research-article

AdReveal: improving transparency into online targeted advertising

Authors:

Jaideep Chandrashekar,

Ramesh GovindanAuthors Info & Claims

HotNets-XII: Proceedings of the Twelfth ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks

Article No.: 12, Pages 1 - 7

https://doi.org/10.1145/2535771.2535783

Published: 21 November 2013 Publication History

Abstract

To address the pressing need to provide transparency into the online targeted advertising ecosystem, we present AdReveal, a practical measurement and analysis framework, that provides a first look at the prevalence of different ad targeting mechanisms. We design and implement a browser based tool that provides detailed measurements of online display ads, and develop analysis techniques to characterize the contextual, behavioral and re-marketing based targeting mechanisms used by advertisers. Our analysis is based on a large dataset consisting of measurements from 103K webpages and 139K display ads. Our results show that advertisers frequently target users based on their online interests; almost half of the ad categories employ behavioral targeting. Ads related to Insurance, Real Estate and Travel and Tourism make extensive use of behavioral targeting. Furthermore, up to 65% of ad categories received by users are behaviorally targeted. Finally, our analysis of re-marketing shows that it is adopted by a wide range of websites and the most commonly targeted re-marketing based ads are from the Travel and Tourism and Shopping categories.

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Cited By

Moti ZSenol ABostani HBorgesius FMoonsamy VMathur AAcar G(2024)Targeted and Troublesome: Tracking and Advertising on Children’s Websites2024 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)10.1109/SP54263.2024.00118(1517-1535)Online publication date: 19-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/SP54263.2024.00118
Vänskä ARauti SHeino TCarlsson RMickelsson SSärmäkari N(2024)Fair Data is the New Black: Online Shopping, Data Leaks, and Broadening the Understanding of Sustainable FashionFashion Theory10.1080/1362704X.2024.2339251(1-29)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2024.2339251
Medert FOtto JPerczel L(2024)Enhancing Transparency of Political Micro-targeting on FacebookCode and Conscience10.1007/978-3-031-52082-2_4(47-62)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52082-2_4
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Index Terms

AdReveal: improving transparency into online targeted advertising
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Measurement
    2. Metrics

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

HotNets-XII: Proceedings of the Twelfth ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks

November 2013

188 pages

ISBN:9781450325967

DOI:10.1145/2535771

General Chair:
Dave Levine
UMD
,
Program Chairs:
Sachin Katti
Stanford University
,
Dave Oran
Cisco

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 21 November 2013

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HotNets-XII

Sponsor:

SIGCOMM

HotNets-XII: Twelfth ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks

November 21 - 22, 2013

Maryland, College Park

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HotNets-XII Paper Acceptance Rate 26 of 110 submissions, 24%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 110 of 460 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

Moti ZSenol ABostani HBorgesius FMoonsamy VMathur AAcar G(2024)Targeted and Troublesome: Tracking and Advertising on Children’s Websites2024 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)10.1109/SP54263.2024.00118(1517-1535)Online publication date: 19-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/SP54263.2024.00118
Vänskä ARauti SHeino TCarlsson RMickelsson SSärmäkari N(2024)Fair Data is the New Black: Online Shopping, Data Leaks, and Broadening the Understanding of Sustainable FashionFashion Theory10.1080/1362704X.2024.2339251(1-29)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2024.2339251
Medert FOtto JPerczel L(2024)Enhancing Transparency of Political Micro-targeting on FacebookCode and Conscience10.1007/978-3-031-52082-2_4(47-62)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52082-2_4
Reitinger NWen BMazurek MUr BKnijnenburg BPapadimitratos P(2023)Analysis of Google Ads Settings Over Time: Updated, Individualized, Accurate, and FilteredProceedings of the 22nd Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society10.1145/3603216.3624968(167-172)Online publication date: 26-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3603216.3624968
Wang XChen HZhou YMa JZhu W(2023)Disentangled Representation Learning for RecommendationIEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence10.1109/TPAMI.2022.315311245:1(408-424)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TPAMI.2022.3153112
Wang XLi QYu DCui PWang ZXu G(2023)Causal Disentanglement for Semantic-Aware Intent Learning in RecommendationIEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering10.1109/TKDE.2022.315980235:10(9836-9849)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TKDE.2022.3159802
Gkiouzepi EAndreou AGoga OLoiseau P(2023)Collaborative Ad Transparency: Promises and Limitations2023 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)10.1109/SP46215.2023.10179448(2639-2657)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SP46215.2023.10179448
Gak LOlojo SSalehi N(2022)The Distressing Ads That Persist: Uncovering The Harms of Targeted Weight-Loss Ads Among Users with Histories of Disordered EatingProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35551026:CSCW2(1-23)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3555102
Zeng EMcAmis RKohno TRoesner FBarakat CPelsser CBenson TChoffnes D(2022)What factors affect targeting and bids in online advertising?Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3517745.3561460(210-229)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3517745.3561460
Di Tizio GMassacci F(2021)A Calculus of Tracking: Theory and PracticeProceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies10.2478/popets-2021-00272021:2(259-281)Online publication date: 29-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.2478/popets-2021-0027
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