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Maybe you’ve seen them on Instagram or Facebook – pictures of babies dressed up in grown-up suits like so many chubby-cheeked David Byrnes. It’s called “baby suiting,” and it’s the latest photo craze instigated by mom blogger Ilana Wiles, who just a year ago launched a surge of “baby mugging,” which is just what it sounds like (well, maybe not) – taking pictures of babies as though they’re sitting in coffee mugs.

Wiles and her blog – MommyShorts – are part of a growing and influential trend of moms who blog. According to recent research by eMarketer, there are roughly 4.2 million moms who blog, accounting for eighteen percent of all adult bloggers. An established mom blog can have hundreds of thousands of regular readers.

As Wiles and her MommyShorts blog has proven, mom bloggers wield an enormous amount of influence. If you can get thousands of other moms to dress their infants up in their husbands’ best jackets and ties, what do you think happens when she mentions – let alone reviews – a product she likes? And like Wiles, many mom bloggers are quite entrepreneurial, and actively court brands to advertise on their blogs or to submit products for review.

The Way I See It

  • Blogs are an effective way to reach important demographics. Most moms have a list of blogs they read daily, and almost seventy percent of them believe the word-of-mouth information they get from blogs is credible. In fact, eighty-one percent of all consumers trust the information they get from blogs and social media.
  • I see brands actively courting moms and their audiences, often participating at events like the “Mom 2.0 Summit” and other events for mom bloggers, which, among other things, also teach bloggers how to work with brands.
  • I see the relationship between brands and mom bloggers, specifically, growing. Who better to receive advice from than a fellow parent?

The Way the Industry Sees It

I sat down with Ilana Wiles, founder of MommyShorts, to discuss mom bloggers and their influence as brand ambassadors.

What was your goal in launching Mommy Shorts, and how has that goal evolved over time?

Almost four years ago, I was laid off from my job as a creative director shortly after I returned from maternity leave. I had a hard time finding a full-time job at my level when most of my portfolio was in traditional advertising – television, outdoor, print. I had very little digital experience. Many of the brands at my old company had recently started paying attention to mom bloggers, and I thought if I got involved in that space, it could end up being a real asset in the advertising world. I decided to work freelance and start a blog in my down time. I became immersed in social media, building my own brand and creating content to engage a growing audience of new moms. As my audience grew, I received more ad jobs where agencies wanted to leverage my reach for their clients. They were building Mommy Shorts into their pitches and their proposals. I decided it made more sense to pursue the blog full-time and see where it could go if I focused all my energy on building my own brand. In the end, my advertising experience helps me be a better blogger instead of the other way around. As I work with more brands, I find the ideation and the partnership possibilities even more exciting than I did at a traditional agency. This year I started to realize my brand can be bigger than the blog. I have a show on ulive, a licensing deal in the works, and an Instagram following I am leveraging all on its own. I’m not going to be writing about my kids in the same way ten years from now, so it’s nice to know there are lots of possibilities of where this can go.

What’s your relationship with your readers like? Do you feel you have a responsibility to them? If so, what is that responsibility?

I put my readers first always. There are lots of bloggers who are writing entirely for themselves, and their readers love them for it. I am more about reader response. Their engagement determines my content entirely. Every sponsorship I take on means my content has to be that much better. You can’t just sell to people. They aren’t interested. You have to be entertaining and authentic.

Continue Reading “MommyShorts” is Blogging Her Way into Hearts, Homes, and Brands

Marketers promote, entertain, celebrate, and explain. In other words, they talk. But Dave Kerpen, cofounder and chairman of Likeable Media and founder and CEO of its sibling company, Likeable Local, believes that a different skill is needed in a media landscape increasingly driven by social media – listening.  And by listening, Kerpen means more than just using social media channels to respond to consumer questions and complaints.  He sees listening via social media as a means to tell stories and engender authentic conversations with and among consumers and to promote conversations that strengthen and reward brand loyalty.

