Study Shows Privacy Policies on Different Tech Platforms Give a Hard Time to Advertisers to Manage their Ads

According to a new study from the University of Notre Dam, tech companies that remove their user data after some time are a big threat to advertisers. One of the examples of this is Google who started removing their user data if their account was inactive for 18 months. This was a move to preserve user data and privacy but this type of practices can limit ad variety. The study looked at how the designs to protect users’ privacy can have negative effects on the advertising industry.

The study focused on Multiple-Purpose Ads (MPAs) where different ads are present within the same space. When companies protect their user data, it results in fewer user engagements on ads and the click through rate of ads also reduces. Due to this, the ad varieties also decline and users cannot find relevant ads in MPAs. It is because the time ad companies get to target consumer data becomes shorter. When the companies look for user data in a short time, they cannot find many specific categories to target the users with relevant advertisements.

For instance, if a user has searched for men’s shoes, hiking and basketball within 14 days, advertisers won’t know which types of ads to show. If they show the ads in the same categories, the consumers will lose interest. If they get the exposure of different ads, there is a chance that it will strike consumer interest. The author of the study said that these kinds of things are important to consider if advertisers want to balance consumer privacy and effective advertising strategies.

The study looked at two additional policies which are related to ad variety. The first one was the economic impact of ad policies and how advertisers can incorporate clicks and bids according to consumer interest. The next one was how researchers can modify the reservation price in ad auctions. By making use of both factors, advertisers can make their ads effective and increase their revenue on different platforms. This research shows how advertisers should maintain a harmony between user privacy and ad effectiveness.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Meta Under Fire After Australian Government Questions Company About Scraping Users’ Data For AI Training

Meta’s Privacy Director is under fire after a new inquiry by the Australian Government spoke about its data collection practices in the country.

Surprisingly, it was found that no Meta user was given the option to opt out of data-collecting practices. Now, the tech giant is asked why users’ data was scrapped to train its AI models.

As per reports from ABC News, Melinda Claybaugh denied all the claims at the start but after being pressurized to give more answers, she admitted that the company does indeed take part in scrapping all images and texts from social media posts that go as far back as the year 2007.

The only condition where that may not have taken place is if posts were put on private settings. Furthermore, she did admit how the organization is not offering Australians any option for opting out at the moment, similar to the benefits allocated for those in the EU.

She also confirmed that Meta does not take part in scraping user accounts of those below the 18-year age group. However, she did mention another alarming point on how it collects images and other data if it's posted to their parents’ accounts.

Then came the tricky part where she was asked why Australians don’t get any option for consenting to data collected. To that her response was vague, adding how the EU one comes as a reply to legal regulations. This is likely to be linked to the GDPR.

Meta did notify several users across the EU about how it was collecting their data for the sake of training AI unless they checked the opt-out feature.

While Meta might have agreed to the EU’s framework, she still thinks the legal query linked to interpreting any privacy law related to AI is questionable. Meta also opted to avoid rolling out new multimodal AI models and future variants as it feels unclear about what regulators really want.

A lot of issues are related to the issues that have to do with training AI models and using data from EU users while still being in line with the GDPR.

Despite legal queries related to adopting AI in the EU, the conclusion is that Meta is providing EU users more benefits than those in Australia. The reason is simple, they have no other option. Only if such a law is present in Australia can users benefit from similar functionalities.

Now is that really fair? To brush off users’ privacy rights for a poor justification like that does not seem like Meta is winning votes from policymakers in the country, any time soon.

The government has failed big time in terms of acting on privacy and therefore seems to be more focused on monetizing and exploiting the data collected by users. This includes minors on its Facebook app. What do you think?

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Read next: Data Shows Consumers Have Lost $5.6 Billion in Cryptocurrency in 2023
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Data Shows Consumers Have Lost $5.6 Billion in Cryptocurrency in 2023

According to a new report by the FBI, $5.6 billion in cryptocurrency were lost to criminals in 2023, which is a 45% increase from 2022. It is the first time that the FBI has shared a report about cryptocurrency. The FBI received more than 69,000 complaints about cryptocurrency fraud last year, and this makes only 10% of total financial fraud complaints to the FBI.

In a call with a journalist, the FBI said that the reason why complaints about crypto fraud have increased a lot is because many people are no longer hesitant to report crypto crimes. The other reason is that many people believe that they can become rich by investing in crypto, including criminals. So other types or crimes, like ransomware and hacking are also related to cryptocurrency somehow. According to the report, most criminals stole cryptocurrency through investment fraud, with $3.96 billion lost last year. There were approximately 5200 reports in each age range (30-39 and 40-49) which reported investment frauds in cryptocurrency.

