The influence of mobile ad fraud on intercompany relationships : the case of Hang My Ads

Mestrado em MarketingDesde o seu início, a indústria da publicidade mobile tem vindo a enfrentar problemas de fraude associados a grandes perdas financeiras e danos na forma como as empresas se relacionam. O presente estudo explora os efeitos dos problemas de fraude nas relações entre empresas da indústria; abordando o ecosistema da publicidade das aplicações mobile, o contexto focal da Hang My Ads e os processos de adaptação necessários para lidar com os efeitos da fraude. O ecosistema da publicidade de aplicações mobile revela organizar-se em advertisers, intermediários, publishers e empresas de tecnologia, e é marcado por desafios como a fraude, a falta de transparência e a falta de regulamentação. Advertisers e publishers parecem adaptar-se de formas semelhantes, embora diferenças sejam detetadas nos processos de planeamento e agendamento do serviço, produção, e ?outro? ? onde advertisers adaptam mais e investem mais recursos; mas também ao nível de estrutura organizacional ? onde as adaptações parecem estar relacionadas com a dimensão da empresa. Além disto, a investigação confirma a ocorrência de adaptações ao nível da díade, que se propagam para a rede de empresas mais alargada. Além de perdas financeiras e baixo ROI, a realocação de orçamentos de acordo com a competência do publisher para lidar com fraude é confirmada; o estudo revela ainda como efeitos da fraude danos aos níveis da experiência do utilizador, da reputação da indústria e da eficiência das empresas. Um esquema visual do mapeamento do ecosistema e um modelo de análise modificado são propostos.Since its emergence, the mobile advertising industry has been struggling with fraud issues that cause great financial losses and damage how companies relate to one another. The present study exlores the effects of fraud issues taking place in the mobile advertising industry on intercompany relationships; particularly, it looks at the mobile app advertising ecosystem, the focal context of Hang My Ads and the adaptation processes undertaken by advertisers and publishers to tackle the effects of fraud. The mobile app advertising ecosystem is found to be organized in advertisers, intermediates, publishers and technology companies, and characterized by marking challenges such as fraud, lack of transparency and lack of regulation. Advertisers and publishers seem to adapt in similar ways to one another, but differences are found at the processes of service planning and scheduling, production, and "other" - where advertisers adapt more and seem to invest more resources; and at the level of organization structure - where adaptations appear to be related with company size. Furthermore, the case confirms the occurrence of adaptations taking place in the dyad and propagating to the broader network. In addition to financial losses and poor ROI, the reallocation of budgets according to a publisher's competence to handle fraud is confirmed; moreover, it is found that damages at the levels of user experience, industry's reputation and companies' efficiency are caused by fraud. A visual scheme of the ecosystem's mapping and a modified framework of analysis are proposed.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A crime script analysis of the online stolen data market

The purpose of this study is to better understand the online black market economy, specifically relating to stolen data, using crime script analysis. Content analysis of 13 English- and Russian-speaking stolen data forums found that the different products and services offered enabled the commodification of stolen data. The marketplace offers a range of complementary products, from the supply of hardware and software to steal data, the sale of the stolen data itself, to the provision of services to turn data into money, such as drops, cashiers and money laundering. The crime script analysis provides some insight into how the actors in these forums interact, and the actions they perform, from setting up software to finalizing transactions and exiting the marketplace.This work was supported by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate, Cyber Security Division (DHSS and T/CSD) Broad Agency Announcement 11.02, the Government of Australia and SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific (N66001-13-C-0131 to A.H.); and the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice (2010-IJ-CX-1676, 2010, to T. H.). The opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect those of the aforementioned agencies

Attention Must Be Paid: Commercial Speech, User-Generated Ads, and the Challenge of Regulation

This Article examines the dynamics that drive advertisers to push into new formats, and the law’s ability to regulate them. I argue that it will remain possible, and constitutional, to identify advertising and subject it to prohibitions on false and misleading claims, even for ads in unconventional formats. The article also addresses the ways in which regulators were caught off-guard by these new formats. In particular, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which frees online service providers and users from liability for content generated by other users, poses some unanticipated barriers to regulating advertising. Yet despite section 230’s provisions, regulators retain flexibility in many situations. The Article considers the Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC”) recent revisions of its guides on testimonials and endorsements. The guidelines apply to bloggers and others who receive substantial benefits from advertisers in return for their endorsements. After exploring the First Amendment challenges posed by such situations, including questions that go to the heart of the justification for regulating commercial speech, I contend that neither section 230 nor sound policy require the FTC to ignore these new forms of communicating with potential purchasers

Refining Advertising Regulation

Why did the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) aggressively pursue Volkswagen\u27s claims about clean-diesel technology, while ignoring widespread practices like deceptive discount pricing? Why did the FTC offer formal guidance to industry about native advertising, but only casual guidance to consumers about widely-used, peer-review aggregators like Yelp and Fandango? For decades, the FTC has only loosely employed a cost-benefit-analysis approach toward prioritizing enforcement of advertising regulation. I contend that federal regulators can best refine enforcement priorities by looking to the information economics literature for an established framework for classifying advertising claims. This Article shows that classifying advertising into search claims, experience claims, and credence claims offers a structure for more rigorous cost-benefit analysis of enforcement opportunities. Expressly incorporating this search-experience credence claim framework into regulatory decision making and prioritization will lead to improved stewardship of FTC resources

Do We Need Help Using Yelp? Regulating Advertising on Mediated Reputation Systems

