Silverpop Blog

The Security of Customer Data has Become the Defining Issue for our Industry

By Bill Nussey (@bnussey), on April 3rd, 2011

Over the last two weeks a number of email service providers and their customers have announced that their systems were compromised and data was stolen. The security of customer data has quickly risen to become the most important issue facing our industry.

Back in 2010, Silverpop and a small number of our clients faced similar challenges [...]

Can Behavioral Advertising Survive?

By Bill Nussey (@bnussey), on August 6th, 2010

When online banner ad response rates went into a free-fall years ago, some brilliant entrepreneurs responded by creating a new kind of ad network that used third-party cookies to track users. By watching and analyzing Web behavior across a range of sites, these networks could build an anonymous but surprisingly insightful view into the habits [...]

The Consumer Web Privacy Bill

By Bill Nussey (@bnussey), on June 2nd, 2010

As most of you know, a game-changing proposed bill is being circulated up on Capitol Hill that would regulate the online collection, use and disclosure of consumer information for targeted advertising and marketing. If passed, it could rewrite the rules of the Internet.

Just to be clear, the bill does not appear to be aimed at businesses like Silverpop’s. [...]

Life without the Third-Party Cookie

By Bill Nussey (@bnussey), on January 15th, 2010

Earlier this week, I attended the Gridley conference—an annual event put on by investment bank Gridley & Company for the investment community. The audience consisted of company execs and venture capitalists focused on information services industries such as Internet, marketing, financial technology, and data and outsourcing services. Not surprisingly, there was a lot of excitement [...]

That Whole Maine Thing

By Bill Nussey (@bnussey), on September 1st, 2009

If you’ve heard rumblings emanating from Maine and been caught by surprise, you’re not alone. Nobody noticed when a new privacy law intended to protect teens from predatory marketers sailed through that state’s legislature amidst a flurry of bills earlier this year. But now various groups and trade associations say the privacy law goes too [...]

Emailers Not Targeted in New FTC Report on Behavioral Advertising

By Bill Nussey (@bnussey), on February 21st, 2009

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission just came out with an important new report outlining its recommendations on how advertisers who use behavioral targeting—the tracking of individual consumers’ online activities in order to deliver targeted advertising tailored to each person’s interests—should regulate their own activities so that the government doesn’t step in and do it for [...]

The Paradox of Privacy

By Bill Nussey (@bnussey), on July 3rd, 2008

I don’t usually dabble in psychology in my blog, but a recent post in the New York Times blog “Bits” really caught my attention.

According to some recent research about people’s attitudes toward safeguarding their personal information, a person’s willingness to share information varies entirely by the context in which it’s asked. Paradoxically, the more “official” [...]

Advertising Privacy Concerns Are Rising Again in New York

By Bill Nussey (@bnussey), on March 24th, 2008

It seems that once or twice a year, a politician somewhere decides that Internet users are being exploited when their personal information is passed around between advertisers without their knowledge or permission. Now, proposed legislation in New York would make it a crime for certain Web companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising [...]