Ratings for the Olympic Games opening ceremony were down 36% compared to 2016, according to preliminary numbers from NBC Universal. From a report: The figures for the Tokyo Games event mark the lowest audience for an Olympics opening ceremony event in over three decades, per Reuters. Roughly $1 billion has been spent on advertising around the Olympics. Ratings are the only real metric marketers can use to justify much of that spend. About 17 million people watched the event on broadcast and streaming, according to NBC. Early broadcast numbers suggest some 10 million people watched the event on linear TV. By comparison, about 26.5 million people and 27.8 million people tuned in to the Olympic opening events in Rio in 2016 and Pyeongchang in 2018, respectively. Some of this is out of NBC's hands. Without fans in the stands, the content may not be as compelling to viewers this year as it has been in the past. Some reviews of the opening ceremony pegged it as downbeat compared to previous ceremonies, others described it as boring.

After years of warning from researchers, journalists, and even governments, someone used highly sensitive location data from a smartphone app to track and publicly harass a specific person. From a report: In this case, Catholic Substack publication The Pillar said it used location data ultimately tied to Grindr to trace the movements of a priest, and then outed him publicly as potentially gay without his consent. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the outing led to his resignation.

The news starkly demonstrates not only the inherent power of location data, but how the chance to wield that power has trickled down from corporations and intelligence agencies to essentially any sort of disgruntled, unscrupulous, or dangerous individual. A growing market of data brokers that collect and sell data from countless apps has made it so that anyone with a bit of cash and effort can figure out which phone in a so-called anonymized dataset belongs to a target, and abuse that information. "Experts have warned for years that data collected by advertising companies from Americans' phones could be used to track them and reveal the most personal details of their lives. Unfortunately, they were right," Senator Ron Wyden told Motherboard in a statement, responding to the incident

AmiMoJo shares a report from VentureBeat: Apple critics such as Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney have complained about Apple's alleged anticompetitive behavior with the App Store. But Consumer Acquisition's Brian Bowman has frequently sounded the alarm on Apple's decision to favor user privacy over targeted ads by changing access to its Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). Based on Consumer Acquisition's analysis of $300 million in paid social ad spending, IDFA has had a devastating impact, Bowman said in an interview with GamesBeat. In a report issued today, Bowman said that iOS advertisers are experiencing a 15% to 20% revenue drop and inflation in unattributed organic traffic.

Starting in April, Apple began releasing iOS 14.5, which prompted users to answer whether they would allow their data to be tracked for advertising purposes. Apple believes this puts privacy front and center. But Consumer Acquisition and many of its game developer advertisers worry it will break personalized advertising. Only 20% of consumers are saying yes to Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt, which means they will enable apps to personalize ads by tracking their personal data. For the traffic Bowman's company evaluated, performance has faded. Across paid social platforms, downstream event optimization and "lookalike audience performance" is also eroding. [...] Bowman believes -- or at least holds out hope -- that Apple will roll back or soften the IDFA changes by Black Friday.

Inside the World Wide Web Consortium, where the world's top engineers battle over the future of your data. From a report: One of the web's geekiest corners, the W3C is a mostly-online community where the people who operate the internet -- website publishers, browser companies, ad tech firms, privacy advocates, academics and others -- come together to hash out how the plumbing of the web works. It's where top developers from companies like Google pitch proposals for new technical standards, the rest of the community fine-tunes them and, if all goes well, the consortium ends up writing the rules that ensure websites are secure and that they work no matter which browser you're using or where you're using it. The W3C's members do it all by consensus in public GitHub forums and open Zoom meetings with meticulously documented meeting minutes, creating a rare archive on the internet of conversations between some of the world's most secretive companies as they collaborate on new rules for the web in plain sight.

But lately, that spirit of collaboration has been under intense strain as the W3C has become a key battleground in the war over web privacy. Over the last year, far from the notice of the average consumer or lawmaker, the people who actually make the web run have converged on this niche community of engineers to wrangle over what privacy really means, how the web can be more private in practice and how much power tech giants should have to unilaterally enact this change. On one side are engineers who build browsers at Apple, Google, Mozilla, Brave and Microsoft. These companies are frequent competitors that have come to embrace web privacy on drastically different timelines. But they've all heard the call of both global regulators and their own users, and are turning to the W3C to develop new privacy-protective standards to replace the tracking techniques businesses have long relied on. On the other side are companies that use cross-site tracking for things like website optimization and advertising, and are fighting for their industry's very survival. That includes small firms like Rosewell's, but also giants of the industry, like Facebook.

