Data-driven Targeted Advertising Recommendation System for Outdoor Billboard

In this article, we propose and study a novel data-driven framework for Targeted Outdoor Advertising Recommendation (TOAR) with a special consideration of user profiles and advertisement topics. Given an advertisement query and a set of outdoor billboards with different spatial locations and rental prices, our goal is to find a subset of billboards, such that the total targeted influence is maximum under a limited budget constraint. To achieve this goal, we are facing two challenges: (1) it is difficult to estimate targeted advertising influence in physical world; (2) due to NP hardness, many common search techniques fail to provide a satisfied solution with an acceptable time, especially for large-scale problem settings. Taking into account the exposure strength, advertisement matching degree, and advertising repetition effect, we first build a targeted influence model that can characterize that the advertising influence spreads along with users mobility. Subsequently, based on a divide-and-conquer strategy, we develop two effective approaches, i.e., a master–slave-based sequential optimization method, TOAR-MSS, and a cooperative co-evolution-based optimization method, TOAR-CC, to solve our studied problem. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets clearly validate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed approaches.

One donor egg and ‘a dollop of love’: ART and de-queering genealogies in Facebook advertising

We consider what genealogical links, kinship and sociality are promised through the marketing of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). Using a mixed method of formal analysis of Facebook's algorithmic architectures and textual analysis of twenty-eight adverts for egg donation drawn from the Facebook Ad Library, we analyse the ways in which the figure of the ‘fertile woman’ is constituted both within the text and at the level of Facebook's targeted advertising systems. We critically examine the ways in which ART clinics address those women whose eggs they wish to harvest and exchange, in combination with the ways in which Facebook's architecture identifies, and sorts those women deemed of ‘relevance’ to the commercial ART industry. We find that women variously appear in these adverts as empowered consumers, generous girlfriends, potential mothers and essentialised bodies who provide free-floating eggs. The genealogical and fertility possibility offered through ART is represented with banal ambiguity wherein potentially disruptive forms of biogenetic relatedness and arrangements of kinship are derisked by an overarching narrative of simplicity and sameness which excludes men, messy genealogies and explicitly queer forms of kinship. This rationalisation is supported by the simplicity and certainty of the Facebook targeted advertising algorithm which produces a coherent audience and interpellates users as fertile subjects whose choices are both biologically determined and only available through clinical intervention.

LGBTQ Older Adult Recruitment in the Midst of a COVID-19 Lockdown: Reminiscences of a Post-Doctoral Fellow

Within days of obtaining ethics approval for a qualitative study “Optimizing LGBTQ Engagement with Hospice and Palliative Care in the Island Health Region” our local Covid-19 lockdown began. It took several months to have new Covid-19 research protocols (Zoom Town Hall meetings/Zoom or telephone interviews) approved. Being impatient, I teamed with another group of researchers to launch “Covid-19: Your Current Experiences and Planning for the Future,” an online survey with a large qualitative component where we planned to oversample LGBTQ respondents. In time both projects were approved, and here I reflect on recruitment lessons learned. These include my perceptions how Zoom Town Hall meetings and interviews differ from those I’ve conducted in-person, reflections on how to use social media (including targeted Facebook advertising) to recruit participants, and sadly, how to manage anti-LGBTQ sentiment that resulted from even the most targeted advertising.

The Welfare Impact of Targeted Advertising Technologies

We analyze the welfare implications of consumer data sharing, and restrictions to that sharing, in the context of online targeted advertising. Targeting technologies offer firms the ability to reach desired audiences through intermediary platforms. The platforms run auctions in real time to display ads on internet sites, leveraging consumers’ personal information collected online to personalize the ads. The online advertising industry posits that targeted advertising benefits advertising firms (that is, merchants who want to target ads to the desired consumers), consumers who see ads for preferred products, and the intermediary platforms that match consumers with firms. However, the claims that targeted advertising benefits all players involved have not been fully vetted in the literature. We develop an analytical model to analyze the economic and welfare implications of targeting technologies for those three players under alternative consumer information regimes. The regimes differ in the type and amount of consumer data available to the intermediary and to the advertising firms, and reflect the presence or absence of technological or regulatory restrictions to personal information flows. We find evidence of incentive misalignment among the players, as the intermediary prefers to share only a subset of consumer information with firms, whereas advertising firms prefer having complete information about the consumers. As such, a strategic intermediary with the ability to control which information is shared during the auction can have an incentive to use only the information that maximizes its payoff, overlooking the interests of both advertising firms and consumers. The information regimes that maximize consumer welfare vastly differ depending on consumers’ heterogeneity along two dimensions: a horizontal dimension, capturing consumer’s heterogeneity in product preferences; and a vertical dimension, capturing consumers’ heterogeneity in purchase power. Consumers prefer none of their personal information to be used for targeting only in limited circumstances. Otherwise, consumers are either indifferent or prefer only specific types of information to be used for targeting.

