Human trafficking is a global epidemic affecting millions of people across the planet. Sex trafficking, the dominant form of human trafficking, has seen a significant rise mostly due to the abundance of escort websites, where human traffickers can openly advertise among at-will escort advertisements. In this paper, we take a major step in the automatic detection of advertisements suspected to p...

O VER THE PAST QUARTER-CENTURY, PRESCRIPTION drug manufacturers in the United States have increasingly invested in direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) designed to build brand recognition and to foster patients' belief in the quality of their products. Policy-makers in Canada, where limited DTCA is permitted, and in countries that do not permit DTCA are under increasing pressure to allow such ...

We consider how a search engine should select advertisements to display with search results, in order to maximize its revenue. Under the standard “pay-per-click” arrangement, revenue depends on how well the displayed advertisements appeal to users. The main difficulty stems from new advertisements whose degree of appeal has yet to be determined. Often the only reliable way of determining appeal...

Casual observation suggests that Internet media firms sometimes allow consumers to pay to remove advertisements from a free advertisement-based product. In this paper I characterize when this business model is optimal and analyze its impact on advertising quantity and the distribution of surplus. The optimality of the business model depends on the relation between product quality, the annoyance...

Coming up with new and creative advertisements is a sophisticated task for humans, because creativity requires breaking conventional associations to create new juxtaposition of familiar objects. Using objects in an uncommon context attracts the viewers attention and is an effective way to communicate a message in advertisements. Perceptual similarity seems to be a major source for creativity in...

This study looked at whether heath-based advertisements were remembered when placed in a health (congruity) or non-health (incongruity) based television programme and the extent to which participant involvement influenced recall. The study aimed to test whether programme context had an effect on memory for congruent or incongruent advertisements. Sixth-form students watched either a health or n...

Drug advertisements for non-prescription (over-the-counter) drugs on the main radio stations in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, were analyzed as to the information provided about generic names, pharmaceutical company, composition, and dosage. From August 1995 to January 1996, 250 advertisements for 28 products were recorded. More than 80% of these advertisements provided no information ...

While there is a recognized link between high levels of exposure to advertising of unhealthy foods and overweight and obesity among children, there is little research on the extent to which these exposures include persuasive marketing techniques. This study aimed to measure children's exposure to the use of persuasive marketing within television food advertisements. Advertisements broadcast on ...

A search engine can be modeled as a mapping that takes in user keywords as input and produces search results as output. Currently, the most dominant form of search advertising is input bidding where advertisers bid to associate their advertisements with keywords. We propose output bidding where advertisers bid to associate their advertisements with search results without changing or replacing a...