Most criminals do investment frauds by fake apps or sites which look real, and lure customers to invest in crypto. Slowly, they look into users’ funds and then steal the money from them. Another crypto fraud quite common nowadays is pig butchering in which criminals strike a romantic relationship with a victim and then ask them to invest in crypto after they gain their trust. Pig Butchering scam is often done by sending the victim a message, email or direct message on social media and then they slowly try to befriend them. It takes many weeks and months to befriend a person or do any romantic advances at them, but once the victim becomes comfortable, they bring out the talk of investing in crypto.

The report also noted that victims can get scammed more than once. If they have lost their crypto money to scammers, victims immediately look for some platforms that can help them recover their funds. So the fraudulent crypto businesses give the surety to victims that they will be able to help them recover their cryptocurrency but take more from them. The FBI asks all the cryptocurrency traders to always look out for scammers and only do an investment if they completely trust the person or have met them in person.

Read next:

• Is Apple Delaying the Obsolescence of iPhones to Prevent Losing Customers to Android Rivals?

• Generative AI Helps Computer Science Students Excel in Software Development

• Tech Jobs Seen as Best for Family Balance, Survey Finds 17% Prefer Their Flexibility
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Is Apple Delaying the Obsolescence of iPhones to Prevent Losing Customers to Android Rivals?

Whenever there's a new iPhone launch, Apple drops the support of some of its old iPhones. This week Apple has launched its iOS 18 system and iPhone 16 models. But this year, Apple is not fully letting go of its old iPhone models. One of the iPhone models Apple is continuing to support is iPhone XR. This model was launched in September 2018, which was six years ago. Apple has announced that it is going to support its 6 years old model for another year.

Apple is known for making its old models obsolete by taking away their software support on them every year. Last year, Apple made three iPhone models obsolete and there were more iPhone models made obsolete the year before. This was advantageous to Apple as users would then opt for newer iPhone models by paying about $500 more. There's a term for it known as “upgrade cycle” and it is a favorite of many investors.

This year, however, Apple has decided that it's not going to make any older iPhone models obsolete and will shift their operating system from iOS 17 to iOS 18. This makes about 28 iPhone models that Apple is supporting. Why is Apple doing this if it can earn revenue by making the models obsolete? The answer is that Apple strongly takes its customers seriously. If it makes iPhones obsolete every year, it isn't going to do good to their customers.

Apple is also working on artificial intelligence on its newer models but it won't be available till 2025. On the other hand, Samsung and Google are already selling smartphones with AI features in the market. If Apple stops its support on older iPhone models, their customers can start looking for smartphones from other companies. Losing even a small number of customers to Android would not be good for Apple. Apple has been gaining customers for some years now and it doesn't want to do anything that can make the company lose customers.

There are many Android handsets available in the market and Android companies are promising their customers that they will provide them with the latest device support. Samsung has said that it will provide support to its galaxy models for seven years now and that's Apple's plan too. Apple is just waiting for its Apple Intelligence to come to the market as it will be the biggest upgrade cycle in Apple's history.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Generative AI Helps Computer Science Students Excel in Software Development

A study by professors from Dongyang Mirae University in South Korea finds that AI can help students learn computer science courses. Even though there are some worries that generative AI is affecting the learning abilities of the students, this study finds that generative AI is quite helpful in enhancing the learning capabilities of students. To proceed with their research, the researchers of the university gathered 36 students of computer science and did a software development competition among them. The students were asked to take help from ChatGPT and the competition ran for 4 weeks.

In the first round of competition, all 36 students were evaluated on the basis of their innovation, code quality and all the basics of software development. Then, the top 15 students with the best scores were sent to the second round and then a winner was selected among them. The researchers found that students who used ChatGPT showed more high quality results. All in all, their projects had better ideation, development and completion rate. There was also a great difference in gen AI experience among students from the first round and students from second round.

The researchers said that 78% of the students agreed that generative AI helps them a lot in their work. A number of students said that ChatGPT has increased their skill while some students also said that ChatGPT has contributed a lot in their career developments. Ever since the release of generative AI, people have said all kinds of things about it. Some people also say that generative AI has given an easy environment for people to cheat. It is somewhat true but generative AI has also given people room to improve and learn new things.

Right now, many software developers are using ChatGPT to improve their coding. Some are also taking help from generative AI to find issues in their coding while some are learning new coding techniques from it. Generative AI can play an important role in education if educators and students use it for the right purposes.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Google Defends Its Dominance In The Ad Market With Misleading Claims About ‘Hundreds Of Competitors’

Google is fighting back the decision of the DOJ after its antitrust trial ended with a verdict that wasn’t in favor of the tech giant. The company says those responsible for giving the verdict had very little knowledge about how the advertising market runs.

