Google's erotic, elusive ads
By Oh Young-jin
Can anybody hold Google to account and seek punishment of it for its advertisements?
Hardly, because, after all, you choose them and you are given an option to switch them off. Or maybe not.
A latest example is a Google ad inviting people to meet “beautiful Russian woman.”
It starts as a “rolling ad” that follows you up and down as you scroll on a website. The rolling ads are everywhere. The revenue they generate is calculated by the number of clicks they get and the money is shared between Google and the websites.
Clicked, one moves to the page where he or she is asked to sign in. The background is myriad pictures of young women, in the style of an old high school yearbook.
The next time you log in, that “meet…” ad multiplies. In one case, there are two ― plus the existing one. One is embedded in the block of banner ads and another is at the bottom, on its side, promoting a chat room operated by the same dating company.
A click on these ads shows a different photo and this time reveals scantily clad women inviting one to continue the process to join this dating service.
At stake are some issues.
First, these rolling ads serve as bait to lure people to use the service. Anybody can check in ― including children. The entry-level identification check on the site is easy to dupe, requiring only name and date of birth. Web-savvy kids would navigate it hands down.
Google's treasured line of defense logic in a case like this is: it's an algorithm that provides personalized ads to meet the needs and tastes of a given individual. The decision is yours and Google is just a matchmaker and facilitator of the deals.
That appears detached for the world's biggest search engine that is used around the world, irrespective of age, gender, culture and other barriers.
Does it mean in the eyes of Google that children are just another segment of its clientele and are left to their own devices?
Second, what about the underlying negative messages regarding race and gender? Why Russian women and how are they different from women of other nationalities?
Does this ad mean Google is willing to dodge new norms of the #MeToo age?
Google stands by a customer protection policy that reminds one of that borrowed from the smokestack industry. A click at the top of the rolling ad explains how one reports “inappropriate” ads and switches off unwanted ads. Indeed, a click on the “x” replaces the ad with others.
But a real giveaway about Google's ad policy can be found at the upper part of the same customer page, explaining that the ads are pushed to you based on your history of visited sites on Google and Google's analyses of your preferences.
This sounds like a Google disclaimer, telling you: “Customers, don't blame us, you have got what you deserve.” Do we hear it right?