Tuesday, November 27, 2007

When Google Ads go bad

Most of the companies that sell ads on blogs place the ads by using an algorithm that picks key words out of the blog posts and matches them to key words for the ads. In politics, this can lead to unintentionally bad matches. A post saying Ann Coulter is an evil idiot will be matched to a site that wants to sell you Ann Coulter's books. Even worse matches happen when some shopping sites use an algorithm that simply inserts your key words into a phrase and offers to sell you something related to your noun or adjective, like racist ringtones.


These ads were generated by Ads by Google on a post by Amanda about the shame of Seattle, The Discovery Institute, naming culture warrior, and occasional slavery apologist, Michael Medved as a senior fellow.

On consideration, I kind of like the idea of racist ringtones. They could perform a valuable public service. Whenever I heard someone's pocket vibrate and start shouting "The Negroes are coming! Hide the white women!" I would know to get as far as possible from that person, and so would everyone else.

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