Noam Cohen has a great piece in The New York Times today, In Allowing Ad Blockers, a Test for Google, explaining how Google’s decision about allowing ad blocking extensions for the new beta version of its Chrome browser puts Google’s much-ballyhooed talk about openness to the test. So far, Google is passing, with two such extensions (AdThwart & AdBlock) available in Chrome’s extensions gallery. With a combined 130,000+ users, these tools seem destined to be as popular among chrome users as AdBlock Plus has been among Firefox users: nearly 67,000,000 downloads and, according to the Times piece, 7+million active users.
Google has taken a sanguine attitude towards the issue, perhaps because as Adblock Plus creator Wladimir Palant notes, “Ad blockers are still used by a tiny proportion of the Internet population, and these aren’t the kind of people susceptible to ads anyway.” (In other words, the users most likely to download an ad blocking extensions, are likely to be more “ad-blind” and less likely to click on ads anyway.) Google’s director of engineering has noted how cautiously Google weighed its decision to allow ad-blocking programs “because Google makes all of its money from advertising.” But in the end, as the Times notes:
[H]e explained that the prevailing thinking was that “it’s unlikely ad blockers are going to get to the level where they imperil the advertising market, because if advertising is so annoying that a large segment of the population wants to block it, then advertising should get less annoying.”
“So I think the market will sort this out,” he said. “At least that is the bet we made when we opened the extension gallery and didn’t have any policy against ad-blockers.”
Michael Gundlach, creator of the AdBlock extension for Chrome (no direct connection to Palant’s AdBlock plus for Firefox, despite the similar names),
who once worked for Google in Ireland helping to ensure that ads kept appearing on Web sites, says he does not fear for media companies that increasingly rely on online ad revenue. Sounding like a firm believer of Mr. Rosenberg’s embrace-the-chaos manifesto, Mr. Gundlach said a brighter day would emerge from the challenge of ad blockers.
Extensions like his, he said, will make “every one else change their ways, to make ads more useful. Everyone wins, that’s competition. The ideal result would be to retire this extension because the entire Web was covered with ads that people loved and no one wanted to block them.”
What is this but a call for more relevant and less annoying web ads? Ironically, of course, personalized advertising is currently under attack on all fronts, and some experts have asserted that users don’t really want ads tailored to their interests—or, for that matter, news or discounts, either—on the basis of highly questionable opinion polls, as I’ve described. Continue reading →
Free Press, the radical regulatory activist group founded by Marxist media scholar Robert W. McChesney, has never seen a media or technology regulation they don’t like, but their latest effort to have the feds halt innovation is shocking even by their standards. According to The Washington Post:
Free Press and other public advocacy groups are sending letters Monday to the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission calling for a probe of the “TV Everywhere” plan by cable, satellite and phone companies that brings television shows and movies to computers and devices, but only for those that subscribe to both television and high-speed Internet services.
Think about this. “TV Everywhere” is still in its cradle, having only just been launched recently. It will give multichannel video distributors a chance to find their footing as millions of consumers continue to “cut the video cord.” And it would provide consumers with ubiquitous access to content over the Internet while also ensuring that content creators are compensated for their programming.
OK, so what’s wrong with all this again? Why would we want federal antitrust officials throw a wrecking ball into this innovative new business model? Continue reading →
Looking forward to returning to the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year in Vegas after missing the previous year’s show. If others are heading out, let me know. Perhaps I’ll try to schedule a meet-up one night with some fellow tech policy geeks like I did in past years. First round on me… so long as you’re a cheap drinker!
I’m really looking forward to the sessions that the Tech Policy Summit team is hosting at CES this year since they always put together great events. They have sessions on broadband deployment issues; spectrum policy; copyright and new media business models; and discussions with leading policymakers and FCC officials, including FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Should be a great event and admission is open to all CES attendees. I’m going to try to do some live blogging or Tweeting from some of the sessions.
I’m also speaking on a panel about online child safety and parental control technologies at another event out there called the “Mommy Tech Summit & Exhibition.” As you might have guessed, it’s a mini-summit geared toward moms who want to learn more about these technologies. The panel discussions take place on Friday but the technology exhibits there will be open the whole time. That will give me a chance to get latest updates for my ongoing booklet on parental control technologies.
Anyway, hope to see some of you there. Those of you who want that free beer know how to find me!
It really is amazing how much the audio marketplace has evolved over the past decade. I’ve written about the growing “competition for our ears” here before, but over at the Radio Survivor blog, there’s an outstanding collection of essays about “The Decade’s Most Important Radio Trends” by several long-time industry experts. Dennis Haarsager of National Public Radio has a nice listing of all the entries over on his blog, which I have reproduced down below.
It just blows my mind to think that just 10 years ago I didn’t have satellite radio (now have 3 subscriptions); I didn’t have Pandora (my 8 different personalized channels are playing in the background on my computer non-stop); I had never heard a podcast (and now subscribe to several and have hosted one here on occasion); I didn’t have an MP3 player and had never burned any of my music (now have 3 players and my entire 25-year collection of CDs on all 3 devices); and I had never spent any time listening to music online (and now am quite in love with Lala and LastFM). Meanwhile, I am still listening to the old fashion radio quite a bit, including on a new HD Radio player in my house. You gotta love choice like that!
Anyway, read these essays for a fuller investigation into the state of the audio marketplace. I don’t agree with everything said in each of the entries but still recommend you check out the entire series:
Continue reading →
The negativity of political advertising is a constant complaint and has given rise to no end of proposals to regulate purely political speech despite the plain language of the First Amendment and obvious intention of the founders to prevent government from censoring criticism. The importance of this issue extends well beyond politics: With U.S. political advertising for all media expected to hit $3.3 billion in 2010, political ad spending constitutes a significant source of advertising revenue for all kinds of publishers. To put that number in perspective, it’s just 1.4% of the $241 billion in advertising spending expected for 2010, but is nearly half as large the total spent on display advertising revenue (which makes up 1/3 of total online advertising revenue) in 2008. So as advertising revenues continue to decline and more advertising moves online, political ad spending is an increasingly important source of revenue for publishers of both traditional and new media.
