • The New York Times To Loosen RTB Restrictions, Expand Programmatic Initiatives

    By: Staff | Jul 29 2015

    What’s up with The New York Times Co. and programmatic? We’ve pondered that question before, but the publishing giant declined to speak at the time.

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  • Step Aside, Creators. Brands Are Taking Over YouTube

    By: Staff | Jul 27 2015

    The digital video world will converge on Anaheim, Calif., this week for the sixth annual VidCon, a three-day extravaganza that's grown from 1,400 YouTubers and their rabid fans, to 20,000 strong, with top-tier creators from Vine, Vimeo, Tumblr and Meerkat, just to name a few. Some of the biggest brands on the planet will also be in attendance.

    It's no wonder. While about 90 percent of video viewing is still on TV, according to Nielsen, 18- to 34-year-olds—a demographic coveted by advertisers—are increasingly cutting the cord.

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  • IAB Programmatic Revenue Report 2014 Results

    By: Staff | Jul 24 2015

    July 20, 2015 — Over the last several years, publishers and advertisers have continued to adopt programmatic buying and selling of digital inventory into their media strategies; however, within the complex programmatic ecosystem there has been a lack of consensus around the definition of programmatic and its associated types and formats and the size of the programmatic market in comparison with the overall internet advertising market.

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  • Tsunami of Offline Customer Data is Flowing to the Web

    By: Staff | Jul 22 2015

    Call it something dry like "data on-boarding" or something marketable like "connectivity." Whatever it's called, Acxiom-owned LiveRamp is doing a lot more of it than a year ago. The company currently "on-boards" or connects 20 billion consumer records representing individuals or households each month, or around 240 billion per year.

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  • The New Real-time Bidding Formula

    By: Staff | Jul 17 2015

    Real-time Bidding (RTB), a key component of the programmatic advertising revolution, represents a massive platform change in the way we advertise online by bringing the relevance and efficiency of search to display. RTB spend will reach 429 million GBP this year (eMarketer) as budget moves away from more traditional channels.

    If advertisers consider RTB for display there are a couple of tips to help get it right:

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  • Cross-device conversion metrics come to DoubleClick

    By: Staff | Jul 15 2015

    Last week during the DoubleClick Leadership Summit (DLS), we introduced cross-device measurement across all of our DoubleClick advertiser products.
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  • CDD petitions FTC to release COPPA Safe Harbor reports to the public

    By: Staff | Jul 14 2015

    The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), through its counsel, requests the following documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552, related to enforcement of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), 15 U.S.C. § 6501 et seq.: 

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  • Netflix pushes programmatic

    By: Staff | Jul 13 2015

    NEW YORK: Netflix, the online video platform, believes that programmatic advertising can provide numerous benefits for its brand – not least the ability to deliver personalised marketing messages at scale.

    Kathy O'Dowd, Netflix's global director/programmatic marketplace and channel development, discussed this topic at MediaPost's OMMA Programmatic Display conference.

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  • Mobile-Minded: The Small Screen Isn’t So Small

    By: Staff | Jul 10 2015

    Facebook commissioned SalesBrain, a US-based neuromarketing agency, to understand how people’s brains and physiology respond to identical stimuli viewed on a smartphone versus on a TV. The study focused on how the brain responds to 4 key areas: engagement, attention, emotion and retention.

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  • Programmatic, Coming to a Street Near You

    By: Staff | Jul 8 2015

    Programmatic media-buying technologies are taking over the internet at a rapid pace, so much so that traditional offline media is the new frontier for the tech. Programmatic, digital out-of-home (DOOH) has been pioneered in APAC, and is now being exported around the globe. ExchangeWire charts is progress.

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  • Big Data, Digital Marketing, and Privacy: Antitrust & Competition Issues for the 21st Century

    By: Jeff Chester | Jul 7 2015

    The digital data “arms race” that is propelling major companies around the world to expand their data collection, consumer profiling, and online targeting capabilities illustrates how information from and about us drives the commercial (and increasingly political) marketplaces.

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