Rats: pests or pets?
Bob’s mention of the ads for “glushko” in class today reminded me of my own experience with Google ads and disambiguation.
I have pet rats, and when Google was first putting ads in the right column of Gmail, any emails I sent about my pet rats ended up with Google ads for rat exterminators or rat poison. Needless to say, the ads were misplaced and also rather traumatic, as I didn’t want to poison my pets.
But after a few months, I noticed that the mix of ads began to change from exterminators and poison to pet rat food or litter or rescue societies for pet rats. Now they rarely misplace an ad. What I’m wondering is exactly how they changed their formula. I don’t think it was as simple as finding the word “pet” in the same document as the word “rat,” since I generally only refer to my rats as the rats, not as “my pet rats.” But maybe their algorithm was picking up on words like “ratties” or “cute” in my emails to further refine their ad targeting.
It’s still not on the same level as Svenonius-esque categorization, but at least it’s getting a little closer…