In a lot of ways, it’s the next step in the evolution of branding. Branding started with the idea that companies and products had actual identities and that consumers would affiliate with brands that enhanced or fit well with their own identities.  And – without invoking John Roberts and suggesting corporations are people – the next step seems to be making brands part of the consumer’s social circle, or at the very least, using the social circle to validate the brand.

Kerpen first made a splash in all media – not just social – when he and his then soon-to-be wife raised over $100,000 selling sponsorship rights to their wedding, which was hosted at the Brooklyn Cyclones ballpark. They then leveraged their notoriety to launch Likeable Media, a social media and word-of-mouth marketing company that is one of the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States.  Kerpen also authored two New York Times Best Sellers: Likeable Social Media and Likeable Business, and was also named the #1 LinkedIn Influencer of All Time last summer when his article, “11 Simple Concepts for Becoming a Better Leader” garnered 1.8 million views and 21,000 likes. The first concept on his list – listening.

The Way I See It

  • As much as things still keep changing – and will likely continue to keep changing – I see a growing maturation in the use of social media. Whether marketers are arriving at it through Dave Kerpen’s advice or their own observation, more and more brands are realizing the central nature of listening and storytelling to the way social media works.
  • I see consumers heavily relying on participation as a means of measuring trust. They want brands they can engage with and relate to. And they want that engagement validated by their own social networks.

The Way the Industry Sees It

I sat down with Dave Kerpen, cofounder and chairman of Likeable Media and founder and CEO of Likeable Local, to discuss listening, social media, and his most recent book, Likeable Leadership.

Two of the strongest themes in your writing and speaking are listening and storytelling. How are those two skills related?

I always say, “Listen first and never stop listening.” Listening is the single most important communication skill, and sometimes it’s harder than you think. Often when we think we’re listening, we’re just waiting to talk. Try shutting up and really listening to everyone: your customers, your fans, your employees, your husband or wife, your children, etc. You might be surprised at the valuable insight and stories you’ll hear when you do. The next step, of course, is to share those stories. No one remembers facts or statistics, but everyone remembers a great story. Practicing listening and storytelling will make you a better communicator and, ultimately, more likeable, and more successful.

What did you learn as you were “listening” to the stories you collected for the new book? Did anything surprise you?

I am constantly surprised by how much I learn when I just shut up and listen. People’s lives and stories are so fascinating to me, and there are always lessons to be learned. Last year, I wrote an article about my interaction with an older man on a flight to Boston. I chatted with him, asked him a few of questions, and listened … a lot. I had met Frank Lautenberg, the late United States Senator, who taught me, in just forty-five minutes, one of the most important lessons of my life: Career Highlights Won’t be on Your Tombstone. With a few questions and a lot of listening, you can literally change your life.

Continue Reading Likeable Applies the Lessons of Social Media to Branding

Kroger has always been an innovator. It was the first store to combine meats and groceries under one roof, and the first grocery store to have its own bakery. Kroger pioneered the use of optical scanners in the checkout aisles and was one of the first grocery chains to open superstores, a move that has helped it weather competition from big box stores like Sam’s Club and Costco. That drive to innovate has helped make Kroger the nation’s largest grocery chain and the second largest retailer in the country after Walmart.

But, what has really driven Kroger’s recent success is its commitment to the customer experience, and particularly how well it has applied its customer loyalty program. Kroger launched its “Kroger Plus Card” program in 2003. In 2010, Kroger partnered with Shell gas stations allowing customers to redeem points earned on their Kroger Plus Cards for fuel. Well over two million customers use Kroger’s shopping app, which allows users to download coupons, sort coupons by relevance, sync coupons with their shopping lists, monitor their Kroger Plus reward points, and even refill prescriptions.

Last year, a study by Maritz Loyalty Marketing found that Kroger had the highest rated loyalty program in the grocery sector, with an overall satisfaction rate of eighty-three percent. In fact, ninety percent of register transactions are completed with a Kroger Plus card, and eighty-five percent of all United States households in markets where Kroger operates have a Kroger Plus card.

