1. Questions from short readings
business multi-part question and need the explanation and answer to help me learn.
After reading Reading301(1) and Reading301(2), answer the following questions:
What do you think are the three most important benefits of personalized advertising? Why?
What’s your opinion, as a marketer, on this recent trend for online privacy? Do you support
it or not? Why?
Do you think personalized ads and online consumer privacy can coexist? If yes, why? If no,
why?
Your answers can be 1-2 paragraphs for each question.
Requirements: 1-2 paragraphs for each question
The Battle for Digital Privacy Is Reshaping the InternetAs Apple and Google enact privacy
changes, businesses are grappling with the fallout, Madison Avenue is fighting back and
Facebook hascried foul.By Brian X. ChenPublished Sept. 16, 2021Updated Sept. 21, 2021To
hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for
iPhone or Android.SAN FRANCISCO — Apple introduced a pop-up window for iPhones in
April that asks people for their permission to be tracked bydifferent apps.Google recently
outlined plans to disable a tracking technology in its Chrome web browser.And Facebook
said last month that hundreds of its engineers were working on a new method of showing
ads without relying on people’spersonal data.The developments may seem like technical
tinkering, but they were connected to something bigger: an intensifying battle over the
futureof the internet. The struggle has entangled tech titans, upended Madison Avenue and
disrupted small businesses. And it heralds aprofound shift in how people’s personal
information may be used online, with sweeping implications for the ways that businesses
makemoney digitally.At the center of the tussle is what has been the internet’s lifeblood:
advertising.More than 20 years ago, the internet drove an upheaval in the advertising
industry. It eviscerated newspapers and magazines that hadrelied on selling classified and
print ads, and threatened to dethrone television advertising as the prime way for marketers
to reach largeaudiences.Instead, brands splashed their ads across websites, with their
promotions often tailored to people’s specific interests. Those digital adspowered the
growth of Facebook, Google and Twitter, which offered their search and social networking
services to people without charge.But in exchange, people were tracked from site to site by
technologies such as “cookies,” and their personal data was used to target themwith
relevant marketing.Now that system, which ballooned into a $350 billion digital ad industry,
2. is being dismantled. Driven by online privacy fears, Apple andGoogle have started
revamping the rules around online data collection. Apple, citing the mantra of privacy, has
rolled out tools that blockmarketers from tracking people. Google, which depends on digital
ads, is trying to have it both ways by reinventing the system so it cancontinue aiming ads at
people without exploiting access to their personal
data.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/technology/digital-privacy.html
If personal information is no longer the currency that people give for online content and
services, something else must take its place.Media publishers, app makers and e-commerce
shops are now exploring different paths to surviving a privacy-conscious internet, in
somecases overturning their business models. Many are choosing to make people pay for
what they get online by levying subscription fees andother charges instead of using their
personal data.Jeff Green, the chief executive of the Trade Desk, an ad-technology company in
Ventura, Calif., that works with major ad agencies, said thebehind-the-scenes fight was
fundamental to the nature of the web.“The internet is answering a question that it’s been
wrestling with for decades, which is: How is the internet going to pay for itself?” hesaid.The
fallout may hurt brands that relied on targeted ads to get people to buy their goods. It may
also initially hurt tech giants like Facebook— but not for long. Instead, businesses that can
no longer track people but still need to advertise are likely to spend more with the
largesttech platforms, which still have the most data on consumers.David Cohen, chief
executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group, said the changes would
continue to “drive money andattention to Google, Facebook, Twitter.”The shifts are
complicated by Google’s and Apple’s opposing views on how much ad tracking should be
dialed back. Apple wants itscustomers, who pay a premium for its iPhones, to have the right
to block tracking entirely. But Google executives have suggested thatApple has turned
privacy into a privilege for those who can afford its products.For many people, that means
the internet may start looking different depending on the products they use. On Apple
gadgets, ads may beonly somewhat relevant to a person’s interests, compared with highly
targeted promotions inside Google’s web. Website creators mayeventually choose sides, so
some sites that work well in Google’s browser might not even load in Apple’s browser, said
Brendan Eich, aThe pop-up notification that Apple rolled out in April.Apple
founder of Brave, the private web browser.“It will be a tale of two internets,” he
said.Businesses that do not keep up with the changes risk getting run over. Increasingly,
media publishers and even apps that show theweather are charging subscription fees, in the
same way that Netflix levies a monthly fee for video streaming. Some e-commerce sites
