Statement: Spying advertising: File with 650,000 target group segments surfaced

Statement: Spying advertising: File with 650,000 target group segments surfaced

by | Insights, News, Product

Referring to the article “Spying advertising: File with 650,000 target group segments surfaced” in the news by german heise online from 08.06.2023.

What we currently know, we also have from the article of the heise editorial staff. You can read about what happened there. Please follow the linked article above.

An official statement on the part of Microsoft/XANDR is pending, or we do not have one at this point.

In this publicly available Excel file mentioned in the article (now removed), 46 (forty-six) hyScore.io segments are also included by name, consisting of 11 test segments and a number of individually created segments for online advertising agencies and clients.

The file itself lists a total of 651,465 different segments from 94 vendors.

Our actual statement of the case (9th June, 23)

No personal, device or cookie information is recorded, processed, used in segments or required by hyScore.io.

  1. The hyScore segments do not contain any user or device-related data, but consist exclusively of individual article URLs freely accessible to anyone on the Internet, the content of which is analyzed separately using a combination of state-of-the-art methods of natural language processing, image and video analysis and artificial intelligence (contextual analysis.

    Depending on the analysis result, the individual article URL qualifies for a “topic field”, a target group description, a persona or a brand and is then combined into suitable segments consisting of placements (URLs). These generic or individual, dynamically created segments using various data points (such as weighted keywords, phrases, categories, sentiment, security, etc.) are made available to advertisers and their service providers in various platforms for the delivery of an advertising campaign for paid use.

    Example: Articles and guides published on the Internet on the topic of “Pregnancy” can be assigned to a segment with the topic area “Health”, “Health > Pregnancy” or “Family > Parents”, “Family > Pregnancy” based on the text analysis, depending on the focus of the respective article. The bottom line is that a targeting segment in hyScore corresponds to a URL list of articles on one or more specified topic areas.

  2. The segments mentioned in the “XANDR List” are “Custom Segments” that have been provided to advertisers as curated reach (URL lists). These segments are from 2021 and are no longer active with some exceptions.

  3. hyScore “Custom Segments” are clearly named on connected platforms such as XANDR Curate in order to associate them with a campaign or client. This information, or segment names, are named in plain text for organizational reasons.

We see our task in placing online advertising WITHOUT processing device or user data as minimally invasive and as efficiently as possible on quality environments that are suitable or desired in the context. In doing so, we support the companies and platforms of the online marketing industry.

At hyScore, we act – to our own knowledge – within the framework of the most current national and international data protection rules and laws at all times. We are happy to provide you with information about how we work and will publish further insights into our work in due course. Transparency is important to us!

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us via the contact forms or the email address contact@hyscore.io.

German:

Bezugnehmend auf den Artikel “Spionierende Werbung: Datei mit 650.000 Zielgruppen-Segmenten aufgetaucht” in heise online vom 08.06.2023.

Was wir aktuell wissen, haben wir ebenfalls aus dem Artikel der heise Redaktion. Sie können sich dort über das Geschehene informieren. Folgen Sie dazu dem verlinkten Artikel.

Eine offizielle Stellungnahme seitens Microsoft/XANDR steht aus, bzw. liegt uns zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt noch nicht vor.

In dieser im Artikel erwähnten, öffentlich zugänglichen Excel-Datei (mittlerweile entfernt), sind auch 46 (sechsundvierzig) hyScore.io Segmente namentlich enthalten, bestehend aus 11 Test-Segmenten und einer Reihe von individuell erstellten Segmenten für Onlinewerbe-Agenturen und Kunden.

Die Datei selbst listet insgesamt 651.465 verschiedene Segmente von 94 Anbietern auf.

Aktuelle Stellungnahme (9. Juni 2023):

Es werden von hyScore.io keine persönlichen, Geräte- oder Cookie-Informationen aufgezeichnet, verarbeitet, in Segmenten verwendet oder benötigt.

  1. Die hyScore-Segmente enthalten keine Nutzer- und Devicebezogenen Daten, sondern bestehen ausschließlich aus einzelnen, im Internet für jedermann frei zugänglichen Artikel-URLs, deren Inhalte separat in Kombination modernster Methoden des Natural Language Processing, der Bild- und Videoanalyse und künstlicher Intelligenz analysiert werden (Contexual Analyse).

    Je nach Analyseergebnis qualifiziert sich die einzelne Artikel-URL, für ein “Themenfeld”, eine Zielgruppenbeschreibung, eine Persona oder eine Marke und wird dann zu passenden Segmenten, bestehend aus Placements (URLs), zusammengefasst. Diese generischen oder individuellen, dynamisch erstellten Segmente unter Verwendung verschiedener Datenpunkte (wie z.B. gewichtete Keywords, Phrasen, Kategorien, Sentiment, Sicherheit, etc.) werden Werbetreibenden und deren Dienstleistern in diversen Plattformen für die Auslieferung einer Werbekampagne zur entgeltlichen Nutzung bereitgestellt.

    Beispiel: Artikel und Ratgeber die im Internet zum Thema “Schwangerschaft” veröffentlicht werden, können aufgrund der Textanalyse einem Segment mit dem Themengebiet “Gesundheit”, “Gesundheit > Schwangerschaft” oder “Familie > Eltern”, “Familie > Schwangerschaft” zugeordnet werden, je nachdem welcher Schwerpunkt auf dem jeweiligen Artikel liegt. Im Endeffekt entspricht ein Targeting-Segment bei hyScore einer URL-Liste von Artikeln zu einem oder mehreren spezifizierten Themengebieten.