The company further shed light on how there are many alternatives present for both publishers and advertisers. But experts feel otherwise, claiming these statements are misleading.

Several different tech providers are trying to compete in the ad industry, but it’s Google that dominates the pivotal areas of the market. This includes ad exchanges, demanding platforms, and advertising networks.

While Google does have some competitors on the basic level, the gap between market share and its second biggest competitor Microsoft is huge and it’s been like this for years.

Company	Alphabet	Microsoft	Baidu	Yandex
2020 Ad Revenue (Billion USD)	146.92	6.41	10.56	1.37
2021 Ad Revenue (Billion USD)	209.49	6.94	12.51	1.79
2022 Ad Revenue (Billion USD)	224.47	11.59	10.83	2.49
2023 Ad Revenue (Billion USD)	237.86	12.21	11.51	3.71

Both advertisers and publishers don’t really have a lot of choices at the end of it all. As per research, the majority of digital ad spending goes through Google’s ad stack which limits choices.

Meanwhile, we saw in a recently held conference how companies would need 17 years for data collection which the search engine giant can do in a year or so. Did we mention how these ad purchases are not cheap?

So many reports showed how the costs for ads are on the rise. Since Google’s search CPCs were up 9%, it pushed ad spending to 17%. As a result, brands needed to diversify.

Next, Google Search CPC was up 13% while retail saw a 5-year 50% rise in CPC. Furthermore, search ad pricing increases and that means conversion rates are on the decline end of things again white CPCs increased in more than 60 sectors.

Google continued to argue that so many other advertising tech giants are present that compete in the same space. Moreover, ad buyers mix tools with other competitors and hence don’t get to keep all the fees. Also, the fee is lower than what the average figure in the industry happens to be. So many small firms would get hurt along the way by such cases, it mentioned.

Critics pointed out how Google constantly beats the drum about its positive image and flawless practices.

Google hints that purchasing online ads is simple and low in cost but the reality is far from it. Google ads are not so straightforward anymore.

Google is not talking about how much of a dominant name it is in the world of search. Meanwhile, that advantage has 80% of the search intent data that puts every other ad tool from Google in the driving seat, even when big competitors are competing. If they leverage all the search intent on their products, they’ll always be winning.

However, some experts are on Google’s side. They feel that the issue lies with the definition of the market. The market today needs to be linked to digital ads and not non-product ads that feature only texts.

There was also agreement that you cannot assess Google’s fee as it’s not a simple task by any means. To compare that with others is absurd because a lot has to be considered and not everything is transparent.

Last but not least, SMBs will end up losing if the DOJ wins SMBs. it’s not an easy process and the DOJ winning the case will make the system healthy but we can expect many challenges and pain along the way.

In the long run, many do hope to attain a healthy and better ecosystem but in the short run, it’s going to be painful for advertisers and very brutal in the end.

Google has worked long and hard to display itself as a true market leader having free internet that’s open sourced. Now the issue is that the DOJ argued ad tech is doing the opposite. It restricts choices, raises costs, and puts publishers on the extreme end of the spectrum.

So what can we expect next? Well, this case will test all the claims that Google makes against the Department of Justice which has a lot of evidence about the company’s anticompetitive behavior as well as practices.

Read next: EU’s Highest Court Confirms Record $2.7 Billion Fine Against Google For Anti-Competitive Shopping Services
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

EU’s Highest Court Confirms Record $2.7 Billion Fine Against Google For Anti-Competitive Shopping Services

Google is not going to be happy with this new decision delivered by the highest court in the European Union. This is related to its anti-competitive behavior linked to Shopping Services.

The company has been fined a record-breaking $2.7 billion which was first imposed several years ago and is now upheld by the Court of Justice today. This is where the tech giant was called out for favoring its price comparisons in its search engine results. As a result, it put other competitors at a serious disadvantage.

Google issued an appeal against the case during the time to help stop other similar fines from making their way. This includes changes to how its vertical search feature works like maps, travel, and other domains.

The court also ruled that the behavior of Google was not satisfactory, declaring it discrimination against the Android maker. It also issued statements about it falling outside the fair competitive domain.

We’ve seen the company already make some big changes to better comply with the ruling from 2017 but seeing this new verdict might lead to more changes in how the firm shares information online. This would include transparency of the algorithm and also how advertisers strategize and spend budgets.

Google issued its own statement on the matter and how it felt so disappointed over the endeavor. They called the decision very unfair and linked to a small array of facts. The search engine giant also spoke about how they rolled out changes to better comply with the 2017 verdict and now this was disappointing.

Whatever the case is, the has spoken and confirmed that Google cannot function unfairly in the EU and deny consumers access to full online data.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World