areconsidering raising product prices to keep their revenues up.Consider Seven Sisters
Scones, a mail-order pastry shop in Johns Creek, Ga., which relies on Facebook ads to
promote its items. NateMartin, who leads the bakery’s digital marketing, said that after
Apple blocked some ad tracking, its digital marketing campaigns onFacebook became less
effective. Because Facebook could no longer get as much data on which customers like
baked goods, it was harderfor the store to find interested buyers online.“Everything came to
a screeching halt,” Mr. Martin said. In June, the bakery’s revenue dropped to $16,000 from
$40,000 in May.Sales have since remained flat, he said. To offset the declines, Seven Sisters
Scones has discussed increasing prices on sampler boxes to$36 from $29.Apple declined to
3. comment, but its executives have said advertisers will adapt. Google said it was working on
an approach that wouldprotect people’s data but also let advertisers continue targeting
users with ads.Since the 1990s, much of the web has been rooted in digital advertising. In
that decade, a piece of code planted in web browsers — the“cookie” — began tracking
people’s browsing activities from site to site. Marketers used the information to aim ads at
individuals, sosomeone interested in makeup or bicycles saw ads about those topics and
products.After the iPhone and Android app stores were introduced in 2008, advertisers also
collected data about what people did inside apps byplanting invisible trackers. That
information was linked with cookie data and shared with data brokers for even more
specific ad targeting.The result was a vast advertising ecosystem that underpinned free
websites and online services. Sites and apps like BuzzFeed and TikTokflourished using this
model. Even e-commerce sites rely partly on advertising to expand their businesses.But
distrust of these practices began building. In 2018, Facebook became embroiled in the
Cambridge Analytica scandal, where people’sFacebook data was improperly harvested
without their consent. That same year, European regulators enacted the General
DataProtection Regulation, laws to safeguard people’s information. In 2019, Google and
Facebook agreed to pay record fines to the FederalTrade Commission to settle allegations of
privacy violations.In Silicon Valley, Apple reconsidered its advertising approach. In 2017,
Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software engineering, announcedthat the Safari web
browser would block cookies from following people from site to site.“It kind of feels like
you’re being tracked, and that’s because you are,” Mr. Federighi said. “No longer.”TikTok
and many other apps flourished by collecting data about what people did insideapps and
sharing it with data brokers for more specific ad targeting.Peyton Fulford for TheNew York
Times
Last year, Apple announced the pop-up window in iPhone apps that asks people if they
want to be followed for marketing purposes. If theuser says no, the app must stop
monitoring and sharing data with third parties.That prompted an outcry from Facebook,
which was one of the apps affected. In December, the social network took out full-
pagenewspaper ads declaring that it was “standing up to Apple” on behalf of small
businesses that would get hurt once their ads could nolonger find specific audiences.“The
situation is going to be challenging for them to navigate,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief
executive, said.Facebook is now developing ways to target people with ads using insights
gathered on their devices, without allowing personal data to beshared with third parties. If
people who click on ads for deodorant also buy sneakers, Facebook can share that pattern
with advertisers sothey can show sneaker ads to that group. That would be less intrusive
than sharing personal information like email addresses withadvertisers.“We support giving
people more control over how their data is used, but Apple’s far-reaching changes occurred
without input from theindustry and those who are most impacted,” a Facebook spokesman
said.Since Apple released the pop-up window, more than 80 percent of iPhone users have
opted out of tracking worldwide, according to ad techfirms. Last month, Peter Farago, an
executive at Flurry, a mobile analytics firm owned by Verizon Media, published a post on
LinkedIncalling the “time of death” for ad tracking on iPhones.At Google, Sundar Pichai, the
chief executive, and his lieutenants began discussing in 2019 how to provide more privacy
4. without killing thecompany’s $135 billion online ad business. In studies, Google researchers
found that the cookie eroded people’s trust. Google said itsChrome and ad teams concluded
that the Chrome web browser should stop supporting cookies.But Google also said it would
not disable cookies until it had a different way for marketers to keep serving people
targeted ads. In March,the company tried a method that uses its data troves to place people
into groups based on their interests, so marketers can aim ads atthose cohorts rather than
at individuals. The approach is known as Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLOC.Plans
remain in flux. Google will not block trackers in Chrome until 2023.Even so, advertisers said
they were alarmed.In an article this year, Sheri Bachstein, the head of IBM Watson
Advertising, warned that the privacy shifts meant that relying solely onadvertising for
revenue was at risk. Businesses must adapt, she said, including by charging subscription
