Analyzing and testing viewability methods in an advertising network

Many of the current online businesses base completely their revenue models in earnings from online advertisement. A problematic fact is that according to recent studies more than half of display ads are not being detected as viewable. The International Advertising Bureau (IAB) has defined a viewable impression as an impression that at least 50% of its pixels are rendered in the viewport during at least one continuous second. Although there is agreement on this definition for measuring viewable impressions in the industry, there is no systematic methodologies on how it should be implemented or the trustworthiness of these methods. In fact, the Media Rating Council (MRC) announced that there are inconsistencies across multiple reports attempting to measure this metric. In order to understand the magnitude of the problem, we conduct an analysis of different methods to track viewable impressions. Then, we test a subset of geometric and strong interaction methods in a webpage registered in the worldwide ad-network ExoClick, which currently serves over 7 billion geo-targeted ads a day to a global network of 65000 web/mobile publisher platforms. We find that the Intersection Observer API is the method that detects more viewable impressions given its robustness towards the technological constraints that face the rest of implementations available. The motivation of this work is to better understand the limitations and advantages of such methods, which can have an impact at a standardisation level in online advertising industry, as well as to provide guidelines for future research based on the lessons learned.This work was possible thanks to the support of “Plan de Doctorados Industriales de la Secretaría de Universidades e Investigación del Departamento de Empresa y Conocimiento de la Generalitat de Catalunya” and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the Juan de la Cierva Formación program (FJCI-2017-34926). We also want to thank ExoClick for their support in conducting thisresearchPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Improving the robustness and privacy of HTTP cookie-based tracking systems within an affiliate marketing context : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

E-commerce activities provide a global reach for enterprises large and small. Third parties generate visitor traffic for a fee; through affiliate marketing, search engine marketing, keyword bidding and through organic search, amongst others. Therefore, improving the robustness of the underlying tracking and state management techniques is a vital requirement for the growth and stability of e-commerce. In an inherently stateless ecosystem such as the Internet, HTTP cookies have been the de-facto tracking vector for decades. In a previous study, the thesis author exposed circumstances under which cookie-based tracking system can fail, some due to technical glitches, others due to manipulations made for monetary gain by some fraudulent actors. Following a design science research paradigm, this research explores alternative tracking vectors discussed in previous research studies within a cross-domain tracking environment. It evaluates their efficacy within current context and demonstrates how to use them to improve the robustness of existing tracking techniques. Research outputs include methods, instantiations and a privacy model artefact based on information seeking behaviour of different categories of tracking software, and their resulting privacy intrusion levels. This privacy model provides clarity and is useful for practitioners and regulators to create regulatory frameworks that do not hinder technological advancement, rather they curtail privacy-intrusive tracking practices on the Internet. The method artefacts are instantiated as functional prototypes, available publicly on Internet, to demonstrate the efficacy and utility of the methods through live tests. The research contributes to the theoretical knowledge base through generalisation of empirical findings and to the industry by problem solving design artefacts

Enhancing the Use of the Mobile Infrastructure in Cameroon. The Case of Bayam Sellam

The expansion and the reliability of mobile technology in Sub-Sahara Africa - as well as elsewhere - opened up diverse opportunities. For instance, the access to learning material, conduction of commercial activities, promotion of agricultural activities, enhancement of governmental transparency, support of healthcare practices, etc. To harness the existing mobile infrastructure, diverse users are looking for effective and efficient ways, for instance, the Bayam Sellam in Cameroon. Bayam Sellam refers to people engaged in trade between rural and urban markets. This work analyses the usage and development of information and communication technology in Sub-Sahara Africa in general, and the mobile technology and its constraints in particular. An efficient use of the mobile technology depends on appropriate mobile services and applications. These should produce and use local digital content, so as to enhance the use of the existing mobile infrastructure and contribute to satisfy the users' needs. As a case study, we deal with a tailored mobile commerce solution for Bayam Sellam and other related stakeholders such as the governmental department for price regulation. The arising question is how Bayam Sellam can use the mobile devices to improve their business activities and, thereby, use the mobile infrastructure more efficiently. With a questionnaire, we investigate the wishes of 250 Bayam Sellam in Ngaoundere. The aim was to develop a tailored mobile commerce solution called Bayasella for Bayam Sellam. The solution is a hybrid application based on the approach of local data storage, web technologies and frameworks (HTML5, PhoneGap, etc.). Bayasella stores product details offline, and synchronises them with the online database whenever the user wants. The online activities (up/downloading offers) shall be very short so as to minimise charges. Another key issue is: if the provided architecture can be applied to other domains. We put our attention on a combined mobile weather application that impacts the mobile technology and the Bayam Sellam business activities. For this purpose, we combine endogenous qualitative weather data - from ethnic group Tpuri - with existing quantifiable data from established weather forecasting systems, such as World Weather Online