But one of the more powerful arguments against such advertising is that it diminishes the effectiveness of advertising in general for all products and services—and potentially lowers revenue for publishers even more than is spent on political advertising. That’s why some advertisers and even publishers could conceivably support restrictions on negative campaign ads. The problem with this argument is that it’s just not true. That’s the conclusion of this very interesting 1999 Stanford study by Shanto Iyengar and Markus Prior I just stumbled upon: “Political Advertising: What Effect on Commercial Advertisers?” The authors conclude:
Despite the inherent bias of all forms of advertising, people perceive product ads as generally truthful and interesting. In contrast, political ads are dismissed as dishonest, unappealing, and uninformative. When judged against political advertising, product advertising enjoys considerable public support….
They suggest two explanations for “the significant reputation gap between the two genres of advertising”: Continue reading →
Over at Silicon Alley Insider, Gregory Galant has a wonderful post about “18 Awesome Tech Things We Didn’t Have 10 Years Ago.” It serves as another great example of the amazing technological progress we have witnessed over the past decade. He’s asking people for suggestions for what else should be on the list, so head over there and let him know. Seems like wi-fi technologies should be on there somehow. FiOS deserves a shout-out, too. And where’s Firefox & Chrome? Also, I’ll put in a special word for some amazing new home theater technologies: high-def flat-screens and projectors; media servers & Windows Media Center; BluRay; and 3 incredible gaming / media consoles (Wii, PS3, & XBox). Anyway, here’s Galant’s list:
Wikipedia
Gmail
Facebook
YouTube
Twitter
AdWords
Amazon AWS
RSS (started in ‘99 but didn’t catch on till the ’00s)
Meetup
iPod
Google Maps
Podcasts
Mint
Skype/VOIP
iPhone
Google Docs
Creative Commons
Flickr
One of the themes you come across again and again in public policy debates about privacy, advertising, marketing, or even free speech battles, is the notion that the public at large is made up of mindless sheep being duped at every turn. And, as Berin Szoka and I noted in our paper “What Unites Advocates of Speech Controls & Privacy Regulation?” if you buy into the argument that consumers are basically that stupid then it logically follows that people cannot be trusted or left to their own devices. Thus, government must intervene and establish a baseline “community standard” on behalf of the entire citizenry to tell them what’s best for them.
But there are good reasons to question the premise that consumers are blind to efforts to persuade or influence them — regardless of what type of media content or communications efforts we are talking about. I was recently reading Communication Power by Manuel Castells and liked what he had to say about how so many media critics make this false assumption. Castells rightly notes:
Interestingly enough, critical theorists of communication often espouse [a] one-sided view of the communications process. By assuming the notion of a helpless audience manipulated by corporate media, they place the source of social alienation in the realm of consumerist mass communication. And yet, a well-established stream of research, particularly in the psychology of communications, shows the capacity of people to modify the signified of the messages they receive by interpreting them according to their own cultural frames, and by mixing the messages from one particular source with their variegated range of communicative practices. (p. 127)
That’s exactly right, and it is even more true in an age of ubiquitous, interactive communications technologies. “The people formerly known as the audience” have the unprecedented ability to talk back, to compare notes, to collectively criticize and hold accountable those who previously held all the cards in the mass media age of the past. Most consumers are perfectly capable of judging the merits of advertising, commercial messages, or other content on their own; they cast a skeptical eye toward most claims but process those claims alongside other counter-claims, independent judgments, informational inputs, and “cultural frames,” as Castells rightly argues. We need to give the public some credit.
In a letter to the editor of the Washington Post last week, former FTC Commissioner Thomas Leary responded to a Post article describing the FTC’s suit against Intel as a “major step for President Obama,” consistent with his campaign promise to “reinvigorate antitrust enforcement.” Leary responded indignantly to this characterization by declaring:
People seem to forget that the FTC is a bipartisan independent agency.
As a Republican FTC commissioner appointed by a Democratic president, I can vouch for the agency’s independence. During my service from 1999 to 2005 in the administrations of presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, I never received a direct or indirect policy recommendation on a pending matter from anyone in the White House or from any of the people in Congress who had actively supported me.
Leary’s leeriness about political encroachment on the FTC illustrates the depth of abiding faith in independent regulatory agencies as standing truly apart from the day-to-day politics of Washington—especially when the might of the regulatory state is being wielded against a particular company in quasi-judicial prosecutions, such as antitrust enforcement actions. But if the independence of the FTC is this important, what about the independence of the Federal Communications Commission, with its broad jurisdiction over the media and tools of free speech?
Leary would probably be appalled at the politicization of the FCC in recent years. Bush’s second FCC chairman, Kevin Martin, was infamous for his political Machiavellianism and widely despised by the communications law bar. By contrast, when it became clear that Obama’s high-tech advisor Julius Genachowski would succeed Martin as FCC Chairman shortly before Obama’s inauguration, he received a chorus of applause from a wide range of philosophical perspectives, including from our former president at PFF, Ken Ferree:
Julius Genachowski is an outstanding choice to chair the Commission. He is knowledgeable, experienced, and presumably will have the ear of the most influential people within the Administration.
While no one would compare the eminently likable Genachowski to Martin, his relationship to the Obama administration appears unprecedented in its closeness, and one must ask whether that’s a good thing for the head of a supposedly “independent” regulatory agency or integrity of that agency’s decision-making. Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.