One of the new features announced at WWDC 2021 is iCloud Private Relay, a new security feature that lets users hide their real IP address from third-party servers so that they cannot track them across the web. It's called fingerprinting and it is quickly becoming a popular method for advertisers because it allows them to pull together information about your device to pinpoint your identity. As 9to5Mac reports, Apple's new fingerprint-blocking feature has the ad tech industry worried. From the report: As pointed out by a Digiday report, Private Relay comes to join forces with App Tracking Transparency, a feature introduced with iOS 14.5 to prevent apps from tracking users without asking permission. With ATT, Apple relies on developers to update their apps and ask users whether or not they want to be tracked. Private Relay is expected to considerably reduce user tracking at a deeper system level: "And herein lies the rub for ad execs. Apple has told them fingerprinting is off-limits but doesn't seem to be aggressively enforcing this policy. Few execs, however, believe this perceived inaction will last. Eventually, goes the thinking, Apple won't need to enforce a policy like ATT to rid its mobile operating system of fingerprinting -- it will have the technology to block it from ever happening in the first place. The reason: Private Relay."

However, this will probably result in even more companies upset with Apple. Nii Ahene, head of strategy at Tinuiti, warns that Apple needs to be careful to avoid Private Relay being considered "anti-competitive or too dictatorial," as the company has been facing accusations of monopolistic practices. Digiday reports: "'Apple needs to be careful when it uses its market position in a way that could be interpreted as either anti-competitive or too dictatorial,' said Nii Ahene, chief strategy officer at digital agency Tinuiti. 'This is why there's a gradual rollout of Apple's privacy plan. The company communicates what it will do early, starts to have conversations behind the scenes, and then over some time the enforcement of the ATT policy starts to kick in.'" When Apple introduced ATT, companies like Facebook publicly criticized the feature since it directly affects the advertising business, which is responsible for the main income of these companies. Now, it's only a matter of time before more companies speak out against iCloud Private Relay.

A group of privacy-focused tech companies including DuckDuckGo, Vivaldi, and the company that makes Protonmail are calling for a broad ban on targeted, "surveillance-based" advertising. Motherboard reports: "Although we recognize that advertising is an important source of revenue for content creators and publishers online, this does not justify the massive commercial surveillance systems set up in attempts to 'show the right ad to the right people,'" the letter reads. The letter urges lawmakers in the United States and European Union to enact data protection laws that could protect consumers from the "privacy-hostile" practices that many companies turn to for their advertising. It explains that exploiting users' privacy for the sake of personalized ads is not necessary for companies to be profitable.

Many of the signatories, including Proton Technologies and DuckDuckGo, already prioritize data protection in their services. Mojeek, an independent search engine, posted in 2006 about its efforts to avoid using "big brother tactics" and collecting personal user data in order to make money. Many of these companies make money by advertising, but the advertising is "contextual" rather than targeted. For a search engine, this means that an advertiser can buy ads that show up when a user searches a specific term. This is different from targeted advertising, which in this example could potentially take into account a user's search history, their demographic and biographic info, their web browsing history, their geographic location, etc.

The attorneys general of 36 states and Washington, D.C., sued Google "alleging that the company illegally abused its power over developers that distribute apps through the Google Play store on mobile devices," according to Bloomberg. From the report: State attorneys general are targeting the fees Google takes from developers for purchases and subscriptions inside apps. The complaint was filed by 36 states and the District of Columbia in San Francisco federal court Wednesday. The complaint marks a new attack by government officials in the U.S. against the search engine's business practices. The Justice Department and a group of states filed separate complaints over Google's search business last year, while another state coalition sued over Google's digital advertising business. The states are taking on Google even after a federal judge in Washington last week threw out their antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. That case accused Facebook of illegally crushing competition by buying Instagram and WhatsApp because it saw them as threats to its business. The judge said the states waited too long to challenge the acquisitions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: With only 30 minutes of audio, companies can now create a digital clone of your voice and make it say words you never said. Using machine learning, voice AI companies like VocaliD can create synthetic voices from a person's recorded speech -- adopting unique qualities like speaking rhythm, pronunciation of consonants and vowels, and intonation. For tech companies, the ability to generate any sentence with a realistic-sounding human voice is an exciting, cost-saving frontier. But for the voice actors whose recordings form the foundation of text-to-speech (TTS) voices, this technology threatens to disrupt their livelihoods, raising questions about fair compensation and human agency in the age of AI.

