Tag: Advertisement

Here is How Facebook Might Be Invading Your Privacy With Its New Ad Products

Facebook has reportedly decided to roll out two new advertisement products aimed at small businesses. This new advertisement scheme is to encourage smaller firms and companies, who have previously been reluctant to be a part of prime placement on the social networking website.

The first ad product focuses on what Facebook is calling “local awareness ads”. This will allow businesses to target customers according to their location. This feature will especially be helpful to smaller businesses which have multiple chain stores to target their specific audience more personally.

Giving us an example of what the advertisements will look like, Facebook says, “a cafe with multiple locations …could choose to automatically populate the city name in their ad copy, depending on where the people seeing the ad are. So, people in Glasgow would see ‘join us for lunch in Glasgow’, while people in Bristol would see ‘join us for lunch in Bristol’.”

The second ad product will be mainly for the use of the company. It will allow businesses to mark the demographics of their page and locate facts and information about potential customers, that will facilitate documenting and analyzing of data by these businesses. This product will also help them differentiate between people who are passing by their page and potential customers or users.

This feature, however helpful it might sounds to the business, is in fact just one more way that Facebook might be trying to access our private information in order to facilitate another survey more accurately. This has sparked off a debate on Facebook between privacy vs. accuracy.

Facebook had initially started off as a social networking site, where you logged into your profile to contact friends or simply like their profile picture. However, today it has turned into a mega business company and has stretched its arms over almost every sphere of life possible. As of now, the results of it are positive, so let us keep hoping that Facebook continues the way it does.

November 7, 2015
Xiaomi Under Investigation For Allegedly Misleading Potential Buyers

New reports have suggested, that Chinese smartphone manufacturer, Xiaomi Corp is under investigation for allegedly violating China’s new advertisement law. This new law, that became effective from the 1st of September, 2015, states that the use of superlative adjectives in promoting products would be banned.

Investigation of the matter is being made on suspicion of the usage of phrases such as “the best” to describe their product. Zhu Dalin, an analyst at the Beijing based Internet Consultancy Analyses told the Economic Times :

“The new law will have a certain impact on Internet companies, but not too much-after all, consumers are so accustomed to cliches such as ‘the super phone’ and ‘the omnipotent TV’ that these phrases make no real sense to them now.”

Allegedly, Xiaomi has also been in a similar situation earlier, when it had launched the Red Mi Note 2, where it showed the device to be equipped with panels from Japanese electronics giant Sharp Corp and the Taiwan manufacturer AU Optronics Corp. Soon, after buying the product, consumers found that the screens were actually produced from a Microelectronics Co Ltd based in Guangdong province.

This kind of an allegation is probably going to cost the manufacturer its reputation. However, no official reports have been made by the company so far.

September 30, 2015
Customer Match by Google Will Target Ads Using Your Email Address

Google is letting advertisers in on your email address so that they can get you exactly what you’re looking for. And yes, this is a new feature by Google. The company is rolling out a new tool called Customer Match, which allows advertisers to use a list of email addresses to target specific users across Google. So now you can be tracked online by your Gmail address.

When you buy a smartphone, for example, from an online retailer and provide your email address, the retailer will feed your email id along with your recent purchase to the Google server. So the next time you’re surfing the net while logged in to your Gmail account, Google will be able to send you a whole bunch of ads related to you recent smartphone purchases such as phone covers, earphones, and other accessories.

“Let’s say you’re a travel brand. You can now reach people who have joined your rewards program as they plan their next trip. For example, when these rewards members search for “non-stop flights to new york, on Google.com, you can show relevant ads at the top of their search results on any device right when they’re looking to fly to New York. And when those members are watching their favorite videos on YouTube or catching up on Gmail, you can show ads that inspire them to plan their next trip.” Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s ads and commerce veep explained in a blog.

Google is perhaps trying to catch up with Facebook and Twitter who also use your respective email addresses to provide targeted ads within their site. Google calls Customer Match a “privacy-safe” product, but it is still a matter of concern for users who feel that advertisers are getting even more specific with their ad targeting, which calls into question just how much ‘they’ know about you. .

Google, however, has stated that companies will not be able to create personalized profiles of individuals and the tool mainly allows them to compile a list of the user’s habits on YouTube, Google search, and other Google related services. Customer Match will be available to advertise in the coming weeks and you can soon expect to see more specific advertisements pop up in your Gmail account, YouTube, and Google search.

September 30, 2015