Benton RSS Feed

There’s an increasingly thorny debate on how to monitor advertising aimed at children when they are confronted with so many new forms of marketing online. If even the ad industry can’t agree on the definition of an online ad, who can?

Kids spend more time than ever in front of screens beyond the living room television. Advertisers have responded with sophisticated ad campaigns that can start on the TV and then move to apps, social media sites and online games. And federal regulators are struggling to keep up. So far, the Federal Trade Commission doesn’t regulate advertising to kids on these new platforms, except to ensure that marketing messages aren’t false or misleading. The Federal Communications Commission limits ads on television but doesn’t police the Web either. That worries children’s advocates, who say that the FTC and FCC may make distinctions but that to kids, a screen is a screen is a screen — and everything on it looks like entertainment to them.

US Ambassador Terry Kramer warned that countries like China and Iran are looking to propose troublesome language for a telecommunications treaty that could lead to online censorship and government monitoring of Web traffic.

The countries say those proposals are intended to protect computer networks from malicious spam and crack down on online child pornography, but the methods they suggest to accomplish this via the treaty would allow them to see "what information is flowing on the Internet," including what people are doing and saying on the Web, Kramer said at an event hosted by Johns Hopkins University's Center for Transatlantic Relations. "There are a variety of non-democratic nations that are seeking to put some content restrictions out there, that are saying they want to know how traffic flows," said Kramer, who is heading up the U.S. delegation for the upcoming treaty conference in Dubai this December. He said these cybersecurity proposals initially look innocuous, but upon a second look, they propose to broaden the scope of the treaty so it shifts from regulating telecommunications networks to regulating information online.

Two weeks before a high-stakes trial pitting Google's Motorola Mobility unit against Microsoft, Google made what has become a common request for a technology company fighting for billions of dollars: A public court proceeding, conducted largely in secret.

Google and Microsoft, like rivals embroiled in smartphone patent wars, are eager to keep sensitive business information under wraps - in this case, the royalty deals they cut with other companies on patented technology. Microsoft asked for similar protections in a court filing late. Such royalty rates, though, are the central issue in this trial, which begins November 13 in Seattle. US District Judge James Robart has granted requests to block many pre-trial legal briefs from public view. Though he warned he may get tougher on the issue, the nature of the case raises the possibility that even his final decision might include redacted, or blacked-out, sections. Legal experts are increasingly troubled by the level of secrecy that has become commonplace in intellectual property cases where overburdened judges often pay scant attention to the issue.

President Barack Obama's campaign is still outgunning Mitt Romney's in TV ads, in both volume and in spending, by more than 2 to 1.

From April through Oct. 29, the Obama campaign spent $266 million, while the Romney campaign spent $105.4 million, according to an analysis of Kantar Media/CMAG data by the Wesleyan Media Project. However, Obama's edge in ad volume narrows to fewer than 50,000 when factoring in the ads placed by both candidates' support groups. Team Romney began to close the gap in the third week of October. Between Oct. 22 and 29, pro-Romney ads outnumbered pro-Obama ads in nine of the top 25 media markets, including Tampa, Cincinnati, Columbus, Miami, Toledo, Grand Junction, Co., Dayton, Colorado Springs and Youngstown. Team Obama has the ad advantage in Denver, Las Vegas, Orlando, Cleveland, Washington, D.C., Roanoke, Norfolk, Reno, Milwaukee, Des Moines, Richmond, Davenport, Green Bay, Madison and Cedar Rapids. Romney's support groups are spending more than the Obama campaign. Between Oct. 22 and 29, Obama spent more than $26 million on more than 40,500 ads. Romney and his team of Restore Our Future and American Crossroads matched the Obama campaign in number of ads aired, but those ads, purchased by PACs willing to shell out higher ad rates, spent more than $35 million.