The Way I See It

  • As behemoths like Walmart and Amazon continue to gobble up market share – in everything from groceries to clothing to consumer electronics – I see more “traditional” retailers needing to double down on the customer experience in order to compete.
  • Successful competition is going to be increasingly dependent on maintaining an ongoing conversation with customers via the tools and channels they prefer, namely their mobile phones and social media.
  • Data – not just gathering it, but using it in novel and effective ways, and ways customers are comfortable with – may wind up being the biggest difference-maker for retailers.

The Way the Industry Sees It

I sat down with Natalie Ream, Vice President of Customer Communications & Marketing at Kroger to discuss customer service and customer loyalty programs as a way to differentiate.

What’s made your Kroger Plus program so successful? What have you been able to tap into about the way customers like to use these programs that your competitors haven’t?

Our Plus Card program is successful simply because of our ability to deliver real value, and to uphold the trust that our customers place in us as it relates to their shopper data.  Through our shopper card program we are able to capture and analyze shopping behavior, and then apply the insights we gather to create offers, discounts, and recommendations that are meaningful and relevant.  We are very careful to protect our shoppers’ data and their privacy.  Our customers have come to expect us to know them better, and they tell us that they look forward to hearing from us!

What’s the relationship between the Kroger shopping app and more traditional print coupons and circulars?  Will the app and social media eventually replace coupons delivered in the mail, by newspaper, or handed out at the checkout counter?

For more than ten years we have been perfecting our ability to deliver highly-relevant, personalized coupons for the products that our customers like and buy the most through our ‘Loyal Customer Mailings.’  We are now applying that expertise to the digital channel through our mobile app, which allows customers to sort digital coupons by relevance to them.  By applying real-time insight derived from their shopper profile, we can sort and deliver relevant offers based on what we know about a customer’s product preferences or lifestyle segment.  Because we have five generations of customers shopping with us – and because each generation and each customer is unique in terms of their preference for how we talk to them – our aim is to meet our customers and talk with them in the channel or channels that they prefer.

Continue Reading Kroger Gets Its Fuel from Customer Rewards

Let’s say a senior at MIT is about to graduate with a double major in Computer Science and Comparative Media Studies. Career Services tells the student, “You can make six figures at a Manhattan consulting firm, or you can apply to ‘Venture for America.’ Oh, and if selected by Venture for America, you will be sent to a city in need of entrepreneurs. There you will make less than $40,000 a year working for a start-up.” Which would you choose as your first job?  Fortunately, in 2013, hundreds of America’s best and brightest college students chose the latter and applied for the seventy fellowships offered by Venture for America.

Venture for America is the brainchild of entrepreneur Andrew Yang. Yang saw the Ivy League-to-hedge fund/investment bank/consulting firm conveyor belt and thought, “What a waste of talent.” Venture for America re-allocates that talent to where it has the potential to do the most good. Specifically, start-up companies in mid-sized cities across the country that are trying to revitalize their local economies. Recent college graduates receive invaluable experience that they would likely not get at a large, established company, and the start-ups are provided with access to talent they otherwise probably would not have the resources to recruit.

Among the many interesting projects Venture for America has supported is “SocialProvidence,” a social media analytics and consulting company based in Rhode Island, that is supervised by executives from HavasPR, but is run day-to-day by two Venture for America fellows. One of SocialProvidence’s main selling points is that digital natives – like the two young men running the company – have a much more intuitive and accurate sense of what kinds of social media marketing techniques will be most effective.

The Way I See It

  • I see a growing intersection between start-up culture and community development. Some of that is driven by a consumer niche that wants to buy local products and have real relationships with the people whose businesses they patronize. But a lot of it is driven by the genuine desire of a certain class of entrepreneur to use their business as a way of building community.
  • I see a millennial generation that is really driven by a sense of connection. They want to feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves. Millennials are one of the reasons that community service has become such a big deal on college campuses. Venture for America has certainly tapped into that spirit.
  • I see entrepreneurship gaining in popularity among the youth of today, and not just in the sense of entrepreneur as business owner. But embracing the entrepreneurial spirit and building things, creating new ventures, and solving problems.

