On August 22 last year I logged onto a site called geekadelphia that has a very favorable article about a new museum at the place where I work. It also has big ads next to the actual content of the site. The first time I logged onto geekadelphia.com the ad headline said, "Meet Arab Singles." Which lead to a site called Arab Lounge.
The woman in the ad was definitely not wearing a burqa--actually not much of anything but a leopard bikini top and a smile. But my first reaction was "I really don't want to meet Arab singles!!" Who decides what ads go on these sites?
So I was going back through the 506 posts and my sites and cleaning out the ones I started and never finished.
Except this one. I have wondered once in a while how Google decides what ads to put on a site. I logged onto Geekadelphia just now and got an ad for geek t-shirts. So why do I get an ad for American t-shirts in southern Iraq and "Meet Arab Singles!" in Philadelphia? I would expect the reverse. I am not responding to either ad. My wife is very frugal and would be horrified at paying retail for t-shirts when yard sales are full of them. And I am sure she does not want me meeting Arab singles.
So with other posts cleaned out, this musing on web ads is officially number 500. In related numerical updates, my blog has had more than 31,000 visits since last June. And since today is August 30, I should be a civilian in 153 days (January 30) or less if things go well with the demobilization process. That means I should have 650 blog posts before the site takes a sabbatical--I post every day I am on duty so hopefully my post rate will drop to twice a month plus 15 days in the summer.
Actually, I do plan to keep blogging about my return to being a real civilian. It's really going to happen. I can smell the bakery bread and the lattes already.
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Google serves up ads based on your search history and online behavior. It puts cookies on your machine that tracks what you've searched for, what you clicked on, and where you have surfed. It's possible that last time you went to Geekadelphia, you had previously searched on terms or visited sites related to Arab culture, news, etc. So hey, maybe you want to meet a nice Arab single! Your "behavior" might have suggested t-shirts this time, and it's also likely that even if you're using your own machine, the military has restrictions on what kind of information can be gotten from the ISP (such as location).
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7937201.stm