At the center of this reckoning is voice actress Bev Standing, who is suing TikTok after alleging the company used her voice for its text-to-speech feature without compensation or consent. This is not the first case like this; voice actress Susan Bennett discovered that audio she recorded for another company was repurposed to be the voice of Siri after Apple launched the feature in 2011. She was paid for the initial recording session but not for being Siri. Rallying behind Standing, voice actors donated to a GoFundMe that has raised nearly $7,000 towards her legal expenses and posted TikTok videos under the #StandingWithBev hashtag warning users about the feature. Standing's supporters say the TikTok lawsuit is not just about Standing's voice -- it's about the future of an entire industry attempting to adapt to new advancements in the field of machine learning.

Standing's case materializes some performers' worst fears about the control this technology gives companies over their voices. Her lawsuit claims TikTok did not pay or notify her to use her likeness for its text-to-speech feature, and that some videos using it voiced "foul and offensive language" causing "irreparable harm" to her reputation. Brands advertising on TikTok also had the text-to-speech voice at their disposal, meaning her voice could be used for explicitly commercial purposes. [...] Laws protecting individuals from unauthorized clones of their voices are also in their infancy. Standing's lawsuit invokes her right of publicity, which grants individuals the right to control commercial uses of their likeness, including their voice. In November 2020, New York became the first state to apply this right to digital replicas after years of advocacy from SAG-AFTRA, a performers' union. "We look to make sure that state rights of publicity are as strong as they can be, that any limitations on people being able to protect their image and voice are very narrowly drawn on first amendment lines," Jeffrey Bennett, a general counsel for SAG-AFTRA, told Motherboard. "We look at this as a potentially great right of publicity case for this voice professional whose voice is being used in a commercial manner without her consent."

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you receive emails flagged as spam or see a warning that a message might be a phishing attempt, it's a sign that your email provider is scanning your emails. The company may do that just to protect you from danger, but in some situations it can delve into your communications for other purposes, as well. Google announced that it would stop scanning Gmail users' email messages for ad targeting in 2017 -- but that doesn't mean it stopped scanning them altogether. Verizon didn't respond to requests for comments about Yahoo and AOL's current practices, but in 2018 the Wall Street Journal reported that both email providers were scanning emails for advertising. And Microsoft scans its Outlook users' emails for malicious content. Here's what major email providers say about why they currently scan users' messages.

Email providers can scan for spam and malicious links and attachments, often looking for patterns. [...] You may see lots of ads in your email inbox, but that doesn't necessarily mean your email provider is using the content of your messages to target you with marketing messages. For instance, like Google, Microsoft says that it refrains from using your email content for ad targeting. But it does target ads to consumers in Outlook, along with MSN, and other websites and apps. The data to do that come from partnering with third-party providers, plus your browsing activity and search history on Bing and Microsoft Edge, as well as information you've given the company, such as your gender, country, and date of birth.

[...] If you're using an email account provided by your employer, an administrator with qualifying credentials can typically access all your incoming and outgoing emails on that account, as well as any documents you create using your work account or that you receive in your work account. This allows companies to review emails as part of internal investigations and access their materials after an employee leaves the company. [...] Law enforcement can request access to emails, though warrants, court orders, or subpoenas may be required. Email providers may reject requests that don't satisfy applicable laws, and may narrow requests that ask for too much information. They may also object to producing information altogether.

