At one time I had google ads on my site. It was interesting  experimenting with these ads as part of my blogging experience.  But it went beyond interesting, really; it started to bug me. Why? Here is an example.

In a post I talk about my mixed feelings about someone getting the Nobel award for IVF. What do I see in the google ads after I post?  Ads for  IVF and infertility treatments. I write about pro-life  women not being truly feminist. What do I then see in the google ads?  The absolute last thing I want to see on my blog…Vote for  Sarah Palin ads! OY!

These are just two examples of many where google takes words from my post, does whatever it does with its fandango algorithm process, and next thing I know an ad appears that is inappropriate for this site.  And yes, I have done the google “channel” thing that is supposed to “channel” appropriate ads to the site.

It goes deeper- That maybe it reflects how even the tech culture is child-centric in how it approaches advertising.  You’d think that over time the algorithm would pick up that certain products and ads are just not working on this childfree site, but from what I can see is that it does not. It seems google continues to take the key words and associations with those words from a cultural context, not the context in which it was written.

And that cultural context is child-centric, one that it is all about babies, kids, and exalting the role of parenthood. What if the culture was not so child-centric–how would the algorithms change? Different products would show for sure.  And for childfree sites, I hypothesize they would not be so regularly inappropriate!

 

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