ABSTRACT

Targeted advertising lies at the heart of digital economic models and has been scrutinized with respect to the potential pathologies of discriminatory job and housing advertising along with concerns about harmful forms of manipulation and the invasive character of online data harvesting. This article takes as its focus the non-transparent forms of cultural association reproduced by targeted advertising. We call into question the ready distinction between editorial content and advertising that treats news content as a public interest good and advertising as primarily a matter of private interest and personal taste. In online media environments, it has become difficult to interrogate advertising due to their ‘dark’ nature (they are only visible to those to whom they are targeted) allowing them to avoid public scrutiny. This project puts forward a prototype for a tool that may be used to advance accountability discussions further by providing insight into how targeted advertising takes place across demographic categories. This article describes the pilot test of such a tool – one that can be deployed to reveal and illuminate patterns that emerge from targeted and dark advertising practices.

摘要

有针对性的广告是数字经济模型的核心，并且已经根据歧视性工作和住房广告的潜在病态以及对有害操纵形式和在线数据收集的侵入性特征的担忧进行了审查。本文以定向广告再现的不透明的文化联想形式为重点。我们质疑社论内容和广告之间的现成区别，将新闻内容视为公共利益，而广告主要是个人利益和个人品味的问题。在在线媒体环境中，由于广告的“黑暗”性质（它们仅对目标对象可见），因此很难询问广告，从而避免公众监督。该项目提出了一个工具的原型，该工具可用于通过深入了解定向广告如何跨人口类别进行，从而进一步推进问责制讨论。本文描述了此类工具的试点测试——该工具可用于揭示和阐明从有针对性的和黑暗的广告实践中出现的模式。