FTC to Require Cox Media Group, Two Other Firms to Pay Nearly $1 Million to Settle Charges They Deceived Customers About “Active Listening” AI-Powered Marketing Service
The FTC has mandated that Cox Media Group and two other companies pay nearly $1 million to settle allegations of misleading marketing practices. These firms falsely claimed their 'Active Listening' service utilized real-time voice data from smart devices to target ads, which was not the case. Instead, the service merely involved reselling email lists from data brokers at inflated prices.
- ▪Cox Media Group and two other firms are required to pay nearly $1 million to settle FTC charges.
- ▪The companies falsely marketed a service called 'Active Listening' that claimed to use voice data for targeted advertising.
- ▪In reality, the service involved reselling email lists obtained from data brokers.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
FTC to Require Cox Media Group, Two Other Firms to Pay Nearly $1 Million to Settle Charges They Deceived Customers About “Active Listening” AI-Powered Marketing Service (via) Back in 2024 Cox Media Group were caught trying to sell advertisers packages based on "active listening", with this deck which claimed: Smart devices capture real-time intent data by listening to our conversations Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers I wrote about this in September 2024. My theory: I think active listening is the term that the team came up with for “something that sounds fancy but really just means the way ad targeting platforms work already”.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Simon Willison's Weblog.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from Simon Willison's Weblog
