Privacy Gourmet

Welcome

As AOL's Chief Privacy Officer and SVP for Consumer Advocacy, I am responsible for ensuring that AOL's users can trust the company with their information and for educating employees about best practices for advertising, content, and product development.  My team and I are passionate about privacy.  We believe that online advertising will only succeed in providing a good experience for consumers and serve the needs of advertisers if companies are trustworthy in the way they use consumer data.  And to be trustworthy – we need to be open and transparent.  In fact, you might say that we think that transparency is the essential ingredient that has to be added!

Thanks for your interest!

Jules Polonetsky

Click here to watch an animation about behavioral targeting in less than a minute (U.K. version)

Click here to watch an animation about behavioral targeting in less than a minute (U.S. version)

Communicating about privacy and data use to web surfers in the United Kingdom

In June, AOL conducted a survey of a thousand internet users in the United Kingdom to better understand the best way to communicate about privacy and explain online data use.

Here are the questions and results:

Q1. Before today, how familiar were you about behavioral advertising?

	UK
Very familiar	13%
Somewhat familiar	39%
Not too familiar	29%
Not at all familiar	19%

Base 1001

Q2. Do you typically read privacy policies online to understand what information a website collects and how they plan to use that data?

	UK
Yes	38%
No	61%

Base 1001

                              

Q3. Typically, how useful is the information?

	UK
Very useful	15%
Somewhat useful	58%
Not too useful	24%
Not at all useful	3%

Base 379

Q4. Typically, how easy is the information to understand?

	UK
Very easy	9%
Somewhat easy	41%
Not too easy	42%
Not at all easy	8%

Base 379

Q5. Why do you not read privacy policies? (Select all that apply)

Q5. On the occasions you do not read privacy policies, why do you not read them? (Select all that apply)

	UK
Just don’t care	6%
Takes too long	51%
Too much “legalese” or jargon	53%
Interrupts what I am trying to do online	30%
Other	5%

Base 1001

Q6. Assuming you wanted to find information about how a site uses the data they collect for behavioral advertising….

	Very helpful	Somewhat helpful	Not too helpful	Not helpful at all
Video of someone explaining behavioral advertising	25%	39%	23%	13%
An animated story or cartoon explaining behavioral advertising	21%	40%	25%	14%
A paragraph describing behavioral advertising	35%	42%	17%	6%
Diagrams of how behavioral advertising works	33%	44%	17%	7%

Base 1001

Q7. If a site offered information about behavioral advertising, would you stop what you were doing online to learn more about behavioral advertising?

	UK
Yes, but only a brief glance	47%
Yes, I would spend time reviewing the information available	24%
No, I wouldn’t stop what I am doing	30%

Base 1001

Q8. How important is it to you personally to get information on each of the following?

	T2B	B2B
Whether information includes your name or is anonymous	80%	2%
The sensitivity of the data collected	79%	2%
The types of data shared across websites	65%	3%
Being able to opt out of sharing my data across websites	83%	3%
How cookies or other technologies are used	43%	5%
Explaining how behavioral advertising works	33%	6%
Benefits of advertising being tailored	23%	13%
Privacy issues with targeting ads	53%	5%
Security process for the data collected	70%	3%
How long the data about you is stored and used	64%	4%

Base 1001

Q9/Q10. Out of the list below which is the most important/ the second most important piece of information a site can tell you about behavioral advertising?

	UK
Whether information includes your name or is anonymous	59%
The sensitivity of the data collected	37%
The types of data shared across the websites	11%
Being able to opt out of sharing my data across websites	42%
How cookies or other technologies are used	9%
Explaining how behavioral advertising works	3%
Benefits of advertising being tailored	1%
Privacy issues with targeting ads	7%
Security process for the data collected	27%
How long the data about you is stored and used	12%

Base 1001

Q11. What other information should a site tell you about behavioral advertising? (open ended)

Q12. If you were looking for more information about behavioral advertising, which one would you most likely click on for information? (Select one)

	UK
A banner ad	15%
Link to a privacy policy	19%
Help link	18%
Link to a government website	18%
Link to industry website	4%
Don’t know/ Not sure	25%

Base 1001

Q13.  If you saw one of the messages below on a banner ad, how likely are you to click to find out more information about behavioral advertising? 

	Very likely	Somewhat likely	Not too likely	Not Likely at all
Banner ad that says “Privacy”	13%	55%	23%	9%
Banner ad referring to how advertising works at this site	25%	40%	36%	5%
Banner ad saying “Important Privacy Notice”	57%	29%	8%	7%

      Base 152

Defining Day-Parting

I promised awhile ago that we would do some posts describing the different types of data used for targeting and we will indeed be doing so.  Here is a note from Christy Harris, privacy lead on my team for Platform A, describing one of the options advertisers have known as “Day-Parting”.

Media has historically divided the day into sections to better target programming - a practice referred to as "day-parting." Advertisers on TV and Radio often air their commercials during the times of day when their “target” audience will be listening and watching. A restaurant chain might promote its coffee in the morning to reach commuters. An appliance company may seek to reach homemakers watching soap operas in the afternoon. The same can be done online, with an additional twist. Visitors to a Web site may be sitting at computers in different time zones around the world, so running a particular advertisement designed to reach early morning commuters checking the weather will be spot on for folks in one time zone, but inappropriate elsewhere. Since a user’s browser will display the time set on the clock on the user’s computer, an ad server may be able to target its ads to users based on this time. As a result, two users visiting a Web site at the same time may have different ads selected for them based on the time their browser displays to the Web site’s ad server.

Nice Adserving video from Google

Thoughts on Web Privacy

Here's an interview with Kenneth Corbin at InternetNews.com that lays out some of our thinking about privacy.  As I said in the interview, I think the key thing for both consumers and businesses is that there are clear rules in place that so it's obvious to consumers what's happening, and that there are clear rules for businesses about what's appropriate and what's not appropriate. Don't use sensitive profiles. Don't keep data forever. Give people the ability to opt out!

Video: What Are IP Addresses and Why Do They Matter?

We did an earlier post discussing IP Addresses.  For those of you who prefer a video, here's a discussion of IP Address use. Once again, apologies to the very tech-savvy, I have over-simplified this to make it clear to the widest audience.

Here are some useful links about IP addresses:

For a quick look up of your IP Address and demonstration of geo-targeting check out http://whatismyipaddress.com/
Note: Although this tool shows an exact point on a map to illustrate the point, the exact location is actually an approximation. Estimated location information is usually at best available at zip code level.

For information about how an IP address can be used to show the business, university or organization you are coming from, see  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IP_address_blocks