  2. Es handelt sich bei den in der “XANDR Liste” genannten Segmente um “Custom Segmente”, die als kuratierte Reichweite (URL-Listen) Werbetreibenden zu Verfügung gestellt wurden. Diese Segmente sind aus dem Jahre 2021 und bis auf einige Ausnahmen nicht mehr aktiv.

  3. hyScore “Custom-Segmente” werden auf den angeschlossenen Platformen wie z.B. XANDR Curate klar benannt um sie einer Kampagne oder einem Klient zuordnen zu können. Diese Informationen, oder Segmentbezeichnungen, sind aus organisatorischen Gründen im Klartext benannt.

Unsere Aufgabe sehen wir darin Online-Werbung OHNE Verarbeitung von Geräte- oder Nutzerdaten so minimalinvasiv und so effizient wie möglich auf im Kontext passenden oder gewünschten Qualitätsumfeldern zu platzieren. Dabei unterstützen wir die Unternehmen und Plattformen der Online-Marketingindustrie.

Wir bei hyScore handeln – nach eigenem Kenntnisstand – jederzeit im Rahmen der aktuellsten nationalen und internationalen Datenschutzregeln und -gesetze. Wir geben Ihnen gerne Auskunft über unsere Arbeitsweise und werden zu gegebener Zeit weitere Einblicke in unsere Arbeit veröffentlichen. Transparenz ist uns wichtig!

Bei Fragen kontaktieren Sie uns gerne über die Kontakt-Formulare oder die Email-Adresse contact@hyscore.io.

APPLE’S SAFARI NOW BLOCK THIRD-PARTY COOKIES

APPLE’S SAFARI NOW BLOCK THIRD-PARTY COOKIES

by | News

CONTEXTUAL TARGETING – ONE WAY TO MITIGATE THE EFFECTS OF THIRD-PARTY COOKIE BLOCKING FOR THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY

These days the coronavirus presents us with new challenges. In everyday life, we have to adapt quickly and flexibly to the restrictions caused by COVID-19. The same applies to the economy, which has been hit hard in many areas and is now, let’s face it, almost zero for the time being. The virus changes everything. A large part of the population is forced into domestic isolation, working in the home office or sitting on the couch at home and consuming digital media. Life goes on, even if everything changes.

In these troubled times, this also applies to the online advertising industry. The so-called cookie apocalypse, the “cookiepocalypse”, was expected by the industry in the coming years, when Google announced to eliminate third-party cookies for the Chrome Browser entirely by 2022.

Apple does not hesitate and rushes forward

Apple now on Tuesday released a major update to its Safari browser and the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), the privacy feature that allows the company’s web browser to block cookies and prevent advertisers from analyzing the web habits of a user. Safari now blocks all third-party cookies. That means that, by default, no advertiser or website is able to follow the user around the internet using the commonplace tracking technology.

The blocking in Safari is also intended to ensure that digital fingerprinting via login IDs as a tracking method is no longer possible. In addition, Safari also prevents this:

  • Cross-Site Request Forgery through Third Party Cookies
  • the use of a third party domain to identify users; User IDs could remain there even if the website data for the first party has been deleted

It also simplifies the initial situation for developers. Those who need access to cookies as a third party must use the Storage Access API.

Besides Apple (8.7% market share, source statista.com) other Browsers like the Tor Browser and Brave are already blocking these kinds of cookies. Taken in effect the Google Chrome Browser market share of 68,7%, more than 75% of the internet users can’t be addressed by cookie targeting technologies in the future. Additionally, Firefox and other tiny Browser will surely also implement these restrictions near-time.

The Rise of Contextual Advertising

In the next two years says ExchangeWire, experts expect the advertising industry to take a more expansive role in media curation. While historically this has been led by access to unique inventory and tighter supply path optimization (SPO) strategies, the next evolution will be to utilize ‘environment intelligence’ – applying brand suitability, alignment and quality thresholds to media and data.

Given that every brand has different risk profiles, and that agencies have a unique perspective of intelligence for performance and suitability, we will see both begin to deploy customized curation.

Wrapped around this, given the current regulatory environment, will be a push to ensure this curation is compliant and scalable, in which contextual and consent-friendly signals will play an increasingly larger role. Contextual Targeting is one way to mitigate the effects of third-party cookie blocking for the advertising industry.

All you need for environment intelligence and context-based decisions

We as hyScore can help you with these kinds of challenges, and provide you the right solution to get the best analysis and data for your contextual targeting needs.

You can use our generic solution hyScore|analyze – ready to use – to analyze the content of a single URL in real-time or in a batch. For agencies or a brand, we can provide tailored content and website analysis to identify valuable environments to advertise your products in the right context. We have proof, that clients, that are using our data for ad-campaign delivery have an increase in a campaign KPIs measurement of a factor by 5 to 7 compared to the usual practice of programmatic advertising or direct campaigns without contextual data like ours.

Do you want to increase massively the efficiency of your online advertising campaigns? Why wait? We are happy to consult you. Get now in touch! Stay healthy!

Used a Picture from Ryan McGuire at Pixabay

RELEASE v3.5 – BRANDRISK

RELEASE v3.5 – BRANDRISK

by | Product, Release notes

RELEASE NOTES

  • New: hyScore|brandrisk, helps to identify critical content on journalistic websites, which are not optimally suited as an environment for an advertising campaign. The hyScore|brandrisk indicator identifies reports on catastrophes, accidents, and crimes.

With the latest release, we have introduced a new product hyScore|brandrisk. This product is available on request and can be combined with our basic solution hyScore|analyze.