Newman v. Google

3rd amended complain

An implementation of a web platform to support free recycling in Ghana

Applied project submitted to the Department of Computer Science, Ashesi University College, in partial fulfillment of Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, April 2017The advent of free recycling is largely alien and unheard of in Ghana. This is the practice of giving out unwanted but reusable items to other people who may have need of it. Freecycling is a linguistic blend of the words free and recycling which connotes the practice of giving unwanted items for free rather than discarding them in landfills. This project implements a web platform that enables local community members to advertise free items and request for free items that have been advertised.Ashesi University Colleg

Community sharing platform for mobile devices

Communities arise from the need to communicate and share information. The present study intends to facilitate the creation of open communities where users are concerned or passionate about a subject and are willing to share their knowledge with other members. Based on the theoretical concept of community of practice and using a technological hybrid approach, this work proposes a Community Sharing Platform for Mobile Devices. Initially describes a conceptual model using three different approaches: Operational, Technological and Economic. Later, validates this model by developing a functional prototype, which is available for a set of users. Finally, based on usage statistics, the prototype is validated.As comunidades surgem da necessidade que o ser humano tem em comunicar e partilhar informação. O presente estudo pretende encontrar solução que facilite a criação de comunidades abertas, onde os utilizadores conscientes e informados sobre determinadas áreas, estão dispostos a aprender e a partilhar o seu conhecimento. Baseado no conceito teórico de comunidade de prática e utilizando uma abordagem tecnológica híbrida, este trabalho propõe uma plataforma de partilha de informação comunitária para dispositivos móveis. Começa por descrever um modelo conceptual, dividindo-o em três domínios diferentes: Operacional, Tecnológico e Económico. Posteriormente, valida este modelo através da construção de um protótipo funcional, que fica disponível para um conjunto de utilizadores. Por último, com base nas estatísticas de utilização, é realizada a validação desse protótipo

Civil Good - A Platform For Sustainable and Inclusive Online Discussion

Civil Good is a website concept proposed by Alan Mandel with the goal of enabling safe, anonymous, productive, and civil discourse without the disruptive behavior and language common to much of the Internet. The goal of Civil Good is to improve the critical thinking and discussion skills of its users while combating the effects of political polarization and misinformation in society. This paper analyzes Mandel\u27s proposed concept, providing additional research to either support or refute the various features proposed, and recommendations to simplify user interactions. It also examines topics mentioned only briefly or not discussed by Mandel, such as data protection methods, the psychology of Web browsing, marketing, operational costs, legal issues, monetization options, and mobile presence

Eyewear Computing \u2013 Augmenting the Human with Head-Mounted Wearable Assistants

The seminar was composed of workshops and tutorials on head-mounted eye tracking, egocentric vision, optics, and head-mounted displays. The seminar welcomed 30 academic and industry researchers from Europe, the US, and Asia with a diverse background, including wearable and ubiquitous computing, computer vision, developmental psychology, optics, and human-computer interaction. In contrast to several previous Dagstuhl seminars, we used an ignite talk format to reduce the time of talks to one half-day and to leave the rest of the week for hands-on sessions, group work, general discussions, and socialising. The key results of this seminar are 1) the identification of key research challenges and summaries of breakout groups on multimodal eyewear computing, egocentric vision, security and privacy issues, skill augmentation and task guidance, eyewear computing for gaming, as well as prototyping of VR applications, 2) a list of datasets and research tools for eyewear computing, 3) three small-scale datasets recorded during the seminar, 4) an article in ACM Interactions entitled \u201cEyewear Computers for Human-Computer Interaction\u201d, as well as 5) two follow-up workshops on \u201cEgocentric Perception, Interaction, and Computing\u201d at the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) as well as \u201cEyewear Computing\u201d at the ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp)