audience measurement perfecting/polishing/friendly amendments

Following up on today's call, there were people who asked for the opportunity to submit perfecting/polishing/tweaking/friendly amendments to the proposal circulated by Kathy Joe.

Most of the text has been before the group for several months.  As discussed on the call, Kathy Joe and her group have met with everyone who has asked (to the best of my knowledge), and sought to address their concerns.

For this, please for now circulate emails to the public list.  Use message: "Proposed Amendment for Audience Measurement."

Proposed language is due by 5:00 p.m. pacific on this Friday, July 19.  We expect to issue a call for objections, with comments due some time after Wednesday, July 24.

For your convenience, I am re-copying the language circulated by Kathy Joe.  Some of the W3C staff are out of range at the moment, so the change proposal on the web site has not been updated yet.

Thank you,

Peter

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Issue 25: Aggregated data collection and use for audience measurement research 4 July 2013


Normative:

Information may be collected, retained and used by a third party for audience measurement research

where the information is used to calibrate, validate or calculate through data collected from opted-in

panels, which in part contains information collected across sites and over time from user agents.

A third party eligible for an audience measurement research permitted use MUST adhere to the

following restrictions. The data collected by the third party:

• Must be pseudonymized before statistical analysis begins, such that unique key-coded data are

used to distinguish one individual from another without identifying them, and

• Must not be shared with any other party unless the data are de-identified prior to sharing, and

• Must be deleted or de-identified as early as possible after the purpose of collection is met and in

no case shall such retention, prior to de-identification, exceed 53 weeks and

• Must not be used for any other independent purpose including changing an individual’s user

experience or building a profile for ad targeting purposes.

• In addition, the third party must be subject to an independent certification process under the

oversight of a generally-accepted market research industry organization that maintains a web

platform providing user information about audience measurement research. This web platform lists

the parties eligible to collect information under DNT standards and the audience measurement

research permitted use and it provides users with an opportunity to exclude their data contribution.


Non-normative: collection and use for audience measurement research

Audience measurement research creates statistical measures of the reach in relation to the total

online population, and frequency of exposure of the content to the online audience, including paid

components of web pages.

Audience measurement research for DNT purposes originates with opt-in panel output that is

calibrated by counting actual hits on tagged content on websites. The panel output is re-adjusted

using data collected from a broader online audience in order to ensure data produced from the panel

accurately represents the whole online audience.

This online data is collected on a first party and third party basis. This collection tracks the content

accessed by a device rather than involving the collection of a user’s browser history. Audience

measurement is centered around specific content, not around a user.

The collected data is retained for a given period for purposes of sample quality control, and

auditing. During this retention period contractual measures must be in place to limit access to, and

protect the data, as well as restrict the data from other uses. This retention period is set by auditing

bodies, after which the data must be de-identified.

The purposes of audience measurement research must be limited to:

· Facilitating online media valuation, planning and buying via accurate and reliable audience

measurement.

· Optimizing content and placement on an individual site.

The term “audience measurement research” does not include sales, promotional, or marketing

activities directed at a specific computer or device. Audience measurement data must be reported as

aggregated information such that no recipient is able to build commercial profiles about particular

individuals or devices.


Prof. Peter P. Swire
C. William O'Neill Professor of Law
Ohio State University
240.994.4142
www.peterswire.net

Beginning August 2013:
Nancy J. and Lawrence P. Huang Professor
Law and Ethics Program
Scheller College of Business
Georgia Institute of Technology