The Way the Industry Sees It

I sat down with Venture for America CEO, Andrew Yang, to discuss entrepreneurship and his upcoming book, Smart People Should Build Things.

Before you started your own company, you were on the same Ivy League to law/finance/consulting path that you’re trying to knock your Venture for America Fellows out of. What shortcomings did you find in that path?

When I was graduating from college, law, finance, and consulting were the options that were presented to me – mainly because the consulting firms and financial services firms were recruiting heavily at Brown.  It just seemed natural to go down one of these paths on the road to success and prestige.  After becoming a corporate lawyer, I found that it wasn’t a great fit for me because of how narrow and specialized the role was, and that I didn’t enjoy acting as a document reader and deal facilitator.  These “prestige pathways” of finance, law and consulting, as I call them in the book, are still the options that are being presented to college seniors. The professional services firms have millions of dollars to spend recruiting talent on college campuses each year. The salaries and benefits that they can offer are certainly appealing. These kinds of resources are not available to early stage growth companies that are actually creating jobs in this country and are most in need of the nation’s best and brightest minds.

Your last business was a test prep company. What did you see in the students you were working with that made you think that maybe they were open to a different kind of opportunity?

When I was at Manhattan GMAT, I met hundreds of bankers and consultants who were preparing to enroll in business school. Many of them seemed a little lost, like I had been when I realized I no longer wanted to be a lawyer. They would talk about wanting to make a real impact in an organization, and I think they were going to business school often to reset and seek that kind of opportunity.  Our young people want to build things; they just aren’t being presented with the choice to do so. I started Venture for America because I believe that if we provide the path to entrepreneurship to smart, enterprising young people, they will embrace it.  And early returns suggest that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Continue Reading Building the Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow: A Candid Discussion with the CEO of Venture for America, Andrew Yang

Continuing with predictions on what the rest of 2014 will hold, I turn to Jon Podany, Chief Marketing Officer for the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), to get his thoughts.

The Way The Industry Sees It

2014 Predictions within the Sports Industry and How They Have the Potential to Affect Marketing and Advertising, with LPGA’s…

It sure didn’t take long for 2014 to shift into high gear.

Little more than two weeks into the New Year, we’re already knee deep in stories with big implications for marketers in the retail sector (charged anything at Target lately?), sports marketing (the ruling on Alex Rodriguez’s suspension for the 2014 season), and the…

It seems youth marketing has always been a hot topic in the advertising world. As young people move from the “discovery” phase of their tween years to the “experimental phase” of young adulthood, they shift from being motivators of their parents’ buying habits to influential consumers in their own right. But today that demographic is extremely important. Not only are today’s young people the first true digital natives and harbingers of how digital media will influence how we all interact with brands, but also, as baby boomers age and their $400 billion in annual consumption slows, retail, food, and entertainment companies are counting on millennials to fill the gap.

One marketer that has been particularly successful in tapping the youth market is Erin Yogasundram, the twenty-one year old founder of Shop Jeen, an online boutique that sells everything from dollar packs of Ouija gum to $530 filigree sunglasses. Yogasundram launched Shop Jeen in March of 2012, while she was a junior at George Washington University (GWU). She started out with posting cell phone photos of new products to Instagram and filling orders out of her dorm room. The Instagram feed and the business were such an immediate hit that Yogasundram walked away from the remainder of her full-ride scholarship at GWU and moved to New York City, where Shop Jeen now has three offices, nine employees, and half a million Instagram followers.