"Why didn't Microsoft die?" And what does that mean for other entrenched tech companies today? That's the question being asked by the New York Times' On Tech newsletter: For a decade or so, Microsoft botched so many significant technology trends that the company became a punchline. But Microsoft more than survived its epic mistakes. Today, it is (again) one of the tech world's superstars... Understanding Microsoft's staying power is relevant when considering an important current question: Are today's Big Tech superstars successful and popular because they're the best at what they do, or because they've become so powerful that they can coast on past successes? Ultimately the angst about Big Tech in 2021 — the antitrust lawsuits, the proposed new laws and the shouting — boils down to a debate about whether the hallmark of our digital lives is a dynamism that drives progress, or whether we actually have dynasties. And what I'm asking is, which one was Microsoft?

Let me go back to Microsoft's dark days, which arguably stretched from the mid-2000s to 2014... The company failed to make a popular search engine, tried in vain to compete with Google in digital advertising and had little success selling its own smartphone operating systems or devices. And yet, even in the saddest years at Microsoft, the company made oodles of money. In 2013, the year that Steve Ballmer was semi-pushed to retire as chief executive, the company generated far more profit before taxes and some other costs — more than $27 billion — than Amazon did in 2020... On the healthy side of the ledger, Microsoft did at least one big thing right: cloud computing, which is one of the most important technologies of the past 15 years. That and a culture change were the foundations that morphed Microsoft from winning in spite of its strategy and products to winning because of them.

This is the kind of corporate turnaround that we should want. I'll also say that Microsoft is different from its Big Tech peers in a way that might have made it more resilient. Businesses, not individuals, are Microsoft's customers and technology sold to organizations doesn't necessarily need to be good to win.

And now the discouraging explanation: What if the lesson from Microsoft is that a fading star can leverage its size, savvy marketing and pull with customers to stay successful even if it makes meh products, loses its grip on new technologies and is plagued by flabby bureaucracy? Was Microsoft so big and powerful that it was invincible, at least long enough to come up with its next act? And are today's Facebook or Google comparable to a 2013 Microsoft — so entrenched that they can thrive even if they're not the best?

LG plans to introduce its first consumer Mini LED TVs sometime next month, according to a press release from the South Korean company. Mini LED is a new variant of LCD TV tech that offers better contrast ratios, among other improvements. From a report: The new lineup in the US includes one 4K TV (dubbed the QNED90) and one 8K variant (called the QNED99). Both are available in three sizes: 65 inches, 75 inches, and 86 inches.

Much of the recent advertising and marketing muscle behind Mini LED TVs has come from Samsung, but that's not the only company making them. TCL, Hisense, and others have introduced Mini LED sets as well. LG calls its Mini LED technology "QNED," which is just a marketing term that stands for "Quantum Nanocell Mini LED." As far as we can tell, there's nothing fundamentally different about these TVs that actually calls for a different acronym compared to Mini LEDs from other companies.

As Axios reports, a company called playerWON (kill me), described as "a first-of-its-kind in-game advertising platform" (bring me back then kill me again), has signed deals with companies like EA and Hi-Rez (Smite) to try to bring TV-style commercials to their console games. Kotaku reports: Having tested this tech for over a year, they feel like it's now ready to be implemented, the idea being rather than just beaming videos to them in the middle of a game, players would be able to view an ad then, when servers detected the commercial had been viewed in its entirety, "release rewards to the player." This tech would be licensed out to developers so it could be implemented in the game itself (unlike the ads we already see on consoles, in places like system menu screens), and they're trying to justify it by saying that because young people are "cord-cutters," they're unreachable via traditional, cheaper marketing, and are only being reached by branded content deals (like the sneakers and clothes in NBA 2K, or cup noodles in Final Fantasy).

Testing has been taking place inside Smite for around a year, and the findings are as awful as you're probably expecting: "Data from one of Simulmedia's pilot campaigns with Smite, a F2P multiplayer battle arena game from Tencent's Hi-Rez Studios, shows that players were much more likely (22%) to play a game and spend money within the game (11%), if they watched in-game ads that gave them access to more gaming perks." As a result, playerWON "plans to launch in-game ads in roughly a dozen more games by the year's end."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: SMS is widely regarded as an insecure form of two-factor authentication, and another example of this has just emerged. A carrier looks to be injecting ads into the Google verification code used to sign in to services like Gmail. Action Launcher developer Chris Lacy today tweeted how his Google verification code -- which starts with "G-" -- featured an "SMS AD." The advertisement -- for a VPN -- includes a quick message and short URL. For those that immediately suspect this is just a phishing attempt, the verification code is legitimate and was requested by Lacy to successfully verify a login attempt. Google Messages even flagged the link/message as spam. As such, Googlers responding to the thread suspect this is an occurrence of a carrier appending an ad -- note the extra spaces -- into a real text message. It's very unlikely that Google's security teams would allow advertising into a very crucial part of the login process where end user trust is paramount.