1152Use of Facebook to recruit cohort study participants

Background Social media is a relatively new means to recruit research participants. Methods The Australian Breakthrough Cancer (ABC) Study is a prospective cohort study that recruited people aged 40-74 years over 2014-2018. A range of recruitment methods, including ‘traditional’ (e.g. print media, electoral roll, word of mouth) and newer methods (i.e. social media, particularly Facebook) were used. Here we describe and compare these methods of recruitment. Results 52,614 (66%) of ABC Study registrants indicated they had heard about the study via Facebook (36,672 clicked through from an advertisement for the study and 15,942 through users ‘sharing’ content). Overall, 51,586 (64%) participants (58% female, 42% male) completed baseline study components (online questionnaires and provided a DNA sample). 58% of Facebook registrants completed baseline components, compared with 75% of those recruited by traditional methods. The cost per acquisition using Facebook was $1.66 whereas the cost per acquisition using traditional methods (e.g. via the electoral roll) was up to $30. Facebook recruitment initially attracted more female registrants but targeted advertising dramatically increased the proportion of men. Conclusions Targeted advertising can be used to modify the types of respondents obtained via Facebook. Although the proportion completing baseline study components was lower than for traditional methods of recruitment, the cost per acquisition was cheaper making it feasible to recruit a larger number of participants to obtain the desired study size. Key messages Facebook is a viable and economical source of recruits to large prospective research studies.

Targeted individuals

This article argues that researchers in Translation Studies may proactively aim to understand the consequences of an envisaged merger between targeted advertising and automated translation. Functional translation software is widely available online, and several platforms now perform instant translation, sometimes without asking the user whether this is required. Indeed, the user’s main language is known to various applications, which keep track of this information along with other settings and preferences. Data tracking is commonly used to produce targeted advertising: people receive commercial information about products they are likely to be interested in. If text can instantly be altered according to a user’s linguistic preferences, it can also be altered according to aesthetic, commercial, or political preferences. The article discusses theoretical and ideological aspects of the sociotechnical evolution towards the production and consumption of personalised content, highlighting the role translation may come to play.

Targeted Advertising and Consumer Inference

This paper investigates how consumers might form inferences from the mere fact that they observe a targeted ad and how firms facing these consumer must choose targeting strategy optimally under competition.

Social Media as an Object of Marketing Researches

The relevance of the study. The access to social media and digital marketing led to the discovery of plenty of data which marketers use in their work. However, there is a lack of professional rules as to the use of social media in marketing and there is a lacuna in understanding of the consumers’ comfort when marketers use public data of social media. In this regard a new category emerges — consumer marketing comfort. In this scientific article an attempt to analyze the level of comfort of the consumer’s perception of social media data of digital marketing has been made. But the dramatic development of digital technologies demands a constant reconsideration and analysis of this issue. Moreover, none of the authors has studied the problem of use of consumers’ data by digital technologies, consequently the issue of the consumer marketing comfort has never been researched. The purpose of the article is to define the role and the efficiency of digital technologies in marketing communication in the modern environment and the use of consumer data by digital marketing, and in this regard how comfortable it is for people when their data, which are publicly available in a social network, are used. The methodology. Creating the article we applied the theoretical and analytical methods of scientific research. The results. Marketing comfort is a new category which is significant for the future marketing research. Marketing comfort is the comfort of a person while using the information which was posted publicly in social a network for targeted advertising, relations with customers and generation of ideas. In the context of the category development it has been discovered that the targeted advertising is the strongest component and it contributes to the marketing comfort comparing to the two measures: generation of ideas and relations with customers. Taking into account the basis of consumer comfort, this new marketing practice suggests the research of strategies for marketers who can support and mitigate the situation of consumers’ concern in order to let consumers keep their confidence in digital practice of marketers. The scientific topicality. A new category of marketing comfort has been defined and consideration of marketing comfort as a mean of communication has been suggested. The practical significance. The material of this article can be used in the development of marketing strategies of organizations and their communication policy.

Targeted Value-Enhancing Advertising and Price Competition

Digital markets provide firms with vast amounts of consumer data. Economists who have explored this phenomenon have focused on how firms use data to implement price discrimination. Targeted advertising in this context transmits different price information to different consumers. However, advertising is itself often valued by consumers, and can be viewed as a complement to the advertised product. Such advertising may also be customized and targeted. We investigate how targeted value-enhancing advertising affects competition. Competing for consumers with targeted advertising leads overall to higher prices and increases consumer surplus but reduces profitability. In certain markets the advertising is inefficiently over-supplied.