The Way I See It

  • I see a retail industry increasingly focused on millennial and youth marketing. As baby boomers age, their $400 billion in annual consumer spending will fade. The world will turn to millennials to make up the difference.
  • I see a demographic increasingly inclined to shop at multi-brand retailers and to do their shopping online.  According to recent research by Piper Jaffray, roughly eighty percent of teens shop online. Piper Jaffray’s research also confirms millennials’ growing reliance on peer recommendations when making buying decisions.
  • I see a social media market in continued flux as young people gravitate toward new platforms; according to the latest semi-annual Pew survey on teens and social media. While Facebook still has the largest number of teen and millennial users and those users have their largest networks on Facebook, the percentage of teens citing it as their most important social network has fallen by half, from forty-two percent in the fall of 2012 to twenty-three percent in the fall of 2013. In that same period, the percentage of teens citing Instagram as their most important network doubled.

The Way the Industry Sees It

I sat down with Shop Jeen’s founder, Erin Yogasundram, to discuss her brand and how she uses social media to build a customer base.

Where did your initial vision for Shop Jeen come from? What niche or need did you want to fill?

I started the company, junior year, in my dorm room at The George Washington University. I had worked a few internships in the fashion industry in high school as well as during my winter and summer breaks in college.  I was working three part time jobs in retail, and one day I thought, I could do this myself.  I have always been an entrepreneur, and for example I sold autographs online when I was twelve and owned a shoelace selling business in high school. While working retail, I found that I had a keen eye for what would sell well.  I was always suggesting new brands for the stores to carry and had an invisible hand in the buying process.  I had about $2,000 saved from working retail and blew it all on a Celine bag (the bag was very rare, and had a wait list process at the time).  I have always been a workaholic and never a bookworm, so I quickly realized I could have used that money to start a new venture for myself.  I then sold the Celine bag for $3,000, yielding a $1,000 profit!  I decided to pool my money into wholesale purchase orders to fund my new venture.  Initially the site was to be a hub for the “best of Etsy.”  Etsy was gaining popularity, but it was very difficult to navigate and find the good stuff.  I used my keen eye, combined that with my researching skills, and I was able to find the cream of the crop on Etsy.  I negotiated wholesale terms with the sellers on there – most of which did not know what wholesale even meant when I approached them – and Shop Jeen was born.  I coded the original website from trial and error CSS writing.  I sold on campus at every event possible.  And I slowly started bringing on more well-known brands to gain traction and reputation in the industry.  Though we do carry some of the same brands as Bloomingdales, Urban Outfitters, Hot Topic, Bergdorf Goodman, Nasty Gal, Spencer’s Gifts, and ASOS, our curation is what makes us unique. So unique, in fact, that those retailers would not normally be mentioned in the same sentence.

What’s your curation process like? How do you decide what makes it on ShopJeen.com, and how have your decisions affected revenue?

Our Creative Director, Amelia Muqbel, and I work very closely to decide what products are sold, our marketing strategy, our social media voice, the look of our graphics, etc. Everything Shop Jeen stands for is a true representation of the two of us. Luckily, we somehow managed to find each other in this massive world. We share a very unique sense of style, thought-process, and outlook on the world, which is why we work so well together. I think our cohesive mindset comes across when you visit Shop Jeen.  We approach everything from a different angle than everyone else, and I’d say this has aided our success.  We quickly pull apart “competitors’” strategies and try to do the exact opposite.  It sounds crazy, but it’s been working! A lot of retailers are trying to mimic each other in order to come out on top, but if everyone is doing the same thing, how boring is that going to be for the consumer?

Continue Reading Youth Marketing: How the Founder & CEO of Shop Jeen Builds a Customer Base

When we think about advertising law and regulation, we typically focus on Washington, D.C. and the federal regulatory agencies – for example, the FTC’s guidance, including in many industry-specific areas, the FDA’s regulation of food products and cigarettes, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s efforts of late in the financial services sector, among others.  But state Attorneys General are also very active in the enforcement of consumer protection and advertising laws and regulations, both independently within their jurisdictions and jointly through multi-state investigations and actions.  The increased presence of many advertisers in digital and social media does not have geographical borders, and state regulators can take issue with the advertising claims and methods used in these new media platforms along with more traditional ones.

