Meredith Sells Fortune; Many Groups Want National Privacy Rules

Suffer For Your Crimes

In the wake of revelations that the FBI is investigating non-transparent media rebates, the ANA published a white paper detailing potential crimes agency executives could be charged with for accepting undisclosed payments from vendors, The Wall Street Journal reports. “If two or more employees agreed to hide, divert or conceal earned rebates and cause a false report to be sent to an advertiser, a conspiracy may have taken place,” the white paper reads – with the important caveat that no one has yet been accused of any crimes. The FBI is hoping to talk with marketers who have already identified instances of fraud with their media agencies. More. Also in the WSJ: As clients grapple with data privacy regulations, many are pushing liabilities for potential fines onto their media agencies. Read that.

The Nature Of Things

Syndromic surveillance, the collection of data to monitor disease outbreak, historically relies on patients actively reporting symptoms. “In recent years, syndromic surveillance has also begun to include passively collected information, such as information from social media, which can also lend insight into potential disease outbreaks,” according to a new report published in the science journal Nature by researchers at Google, Harvard and public health departments. By connecting Google search queries and location data, for instance, researchers could identify restaurants a disproportionate number of people visited prior to picking up a foodborne illness. More. The report shows the latent societal good that can be drawn from data sets currently used almost entirely by advertisers and also why ad-fueled companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon are investing so much in life sciences and pharma advertising solutions.

The Apple-Amazon Accords

Amazon signed a deal with Apple to grow direct sales and product selection on the ecommerce platform, CNET reports. Currently, most Apple products on Amazon are sold by third-party resellers and may not meet pricing or customer standards that Apple would enforce with a direct seller. That will come to an end in January when Amazon starts pulling all unauthorized Apple products. The only Apple product line not included in the deal is the Apple HomePod, which competes directly with the Amazon Echo smart speaker. (Google Home speakers aren’t available, either.) More. And CNN has more on what the deal means for third-party sellers.

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This post was syndicated from Ad Exchanger.