checkmate.com ads, even though the
company’s database reported having
records for all three names and arrest
records for Sparrow and Lindquist.
Searches for Jill Foley, Jill Schneider,
and Jill James displayed instantcheckmate.com ads with neutral copy; the
word arrest did not appear in the ads
even though arrest records for all three
names appeared in the company’s database. Figure 2 shows ads appearing
on Google.com and Reuters.com and
criminal reports from instantcheckmate.com for the first two names.
Finally, we considered a proxy for
race associated with these names. Figure 3 shows racial distinction in Google
image search results for Latanya,
Latisha, Kristen, and Jill, respectively. The
faces associated with Latanya and
Latisha tend to be black, while white faces
dominate the images of Kristen and Jill.
These handpicked examples describe the suspected pattern: ads suggesting arrest tend to appear with
names associated with blacks, and
neutral or no ads appear with names
associated with whites, regardless of
whether the company placing the ad
has an arrest record associated with
the name.
Google adsense
Who generates the ad’s text? Who decides when and where an ad will appear? What is the relationship among
Google, a news website such as Reuters,
and Instant Checkmate in the previous
examples? An overview of Google AdSense, the program that delivered the
ads, provides the answers.
In printed newspapers, everyone
who reads the publication sees the
same ad in the same space. Online ads
can be tailored to the reader’s search
criteria, interests, geographical location, and so on. Any two readers (or
even the same reader returning to the
same website) might view different ads.
Google AdSense is the largest provider of dynamic online advertisements,
placing ads for millions of sponsors on
millions of websites. 9 In the first quarter of 2011, Google earned $2.43 billion
through Google AdSense. 10 Several different advertising arrangements exist,
but for simplicity this article describes
only those features of Google AdSense
specific to the Instant Checkmate ads
in question.
figure 2. ad from a search of three different names beginning with the first name “Jill.”
(a)
(b)
(c)
