Assignment #8

A perfect example of text mining is Contextual advertising, better known as automated ads. Contextual advertising systems scans the text of websites for keywords and returns advertisements based on those keywords. For example if it runs a scan that comes back with multiple results about cleaning products, it will then render advertisements for those type of products or products similar to it. These ads can come in different forms. They could be integrated into the webpage such as on the side or somewhere on the the page. They could also come in the form of popups which we all know and hate. The majority of the time our popup blockers will catch these ads, therefore, most websites have started resorting to integrated advertising. If you have ever wondered why the advertisement you see on your computer are usually things that are somewhat interesting to you, text mining is how this is accomplished. By text mining it is more likely to have the person click on that advertisement because it relates to something that they are or were recently looking at.

Contextual advertising is also used by search engines to produce similar results. By using search engines such as Google, it will produce the ads in the form of a link for a related search at the top of the list. This will almost always trick the person into clicking on it if they are not aware of this. Most people do not pay attention to word "Ad" displayed right along side of the link. Google ad sense was the first major contextual advertising network. Since then many others have adopted the system due to it's efficiency. Of course this type of advertising does not come without controversy. There are many controversial issues concerning this type of advertising such as hyperlinks, when clicked on, automatically installs software on a users computer that interferes with that users browser. Due to the success of contextual advertising and the continuous large sums of money it brings in for websites, it's here to stay.