The East Bay Express reports on how Google’s superior ad serving technology can also act as a censor, as it avoids placing ads on pages that have contextual content that may be deemed graphic. While that makes sense for obscene sites, it also seems to apply to stories like the civilian deaths in Qana last Sunday:
The genius of Google lies in its capacity to pair advertising with similarly themed editorial content. This technique is revolutionizing the very nature of advertising, as businesses exercise more control than ever over the contexts in which their messages appear. Hardware stores, for example, can now ensure that their ads are placed next to stories about home improvement. But businesses also want to control what they don’t appear next to — automakers are displeased when their ads appear next to stories about traffic accidents. In response, in 2003, Google developed “sensitivity filters” to periodically scan the Web sites of its partners in search of violence, mature content, or other unacceptable material. “They detect sensitive content that we probably don’t want to be showing advertising beside, and show public service announcements instead,” says Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google’s business product manager for trust and safety.