State Attorneys General offices use consumer protection laws and regulations to help shape public policy and improve communications to consumers, but they are also subject to, and driven by, the partisan politics of elections and the complex webs of relationships that operate day-to-day in state governments.  This can mean national advertisers may face state regulation from a number of different angles.

The Way I See It

  • I see state Attorneys General becoming increasingly active in enforcing consumer protection laws, with increased initiatives to regulate online, mobile, and social media.
  • I see state regulators initiating investigations and taking action in response to national advertising campaigns, which have an impact on consumers within their states and which may not comply with the letter of each particular state’s unique laws and regulations.  There is a greater need than ever to carefully consider these nuances when vetting national advertising materials.
  • I see a complicated political structure in each state when it comes to interpreting regulators’ motives and actions, and a symbiosis between the actions and interests of federal regulators and their state counterparts.

The Way The Industry Sees It

I sat down with Al Shelden, Ex-Senior Assistant Attorney General of California who was in charge the state’s Consumer Law Section, to get a state regulator’s perspective on some key consumer protection issues.

As a former state regulator, how important do you think state Attorneys General are for shaping regulation of national advertisers and big brands?  How did you view national advertising campaigns during your tenure in California?

The state Attorneys General have a long history of shaping the regulation of national advertisers and big brands.  Starting in the ’80s and ’90s, the states were the first to challenge “health” advertising by cereal, fast food, and vitamin companies.  We also were the first to challenge the use of deceptive environmental claims in advertising.  The FTC and Congress followed.  Today the states are leading the way in actions against pharmaceutical companies for off label promotion of drugs.  The states’ actions and adoption of legislation against the deceptive use of sweepstakes and other product promotions also preceded federal action in these areas.  Likewise, actions brought by the Attorneys General involving improper telephonic solicitations and advertisers’ improper use of information they obtained from customers lead to the adoption of telephonic seller registration, do not call and privacy protection laws, first on a state level and then on the national level.  Since national advertising in California affects tens of million California residents, we always viewed it, and still do, as “local” advertising, meaning that any advertising which is used to obtain business from California residents must comply with California law.

What has been the historical relationship between the Federal Trade Commission and state Attorneys General?  What is the current relationship like?

Historically, the relationship has been one of benign neglect, conflict, and cooperation.  In the 1960’s, when those states that did not yet have consumer protection laws started to adopt them, a large portion looked to the FTC and the FTC Act.  During the ’60s and ’70s, the FTC and the Attorneys General “got along” but seldom regularly worked together on issues.  Starting in the early ’80s, things between the Attorneys General and the FTC became somewhat “testy” when, under Chairman James Miller III, the FTC adopted its “deception” and “unfairness” policies.  Many states thought these policies incorrectly defined FTC case law requirements for advertisers and argued they should only be viewed as the FTC’s own enforcement guidelines. Because some states’ laws tie the meaning and interpretation of their laws to FTC regulations and decisions, there was great concern.  One state, Missouri, changed its consumer law so that it was no longer tied to FTC law.  Things remained cold until Janet Steiger became FTC Chair in 1989.  She worked tirelessly to reach out to the Attorneys General and convince them that going forward the Attorneys General and the FTC needed to be trusting partners who should be working together toward the same goals.  Her term marked the true beginning of the Attorneys General and the FTC working cases jointly, sharing information and deferring to one another in the proper circumstances.  Improving relations continued under Robert Pitofsky’s tenure and while there have been periods of ebb and flow since then, things again were very harmonious during Jon Leibowitz’s term as Chair and David Vladek’s term as Head of the Bureau of Consumer Protection. There appears to be no reason to think that such cooperation will not continue during the term of Edith Ramirez as Chair.

