Print

Mail

wiki links

Google censors text ads in new e-mail service

When Google announced in April that it would test a free Web-based e-mail service that offered users vastly more storage space than its rivals, it introduced one twist -- the ads that users see when they read their mail would be related to the subject mentioned in the message.

So if your friend sends you a message about his vacation in Florida, you will see text ads for beach resorts to the right of the message. When your mother writes about her new digital camera, photography ads appear.

The ads appear on messages received by Gmail users; the e-mail sender does not need to be a user of Gmail.

Privacy advocates were deeply offended by a product that scanned private e-mail and could potentially send offensive ads to e-mail recipients -- and for many, those aspects of Gmail remain troubling.

But the service turns out to have some interesting self-imposed constraints. Google has created what is the electronic equivalent of a television network's standards and practices department to determine which e-mail messages are suitable for ads and which are not.

Google will not display ads on e-mail messages with words related to sex, guns, drugs and other topics it considers off limits.

"We want the ads to be family friendly," said Susan Wojcicki, Google's director of product management. "There are some topics for ads we have decided that are not appropriate to be shown on e-mail."

Google will not show any ads on Gmail for dating sites, one of the most lucrative categories for other Web-based e-mail services. And it will not even show ads related to squirt guns.

It also tries not to display ads next to messages that contain disparaging language about the products of its advertisers. So if your mother complains that her digital camera is a dud, the recipient is not likely to see a camera ad on that message.

Gmail is available by invitation only, but the company says it hopes to introduce it to the public by the end of the year.

While free Web-based e-mail services have been popular with users, marketers have not been willing to pay much for ads connected to those services because e-mail users, who are reading and writing messages, tend to be harder to distract.

Google hopes to profit in this area because Gmail's ads are more relevant to the readers and thus could merit higher prices from advertisers.

Still, in its initial phase, many Gmail ads have only a very loose connection to the message in checks conducted last week by The New York Times.

A message discussing a purchase of a new home was accompanied by two ads for sites offering jobs in New York City.

The message did not mention anything related to jobs, but it did have a signature line from one sender that included a New York address.

Another test message about a college reunion that contained the line "Great seeing you and your wife" was accompanied by an ad from Avon: "Get Rid of Cellulite. Reveal a Slimmer & Smoother You."

Wojcicki said she did not know why that message prompted that ad.

Generally, though, the technology used by Google and others to match advertisements to text, whether in search queries or e-mail, can be imperfect in coping with ambiguities in the English language.

"If you run ads on a story about Polish language, and the ad is from Berlitz, you are happy," said Lance Podell, president of Kanoodle, a service that sells text ads on Web sites.

But it is a different matter, he said, if what turns up is "an ad for auto polish."

The Gmail technology involves two steps, Wojcicki said. First, computers scan a message to determine what concepts are being discussed.

They look at the words that are used, their frequency and where they are in the message, among other factors.

The technology distills this data into key words that describe the content of message.

The second step involves comparing those keywords to Google's database of advertisers, who have bid to have their ads placed next to messages containing certain key words.

Google's system considers both the relevancy of a given ad to a given e-mail message as well as how much the advertisers are willing to pay.

Sometimes the process can lead to seemingly arbitrary ad choices.

For example, a message that mentioned the movie Shrek 2, bowling, a Fuji digital camera and a trip to Aruba, arrived with three ads for Fuji cameras, but no ads relating to the other subjects.

Google is trying not only to analyze the content of messages, but also their tone.

A message that said "I love Orlando" was accompanied by ads for resorts at Disney World. But the same message, with the word love replaced by hate, prompted no ads.

Frederick Marckini, the chief executive of iProspect, an advertising agency that specializes in search ads, praised this approach.

"There is no commercial application for hate," he said. "There are some words that advertisers are not going to want to be associated with."
This story has been viewed 2280 times.