fees and using artificialintelligence to help serve ads.“The big tech companies have put a
clock on us,” she said in an interview.Kate Conger contributed reporting.Sundar Pichai,
Google’s chief executive, speaking at the company’s developers’conference in 2019. Jim
Wilson/The New York Times
Back to NewsroomMetaA Path Forward for Privacyand Online AdvertisingOctober 2,
2020By Erin Egan, VP and Chief Privacy Officer, Public Policy and Steve Satterfield, Director
of PublicPolicyOn Wednesday, September 23, 2020, Facebook joined a virtual discussion
hosted byThe Atlantic as part of The Atlantic Ideas Festival. We shared how we’re building
newtools to give people more control over their information and addressed how privacy
andpersonalized advertising are not at odds. Below is a selection of our opening
remarks.Erin Egan’s RemarksIt’s hard to believe that the consumer Internet has entered its
fourth decade. TheInternet in 2020 includes a huge range of services, many of which have
been criticalduring this pandemic. These services – from search and social networking, to
video calls and privatemessaging – are all available to people for free. And they’re free
because they’resupported by advertising. It’s not a stretch to say that much of today’s
Internet hasbeen brought to us by ads. The Facebook company is now Meta. Learn more.
Just to set some context, many of us will remember that online ads in the 1990s
werespammy. I certainly remember having content blocked or overlaid with
flashing,annoying ads. Businesses were skeptical too: For a long time, advertisers didn’t
believeonline ads could be as valuable as TV and print ads. But over the years, many of these
spammy experiences have subsided. And we knowthat businesses are now finding real
value in online ads. So what changed? I think the key change has been the rise of
personalization. Online ad platforms foundways to use data to show better, more relevant
ads – to make ads personalized. Thismade it easier for businesses to reach people likely to
be interested in their products. Itcreated huge efficiencies for businesses of all
sizes. Personalization also made it easier to show ads without disrupting the user
experience:once platforms made ads personalized, we didn’t need to show those flashing
bannersto get people’s attention. We could make ads interesting to people by making
themrelevant. The rise of personalized advertising has brought its own controversies, of
course. Manyof those have focused on privacy and data use, which is the area I cover at
Facebook.And, as you know, the past few years have seen other concerns emerge,
especiallyaround particular kinds of ads, like political ads. These concerns are serious, and
5. it’s become increasingly common for folks to ask us,why don’t you just stop showing
personalized ads? The answer is that we believe that personalized advertising provides the
bestexperience for people and the best value for businesses – particularly small
businesses,which make up the vast majority of Facebook’s nine million active advertisers
acrossour services. The benefits for people are real. Personalized ads help people access
services, discovernew products, and receive deals from the brands they care about.
Personalized ads also help businesses. Retailers have been increasing their reliance
ononline channels for years. But estimates say that the pandemic has accelerated the shiftto
selling goods and services online by as much as five years. This shift means different things
for businesses of different sizes. Large advertisersmight be able to afford expensive massive
online marketing campaigns. But smallerbusinesses usually have smaller budgets. For those
budgets to yield value, the businesshas to advertise to people who are likely to be interested
in its products. This is whypersonalized ads are so valuable; they can connect businesses
and people in ways thatsimply aren’t possible with other kinds of ads. This ability to
connect has major real world consequences. We partnered with the WorldBank and the
OECD to survey more than 25,000 small business leaders in more than 50countries, and
learned that, in May, 26 percent of small businesses had closed becauseof the pandemic,
with more than half closing down in some countries. During thispandemic, reaching
customers has been the difference for many between staying afloator going under. There
are also, of course, millions of apps and websites that sustain themselves byshowing people
ads. In a recent study we ran in connection with our ad network, theFacebook Audience
Network, we saw a greater than fifty percent drop in revenue formobile app ad install
campaigns, when we removed personalization from the ads wedeliver on other companies’
sites.This is consistent with findings from Google, which ran a similar study last year –
andwith another study from Professor Deighton of Harvard Business School, which
foundthat personalization contributes billions of dollars to publisher revenue. But these
days – particularly in policy circles – you’re far more likely to hear concernsabout
personalized ads than you are to hear about their benefits. Some people believethat services
that rely on personalized ads are inherently harmful. They believe theseservices collect
more data than they need to provide value to people. And they believethese services use
that data in ways people do not understand and cannot control. This criticism is influencing
policy proposals to limit personalized ads by restrictingbusiness-to-business data sharing
and the use of decades-old web technologies, likecookies.
