5 ms·

So, let's see, a $950k penalty for illegally tracking "hundreds of millions" of consumers' locations works out to ... ($.0095, $.00095)/consumer. I'll bet InMo

by rosser 10y ago

So, let's see, a $950k penalty for illegally tracking "hundreds of millions" of consumers' locations works out to ... ($.0095, $.00095)/consumer. I'll bet InMobi really feels chastised now! Thanks, FTC; you sure showed them!

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
I guess the question is, how much value did InMobi get per customer from those acts of illegal tracking?
- rosser 10y ago
  Do you honestly think it was on the order of half a cent per, or close enough that this penalty has teeth? Several months ago, Verizon was fined $1.3m for their UIDH "super cookies". That worked out to half a minute of their revenue for 2015 — for a program that had been in place since 2012. These penalties are meaningless. They're press release fodder for the company paying them, to be able to say to people, "Gosh, I guess we were naughty. We're really, really sorry. See how contrite we are? You can totally still trust us!" The lawyer who negotiated that settlement for Vz probably got a bigger bonus than the fine the company paid.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  Does it matter? Penalties rarely line up to the profit made from illegal decisions. That's why we see stuff like financial fraud happening constantly. The cost savings/profits are in the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, the penalties merely in millions.
shostack 10y ago
Well, some quick back of the napkin math shows that at the upper end (999,999,999 users) the fine equates to roughly a $.95 CPM and at the lower end (100,000,000) it equates to a $9.50 CPM. So the question is where their margins fall in line with those numbers. I've never negotiated with InMobi so don't have a sense of their rates, but doing more than a $1 CPM seems entirely doable. $9.5 on mobile is a bit tougher, but depending on how they leveraged that data, still possible (particularly if they are brokering that data with any cookie onboarding services in addition to just serving an ad). My coffee is still kicking in and I'm in a full on food coma, so someone please feel free to chime in and correct my math/logic here if I'm wrong.
- chetanahuja 10y ago
  What the heck is a "cookie onboarding services" ?

by rosser 10y ago

ocdtrekkie 10y ago

I guess the question is, how much value did InMobi get per customer from those acts of illegal tracking?

rosser 10y ago
Do you honestly think it was on the order of half a cent per, or close enough that this penalty has teeth? Several months ago, Verizon was fined $1.3m for their UIDH "super cookies". That worked out to half a minute of their revenue for 2015 — for a program that had been in place since 2012. These penalties are meaningless. They're press release fodder for the company paying them, to be able to say to people, "Gosh, I guess we were naughty. We're really, really sorry. See how contrite we are? You can totally still trust us!" The lawyer who negotiated that settlement for Vz probably got a bigger bonus than the fine the company paid.
whamlastxmas 10y ago
Does it matter? Penalties rarely line up to the profit made from illegal decisions. That's why we see stuff like financial fraud happening constantly. The cost savings/profits are in the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, the penalties merely in millions.

shostack 10y ago

Well, some quick back of the napkin math shows that at the upper end (999,999,999 users) the fine equates to roughly a $.95 CPM and at the lower end (100,000,000) it equates to a $9.50 CPM. So the question is where their margins fall in line with those numbers. I've never negotiated with InMobi so don't have a sense of their rates, but doing more than a $1 CPM seems entirely doable. $9.5 on mobile is a bit tougher, but depending on how they leveraged that data, still possible (particularly if they are brokering that data with any cookie onboarding services in addition to just serving an ad). My coffee is still kicking in and I'm in a full on food coma, so someone please feel free to chime in and correct my math/logic here if I'm wrong.

chetanahuja 10y ago
What the heck is a "cookie onboarding services" ?