Continue Reading The Role of State Consumer Protection Regulation and Enforcement in a National Advertising Landscape

Consumer protection in our digital age is becoming an ever more complex challenge, with technology constantly evolving and always “newer” new media emerging at lightning speeds. In recent years, online behavioral advertising has taken center stage as one of today’s most hotly-debated marketing practices. There seems to be a consensus amongst regulators that the industry, through self-regulation, should take on the challenge of establishing a transparent opt-out program for addressing privacy concerns and allowing consumers to choose not to have their data collected for future targeted ads.  However, the water gets more murky when it comes to online and mobile advertising to children.  Advertising to children is laden with issues and I’ve talked here on Madison Ave Insights about how the FTC and other regulators have taken a particular interest in children’s privacy and data security.

This year’s Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) Annual Conference will discuss a number of critical issues in children’s advertising, including apps, social media, and location and other data security.  With more children online (even at school) in today’s age, how do we as advertisers ensure we are keeping kids safe?

The Way I See It

  • I see more challenges arising with new digital, mobile, and social media to address privacy and data security concerns through self-regulation, especially when it comes to children.  With new technologies emerging, the advertising industry is forced to adopt new standards to meet the issues for regulators and consumers.
  • A lot of progress has been made in recent years to address privacy and data security challenges raised by new technology and social media, including the CBBB’s self-regulatory guidelines that implemented the Ad Choices program to allow consumers to opt out of targeted online advertising.
  • I see an increasing commitment from the advertising industry to self-regulate when it comes to children’s issues, as well as new online and mobile platforms, which is a strong signal that the industry will meet calls from regulators to enforce privacy and data issues.

The Way The Industry Sees It

I sat down with Genie Barton, Vice President and Director, Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program and Mobile Marketing Initiatives at the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB), to discuss the effectiveness and challenges of online behavioral advertising (OBA), especially for children.

Online behavioral advertising (OBA) has been under the microscope in recent years with regulators and consumers.  How have you worked to address these issues and what do you expect to improve with OBA moving forward?

Regulators and privacy advocacy groups have varying degrees of concern about the collection and use of data to provide consumers with advertising that is based on their previous browsing activities across websites and time.  In addition, some consumers also have concerns, but there is a high degree of debate regarding consumer preferences. Some studies show significant concern, while others show that in real life scenarios, consumers prefer ads that are relevant over ads that are random.  But what I think we can all agree on is that the two largest areas of concern for regulators, privacy advocates and consumers stem from the largely “invisible” nature of online interest-based advertising.  The industry responded to those concerns, as expressed by the Federal Trade Commission in a staff report providing guidance on how to implement self-regulatory principles governing OBA, by creating consensus principles that provide the transparency and control that were missing.  I like to say that the DAA Principles took the mystery and potential “creepiness” out of interest-based advertising by providing real-time notice and a direct link to an easy-to-use opt-out. These innovations—the sideways blue triangle known as the AdChoices Option Icon, which appears in all interest-based ads, and takes the consumer to an explanation of OBA and a link to a choice mechanism—shine a light for consumers on interest-based ads.

How do you navigate the complexity of and constant changes in online and mobile advertising?  Any tips for advertisers?

I navigate this ecosystem with a lot of help from my friends and fabulous staff, and by constant reading and discussions with people in the industry. Just when I think I have a handle on something, there is another innovation. But that is what makes the job fun and keeps it fresh.  I would advise advertisers to make privacy a positive differentiator for their brand. To do this successfully, the advertiser has to be extremely careful with what companies it engages to guide it on developing an ad campaign. Be sure to deal with an agency and all others in the ecosystem that follow (and ensure that you will be following) the highest industry standards. While an OBA campaign can be the most effective way of reaching the right customer, doing it without the transparency and control provided by the DAA program can actually damage the brand and its relationship with its customers. A recent study showed that consumers prefer to do business with companies that engage with their customers on privacy issues. The study also showed that consumers click on ads with the icon more readily than on ads without it.  So providing consumers with transparency and choice is a positive for the bottom line.

Continue Reading CARU Annual Conference: Online Behavioral Advertising & Industry Self-Regulation for Marketing to Children