Google's Ad Sense

I signed up for ad sense on this blog. It's an experiment. Maybe I'll make some money. We'll see.

However, what's incredibly interesting is what has been chosen to present for the ads. Of course, these ads are local to the computer being used to view the blog.

So: why would a set of ads involving Summer's Eve Douche show up on my computer?

Well, I was viewing articles involving facing off on evolution, the selfish gene becomes a musical, metropolitan undergrounds, smart elephants, risk in science education and an article on vaginal pH entitled, "Don't douche, she declares acidly."

Should I be surprised at which one was chosen as an ad to grace my pages?

The selection mechanism for these ads is interesting. On one end you have to match the ad to the viewer's interests. (I almost said "tastes.") But on the other you have to match a advertisement to that interest. I'd expect a sliding scale of matching based on how much the advertiser has paid for the placement for the ad. An inexpensive but precise connection to Scientific American subscriptions (most of the above were SciAm blogs) might well lose out to an expensive ad that has only a marginal probability of connection.

How those connections are made might also be interesting. If it's word oriented, what's the probability that the word "douche" might be indicative of interest in a feminine hygiene product or just being used as a pejorative, as in, "Rick Parry is a douche."

Also, how is the content of the article viewed joined with the title of the article viewed. In this case the word "douche" is used several times in the article along with the words "vagina", "pH" and, lo and behold, "Summer's Eve". This could, for a fairly simple machine, indicate strong interest. It also argues for that simplicity of algorithm since one could, by examining the site and references to the article, determine that this is an article mostly about science. One wonders if I had been viewing an article about vaginal pH of baboons in Science magazine would I have gotten the same result.

The number and frequency of the ads are also interesting. There was space for 3 ads in the window for the blog. Consistently, for several minutes, the ads for douches were present. I looked at that article once. I looked at many other articles over an hour. But those adverts resolutely stayed douche.

Either douche is a major interest point or Summer's Eve is really pouring on the money.

Heh. With this entry I'll probably have douche articles for the rest of the summer's eve.