Ho-hum, another day, another chart showing Android's growing dominance. Nielsen says Android was the most popular OS on smartphones in the first half of the year and Apple and RIM were in a "statistical dead heat for second place." This data only includes one month when the iPhone 4 was on the market. Perhaps the iPhone 4 will goose sales. This is also U.S. only, which means the iPhone isn't available to ~60% of the market. While this looks good for Android, if Apple does strike a deal with Verizon and T-Mobile, it could be a completely different story.

It's the first trial of what some hope will become the online ad industry's long-promised self-policing system designed to stave off the growing forces for regulation in Washington, as well as give consumers more control over how they are targeted by advertisers.

The system, deployed by a start-up called Better Advertising, will place an icon in the upper right-hand corner of the ads that looks like a cross between an eye and power button called the "power eye." Consumers who mouse over the icon will get a view of all the data that was used to target the ad, as well as the option to opt-out of future targeting by those companies. The system is one of several competing to get the endorsement of a coalition of organizations representing the ad industry, as well as the Council of Better Business Bureaus, which has been tasked by the industry and regulators to come up with a system of disclosure for consumers. Several online ad vendors also have proposals before the organization, but executives close to the process say Better Advertising, founded by former About.com chief Scott Meyer, is close to winning the deal. Better Advertising's system has been endorsed by units of all the major ad holding companies, WPP, Havas, Publicis Groupe, Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group of Cos. Those rolling out the system this week include Interpublic's audience-buying platform Cadreon, Publicis' Vivaki and WPP's MEC Interaction. "Ultimately the data belongs to the consumer -- we are being allowed to use it," said John Montgomery, chief operating officer of Group M Interaction, the digital-buying unit of ad giant WPP. "If the consumer is uncomfortable, then they will not allow it to be used that way."

Opting out
Many of the largest web publishers such as Yahoo and Google, data providers like BlueKai, and ad networks like Audience Science currently allow consumers to opt out of targeting. But those require consumers to continually opt out on many sites and the industry has been seeking a solution to allow consumers to opt out of the ad itself, wherever they happen to encounter it on the web. "This is the first to provide consumer notice and a compliance service that is independent and works across platform," Mr. Meyer said. Part of that is a subtle PR effort for online advertisers: the term "behavioral targeting," in use since late last decade, is getting a makeover as the softer, gentler "interest-based" advertising, terminology they hope will sound less sinister. The system will also provide advertises with a new kind of feedback mechanism from consumers. While today they measure effectiveness of ads by the rate at which people click or interact with them, soon they will also get data on how many people found the ad objectionable enough that they decided to opt out of the targeting behind it. Consumers won't be able to opt out of the ads, mind you, just the targeting. But the opt-out will give marketers a new view into how their ads -- and their brands -- are perceived. The prevailing hypothesis is that greater transparency will lead to greater trust among consumers. But even the most enthusiastic supporters of the project also see risk. "If people start to opt out it makes our targeting less effective and it becomes more challenging to sell to people," said Steve Governale, executive director-digital marketing at AT&T. "But, long-term, transparency can only do us good."

Behavioral data
Mr. Governale said the icon would apply to AT&T's ads selling products such as mobile phones, where third-party behavioral data is used. AT&T's brand ads -- "more bars in more places," for example -- don't generally use behavioral data. The self-regulatory system will only apply to ads that use data from third parties; a brand ad aimed generally at readers of a website won't apply, nor will it apply to publishers using their own data. About 12% to 15% of online-display dollars go to ads that employ third-party targeting data, according to Kantar Media, and a recent Ponemon Institute survey of 90 marketers said they're spending 75% less than they would on targeted ads due to privacy concerns. Execs say the brands themselves have been the silent hand pushing the issue, part out of fear of regulation and in part to forge more authentic connections with consumers. "It's definitely something that will differentiate us from the folks not doing it," said Brendan Moorcroft, CEO of Cadreon. Backed into a corner, the online ad industry doesn't have much of a choice. A privacy bill from Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) is likely to be introduced later this year, and the Federal Trade Commission has made it plain that the online ad business has a narrow window to show it can pull this off.  

Graffiti Analysis is an extensive ongoing study into the motion of graffiti. Custom software designed for graffiti writers creates visualizations of the often unseen motion involved in the creation of a tag. Motion data is recorded, analyzed and archived. Influential graffiti artists such as SEEN, TWIST, AMAZE, KETONE, JONONE and KATSU motion captured their tags already using the Graffiti Analysis software. Graffiti Analysis 2.0 is an open source project that is available online for free in OSX, Windows and Linux. The brains behind the project is technology artist Evan Roth. I’m amazed!

Today, IBM is introducing a new social media monitoring tool, one that it says will measure consumer sentiment from data gathered on Twitter, blogs and other web services and networks.

The software, called the SPSS Modeler data mining and text analytics workbench, will use natural language processing (NLP) to analyze everything from product names and industry jargon to slang and emoticons, and it’s already being used by some pretty big businesses.

Navy Federal Credit Union, Rosetta Stone and Money Mailer are already using IBM’s software to understand how consumers feel about their brands, products and competitors. This software can also be put to good use by political groups, marketing and advertising agencies, research firms and many other organizations and businesses.

Data from the social web can also be merged with internal data to create even more accurate intelligence about consumers, IBM says. “Organizations can combine all of their structured data with textual information from documents, emails, call center notes and social media sources.”

Companies already using IBM’s application have used this data to improve CRM and make better-informed choices about products and marketing.

Rosetta Stone’s VP of Strategic Research and Analysis Nino Ninov said, “Predictive analytics allows us to leverage unsolicited and unbiased customer feedback and strategically improve our business. We now can also monitor competitor and industry websites[...] to maintain a current view and better understand how the public perceives our competition.”

SPSS Modeler data mining and text analytics workbench is a high-grade product and might be both too sophisticated and too expensive for the average small business. The interface itself is hardly what we’d call intuitive or user-friendly. But for larger enterprises that need robust technologies and can’t risk entrusting data collection to a startup web app, IBM’s software might very well provide the features they need.