The criticism is also informing changes that large platforms are making: Apple’s newiOS 14
policy is actually focused mainly on the use and sharing of data for personalizedads. We
understand people have real questions about how online advertising works, but
wefundamentally disagree with the underlying assumption that you cannot provide free,ad-
supported services in a way that respects privacy. We believe it is possible to haveprivacy
and a thriving, free, ad-supported Internet. Now, I recognize that this might be a tough
message to hear from Facebook in light ofthe controversies we’ve faced. We’ve learned a lot
from these controversies, and we’vemade meaningful changes in response to them. But we
continue to believepersonalized ads and privacy can coexist. To make this possible,
transparency and control are the starting point. People shouldunderstand how their data is
6. used and should have meaningful controls. That’s whywe’ve built tools like Off-Facebook
Activity, which lets people see a summary of theinformation other apps and websites send
to Facebook and gives them the option todisconnect it from their account. This tool was
unprecedented when it was launched,and I believe it remains unmatched today.We’re going
to continue investing in transparency and control, and we know the rest ofthe industry will
– and should – continue to regard those principles as the foundation ofits approach to
privacy. But we also recognize that transparency and control aren’tenough. That’s why
we’re investing in research and development of privacy-enhancingtechnologies. These
technologies will help us achieve the value of personalized adswhile using and sharing data
securely in de-identified form We’re also working on ways to process data off of Facebook’s
servers, for example in asecure and encrypted environment, so that Facebook itself never
even sees the data. Inmany cases we are collaborating with the open source community to
advance thesetechnologies. We want our solutions to be available for anyone to see, verify,
build on,and use.
We believe that these technologies are only a part of the solution – that we need tocontinue
to evaluate the ways our products collect and use data with core privacyprinciples, like data
minimization, as our guide. But we believe privacy-enhancingtechnologies offer solutions
that will help build a sustainable, ad-supported Internet.This is the future of personalized
advertising, and we hope to work collaboratively withpolicymakers, regulators, and others
in the industry on policy regimes that ensurestrong privacy protections and broad access to
online services. Let’s focus on building the next generation of privacy-enhancing
technologies so thatwe can sustain the ad-supported Internet so it continues to provide
massive value topeople and businesses. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention, in closing, that
keeping the internet open and accessiblealso means ensuring that businesses and other
organizations are able to safely, securelyand legally transfer data across national
borders. Steve Satterfield’s RemarksI want to pick up briefly on something Erin said about
the role of policymakers andregulators in this space. Erin mentioned that we’re seeing
regulation that will make itharder for companies to monetize their services through ads.But
I think it’s important to add that this regulation is being intensely debated by arange of
stakeholders – which is what you’d expect for proposals that could have asignificant effect
on people’s online experiences and on the economy. I think about the proposed ePrivacy
Regulation in Europe, which is the piece oflegislation most clearly targeted at ad-supported
business models. That proposal hasbeen debated literally for years at this point because,
while people rightly argue thatthere’s more that the industry should be doing to protect
privacy in connection withpersonalized advertising, there’s also a recognition that imposing
tight restrictions onthese kinds of ads could create real costs for society. What we’re seeing
in these debates is the democratic process play out. There should bedebate about these
things; we should be able to assess the impact to differentstakeholders before we impose
new restrictions.
This is why it’s concerning that some of the most significant restrictions onpersonalized
advertising aren’t coming from policymakers or regulators – but fromprivate companies
that control app stores and operating systems. Should any one company decide for us
where the balancing of equities should landwhen considering the pro-consumer and pro-
