Articles tagged: contextual ads

Why does this ad imply I have a criminal record?

It can be pretty frightening when a search result delivers back to you the term you were searching for as an ad… particularly if you were searching for your name. But it might not be any more sinister than that.

Is Gmail’s targeted advertising a bad thing?

Of course Gmail can read your email. How else would they be able to filter it for spam? But “who” or “what” is reading it, and does it really matter?

How Did a Website Discover My Email Address?

It’s probably a coincidence, but there are a few scenarios where data could be shared with other websites. Let’s look at how that can happen.

How Do Those Ads Know Where I Live?

There are several ways websites can reasonably approximate your location and serve up ads specific to locale. We’ll look at each.