Yelp, Angie’s List, Avvo, and similar entities enable consumers to access an incredibly useful trove of information about peer experiences with businesses and their goods and services. These “mediated reputation systems,” gatherers and disseminators of consumer peer opinions, are more trusted by consumers than traditional commercial channels. They are omnipresent, carried everywhere on mobile devices, and used by consumers ready to transact. Though this information is valuable, a troubling conflict emerges in its presentation. Most of these reputation platforms rely heavily on advertising sales to support their business models. This reliance compels these entities to display persuasive advertising right along with their presentation of authentic peer information. Consumers expecting to access this authentic peer information must also confront a persuasive message. The revenue lifeblood for these platforms comes from the very businesses under peer review. This Article argues that the power of peer information provides an exceptionally credible context for persuasive advertising. Accordingly, advertising on reputation platforms should trigger more rigorous regulation in the form of disclosure requirements and prioritized enforcement

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Developing Rational Standards for an Advertising Subsitution Policy

American annual consumer expenditures of nearly two trillion dollars involve approximately sixty-four percent of the country\u27s Gross National Product. A substantial portion of those consumer purchases result in some sort of dissatisfaction. The term \u27consumer dissatisfaction’ represents a large continuum of feelings ranging from mild disappointment to all consuming rage. Consumer dissatisfaction is a serious societal problem for a variety of reasons. It indicates a misallocation of scarce resources. It can be a significant factor in producing the perception that the economic and political institutions are unfair, ineffective, or unresponsive. That perception can have wide ranging political ramifications. Finally, it may be an indication of genuine political and economic unfairness. Consumer dissatisfaction is often caused by advertising or other marketing practices that create unrealistic expectations on the part of consumers regarding the properties or effectiveness of products or services. Advertising, both true and untrue, plays a significant role in determining how consumer dollars are spent. Approximately seventy-billion dollars are spent annually on advertising. Therefore, the part that advertising plays in consumer misapprehension regarding the properties or effectiveness of products deserves our attention. A number of governmental institutions and substantive legal doctrines have been established to resolve consumer disputes and to prevent consumer dissatisfaction. The Federal Trade Commission (Commission) often is considered the prime federal agency protecting consumers from false advertising. The Commission administers a number of statutes which seek to protect consumers in the market-place; the most inclusive of those laws is Section Five of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA) which prohibits ‘unfair and deceptive acts and practices.’ This language has been used for eighty-four years as the basis of the Commission\u27s jurisdiction to regulate advertising. The Commission has regulated advertising by enacting a variety of Trade Regulation Rules and by ordering various advertisers to ‘cease and desist’ advertising campaigns that the Commission determines are deceptive. Traditionally, identification of an advertisement as deceptive involved a determination that the advertiser was making false claims about the nature of the product. The Commission has employed another approach to the concept of deception. An advertiser violates the FTCA by making claims about a product when the advertiser does not have a reasonable basis to believe the claim, i.e., the advertiser lacks sufficient substantiation for the claim. This ‘reasonable basis doctrine’ forms the root of what is known as the Commission\u27s advertising substantiation program. That program involves (or has involved) collecting and disseminating to the public the substantiation for particular advertising claims, as well as penalizing advertisers who make claims without a sufficient substantiation for those claims. The advertising substantiation program often is recognized as a significant aspect of the Commission\u27s consumer protection efforts. Nearly all complaints, decisions, and consent orders involving deceptive advertising at least partly are based on the doctrine that advertisers should have substantiation for claims. The advertising substantiation program was the subject of one of the two major policy statements regarding consumer protection that have been issued by the Commission during the Reagan administration. A number of issues regarding the application of the substantiation requirement remain unresolved. Those issues involve: identifying the standard for determining the appropriate level of substantiation by advertisers, deciding whether substantiation developed after a claim is made should be considered, deciding whether the Commission should proceed by rule or adjudication in establishing the substantiation requirement, and deciding whether the substantiation materials should be available to the public. After a brief history of the substantiation requirement, this article will establish a theoretical basis for that requirement. That basis will be used to resolve the issues which have arisen

Online advertising: analysis of privacy threats and protection approaches

Online advertising, the pillar of the “free” content on the Web, has revolutionized the marketing business in recent years by creating a myriad of new opportunities for advertisers to reach potential customers. The current advertising model builds upon an intricate infrastructure composed of a variety of intermediary entities and technologies whose main aim is to deliver personalized ads. For this purpose, a wealth of user data is collected, aggregated, processed and traded behind the scenes at an unprecedented rate. Despite the enormous value of online advertising, however, the intrusiveness and ubiquity of these practices prompt serious privacy concerns. This article surveys the online advertising infrastructure and its supporting technologies, and presents a thorough overview of the underlying privacy risks and the solutions that may mitigate them. We first analyze the threats and potential privacy attackers in this scenario of online advertising. In particular, we examine the main components of the advertising infrastructure in terms of tracking capabilities, data collection, aggregation level and privacy risk, and overview the tracking and data-sharing technologies employed by these components. Then, we conduct a comprehensive survey of the most relevant privacy mechanisms, and classify and compare them on the basis of their privacy guarantees and impact on the Web.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Brooking no excuses: university staff and students are encouraged to develop their engagement

Brooking no excuses: university staff and students are encouraged to develop their engagement This paper will explore the internal and external factors that have prompted the University of East Anglia's decision to give Public Engagement into a more central role within the Universities Corporate Plan. It will illustrate how the SEARCH Action Learning Programme facilitated the design, implementation and delivery of new Staff and Student Development Programmes that aim to provide the confidence, skills and mentorship that will encourage staff to develop their engagement activities. We will use a SWOT analysis to discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the Public Engagement Practitioner. As part of this, we will explore how many of the issues we face as Science communicators with the public are similar to issues encountered by Communicators within the Arts and Humanities disciplines. Finally we will outline and detail our future plans, opportunities and vision that will enable us to move this agenda forward