Google issued the following statement to us today: "These are not our ads and we are currently working with the wireless carrier to understand why this happened." Google confirms that the "SMS AD" did not originate from its own advertising network. Meanwhile, it's working with the wireless carrier in question to find out what occurred. Lacy has decided "not to state the carrier for privacy reasons," and Google did not share that information either.

AmiMoJo shares a report from TorrentFreak: Police in Japan have arrested three individuals who uploaded so-called "fast movies" to YouTube. These edits of mainstream movie titles, that use copyrighted content to reveal entire plotlines in around 10 minutes, are said to discourage people from watching the originals, costing the industry hundreds of millions in lost revenue. According to Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), there are channels with hundreds of uploads being viewed tens of millions of times, often with a for-profit motive. This means that they may fall outside traditional "fair use" style exceptions.

Miyagi Prefectural Police Life Safety Division and the Shiogama Police Station arrested three suspects under suspicion of uploading "fast movies" to YouTube without the rightsholders' consent. The arrests were reportedly carried out under the Copyright Act, which was boosted with new amendments on January 1, 2021. "From June to July 2020, the suspects edited 'I Am a Hero' and two other motion pictures owned by Toho Co., Ltd. as well as 'Cold Fish' and one other motion picture owned by Nikkatsu Corporation down to about 10 minutes without the permission of the right holders. Further, the suspects added narration and uploaded the videos to YouTube to earn advertising revenue," CODA explains. All of the channels shared by CODA appear to be operated from Japan but there is no shortage of YouTube channels operated from the US too.

Google is announcing today that it is delaying its plans to phase out third-party cookies in the Chrome browser until 2023, a year or so later than originally planned. From a report: Other browsers like Safari and Firefox have already implemented some blocking against third-party tracking cookies, but Chrome is the most-used desktop browser, and so its shift will be more consequential for the ad industry. That's why the term "cookiepocalypse" has taken hold. In the blog post announcing the delay, Google says that decision to phase out cookies over a "three month period" in mid-2023 is "subject to our engagement with the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)." In other words, it is pinning part of the delay on its need to work more closely with regulators to come up with new technologies to replace third-party cookies for use in advertising. Few will shed tears for Google, but it has found itself in a very difficult place as the sole company that dominates multiple industries: search, ads, and browsers.

Mark Zuckerberg's ongoing quest to turn every Facebook property into ad-riddled real estate hit a snag this week when the only virtual reality game that publicly offered to onboard Oculus's VR ads (rightfully) backed down. Gizmodo reports: Originally, Facebook set out to test its first iteration of VR ads in Blaston, a $10 multiplayer title for the Oculus Quest that was created by the prolific VR games publisher Resolution Games. The idea of being pummeled with VR ads in a game is bad enough, but the fact that players were going to be pummeled in a game they already paid for was enough to set some players over the edge. Pretty much immediately after Facebook announced its plans to blast Blaston's users with ads, the game's page on the Oculus store was pummeled with one-star reviews.

Less than a week after these reviews started pouring in, Blaston backed down. "After listening to player feedback, we realize that Blaston isn't the best fit for this type of advertising test. Therefore, we no longer plan to implement the test," the company wrote in a Twitter thread posted Monday afternoon. About three hours later, the company added that it did have plans to roll out a "temporary test" of Oculus'sVR ads in another one of its games -- a free-to-download fishing title called Bait!.

India's antitrust watchdog has ordered an investigation into allegations that Google has abused the dominant position of Android in the country's smart TV market. From a report: The news comes hours after the European Union opened a formal antitrust investigation into allegations that Google abuses its leading role in the advertising-technology sector. In its initial review, the Competition Commission of India, which began looking into these allegations last year, said Google had breached certain anti-competitive laws.

