The co-creator of Facebook's Libra says that once the blockchain-based digital currency is launched users' social media information – and financial data tied to the stablecoin – will not be connected in any way.

Christian Catalini, the head economist at Calibra, the Facebook subsidiary in charge of the launch of Libra and its associated online digital wallet, said that from the beginning the plan for the cash-backed cryptocurrency was to profit from advertising and not the sale of private data.

The slump in optimism around ad tech and martech businesses hasn’t been enough to deter a growing number of advertisers. So far this year, several high-profile advertisers have swooped for companies that sat on the periphery of the ad tech and mar tech sectors. McDonald’s bought personalization platform in March, Walmart snapped up ad tech startup Polymorph Labs to deliver more relevant ads to online shoppers in April, Nike bet on predictive analytics company Celect in August; travel startup OYO Hotels and Homes-bought Danamica, a Copenhagen-based startup that specializes in dynamic pricing through machine learning in September; and the same month MasterCard cut a deal for customer data platform SessionM.

As different as the acquired businesses are to one another, none of them can be described as a core part of an ad tech or martech stack — i.e., a demand-side platform, an ad server, a content marketing platform or search engine optimization tools. None of those types of businesses are easy to manage. Agencies and publishers have tried to make those deals work in the past and struggled to varying degrees. When mobile phone operator Three kicked off a search to acquire a DSP in the first quarter of the year, for example, the procurement process quickly ground to a halt, said one consultant with knowledge of the plan on condition of anonymity. With the latest wave of acquisitions, however, advertisers aren’t trying to shoehorn sprawling ad businesses that weren’t developed with them in mind. Instead, they’re eyeing smaller but arguably more strategic vendors that can turbocharge specific objectives.

First, through our MSR app, my team asked a group of individuals how concerned they are about the general protection of their privacy. Seventy-four percent said they were either somewhat or extremely concerned. No big surprises here. We went a step further by asking them how likely they’d be to share more data if they felt their privacy was protected, 61 percent indicated that they probably or definitely would. 

When we asked our users if they would be willing to share more data if they felt corporations were being more transparent in how they were using the data, we found 77 percent indicating that they probably or definitely would share more. 

Here is where things get interesting. Our team also asked how likely they would be to share more data if they were paid fairly for it. Wait for it . . . 73 percent said they probably or definitely would, with only 7 percent saying they would not (the rest being neutral). So the question becomes, do people care about privacy, do they care about being paid, do they care about transparency or something else entirely?

Google announced plans to buy Fitbit for more than $2 billion, and make no mistake, it’s not for the wristbands. 

Google has been working on products related to health and medicine for years. Last year, it announced an effort to use artificial intelligence to scan electronic health records, or EHRs, to make predictions about what might happen with hospitalized patients. 

Recently, there’s also been a push in the medical field around something called social determinants of health. Those are, for example, how your location, income, education or your commute can have a big impact on your health. 

Speaking with MIT Technology Review, Rohit Prasad, Alexa’s head scientist, has now revealed further details about where Alexa is headed next. The crux of the plan is for the voice assistant to move from passive to proactive interactions. Rather than wait for and respond to requests, Alexa will anticipate what the user might want. The idea is to turn Alexa into an omnipresent companion that actively shapes and orchestrates your life. This will require Alexa to get to know you better than ever before.

Forget GDPR. Publishers could be in for an even rougher time with the looming ePrivacy Regulation, which will clamp down on how cookies are used for ad targeting, with potentially far-reaching impact for the way digital advertising has operated for over 20 years.

Under the current ePrivacy law proposals publishers and any site owners would need informed consent in order to use any form of cookie. (Under GDPR, there are six different legal bases, albeit two that are used mostly in advertising: legitimate interest and consent.)

An earlier draft also specified that consumers would determine their consent settings via the browsers they used, not publishers directly, making browsers the so-called gatekeepers of consent. That latter part has been deleted in the various revisions, yet numerous European publisher trade bodies, including the European Publishers Council, have stressed their concern that it will be reintroduced.

On Oct. 22, European Union member states will vote on whether or not they agree on the current, revised version of the law. Should they do so, that may speed up the law’s ratification earlier than suspected, according to Angela Mills Wade, executive director of the European Publishers Council. “It’s looking, alarmingly, like it is speeding up,” she said.

With libra, the social-media giant promised to change payments world-wide. Instead, major partners bolted after lawmakers and regulators challenged its plans, an early sign of how Washington is putting Facebook on a tight leash.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/14/what-you-do-internet-is-worth-lot-exactly-how-much-nobody-knows/

If your company is still grappling with Europe's data protection laws, then watch out. You'll soon have American data protection laws to deal with, too.

The California Consumer Privacy Act could cost companies in the state a total of $55 billion for initial compliance expenses, according to a new study prepared for the state attorney general's office. The landmark privacy legislation is slated to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2020.

The study, prepared by independent researchers at Berkeley Economic Advising and Research, was made public by the Department of Finance in late September.

The report portrays the $55 billion figure as a rough estimate of initial compliance costs for the 75 percent of California companies that will be required to adhere to the new law.

Faceook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has hinted that the 2020 launch of Libra is not written in stone in a recent interview with Nikkei Asian Review. When asked directly about the 2020 launch he was ambiguous.