Google was in the EU antitrust spotlight again on Tuesday as regulators opened an investigation into whether its digital advertising business gives the Alphabet unit an unfair advantage over rivals and advertisers. From a report: The European Union competition enforcer's move marks a new front against Google and follows more than 8 billion euros ($9.5 billion) in fines over the past decade for blocking rivals in online shopping, Android smartphones and online advertising. The European Commission said it would investigate whether Google distorts competition by restricting third party access to user data for advertising purposes on websites and apps, while reserving such data for its own use. "We are concerned that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete in the so-called ad tech stack," European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. Google generated $147 billion in revenue from online ads last year, more than any other company in the world, with ads including search, YouTube and Gmail accounting for the bulk of its overall sales and profits.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Apple is under investigation by the German competition watchdog. The Federal Cartel Office (FCO) said the initial investigation will look at whether the company is of "paramount significance across markets." Apple said it looked forward to "having an open dialogue" with the FCO about any of its concerns. In a statement, Andreas Mundt, President of the FCO, said it would examine whether with iOS Apple had created "a digital ecosystem around its iPhone that extends across several markets." He added that a focus of the investigation would be the App Store, "as it enables Apple in many ways to influence the business activities of third parties."

Depending on the outcome of its investigation, the FCO said it would look in more detail at specific practices of Apple, in a possible further proceeding. The FCO said it had received various complaints alleging anti-competitive practices, which a further probe could consider. The watchdog noted that App developers had criticized "the mandatory use of Apple's own in-app purchase system and the 30% commission rate associated with this." It had also received a complaint from the advertising and media industry about restrictions on user tracking in iOS 14.5, the watchdog said. The FCO said it would establish contact, where necessary, with the European Commission, which is currently investigating how App Store policies affect music streaming. In response, Apple said the "iOS app economy" supported more than 250,000 jobs in Germany. It added that the App Store had given "German developers of all sizes the same opportunity to share their passion and creativity with users around the world, while creating a secure and trusted place for customers to download the apps they love with the privacy protections they expect."

For many professionals, Hawaii seems a dream spot for remote work. But pulling off remote work in the Aloha state takes more than a plane ticket and a laptop. From a report: The pandemic devastated the state's economy. According to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, visitor arrivals fell 97.6% between August 2019 and August the following year. Employment in the state's leisure and hospitality sector, which accounts for nearly one in five jobs, fell 53% between February and August 2020, according to the Pew Center. Thanks in part to state initiatives -- including pre-arrival coronavirus testing for visitors and marketing campaigns wooing remote workers -- tourism is on the rebound. In April, visitors reached nearly 500,000, compared with roughly 4,500 in April 2020. One program, called Movers and Shakas (named after the friendly Y-shaped hand gesture with extended thumb and pinkie that means "hang loose"), was launched in December with local business leaders. It offers free airfare to remote workers who commit to staying at least a month and participate in volunteer activities. The program's 50 spots attracted 90,000 applications. Applications for the second round will open this month.

As it is elsewhere, reliable Wi-Fi is the litmus test for many. Some areas of the Hawaiian islands, especially rural regions, lack robust broadband or cellular infrastructure. Tomasz Janczuk, a 45-year-old based in the Seattle area who owns and operates a software-development firm, chose the three Big Island hotels that he and his family lived in for a month based on Wi-Fi strength. During an off-road excursion, Mr. Janczuk got a call from an employee about a service outage at his company. He pulled over and had to climb on top of his Jeep for sufficient reception to help troubleshoot the problem. "If there's no Wi-Fi, you have to fall back on cellphones, and that is quite spotty out there," said Mr. Janczuk, who also carried a hot spot. Some workers find that Hawaii's spectacular surroundings -- which drew them in the first place -- can be a distraction. Jasmyn Franks, a social-media strategist for an advertising agency in Kansas City, Mo., began working in mid-May from the palm-tree-filled backyard of her aunt's house in Mililani, a mountainous city on Oahu. Ms. Franks, 30, said initially, the first five to 10 minutes of every conference call were taken up with colleagues admiring her background. "So, there was a point where I was just like, 'OK, let's just take this to the corner or something where it kind of looks like I'm at the house.'"