Targeted advertising / recruitment?
[ by Charles Cameron – a Zenpundit exclusive! ]
I was browsing the web looking for court papers from the case of Rajib Karim today, and one of the links I got took me to an Islamic Awakening page — which is to say, to an English-language, pro-jihadist forum founded by Yousef al-Khattab — where I found myself facing some unexpected advertising…
Let me get this straight. The pro-jihadist website Islamic Awakening is now receiving funds from a university that wants to train future diplomats and some schools for aspiring police officers?
If so, do these educational establishments imagine they’re recruiting from the pool of wannabe jihadists who supposedly frequent the site — or from folks already in the FBI and counter-terrorism business, who may by now be the site’s only remaining readers?
Either way, I’d say it’s a pretty subtle approach — and almost as much fun to stumble across as the Bold Christian clothing ad that I found on a previous visit to Islamic Awakening… do you remember that?
February 7th, 2011 at 3:40 am
Islamic Awakening has a good number of pro-militant members. It also has those who aren’t. In the past, the admins have banned very militant users, a few of whom who came from strictly pro-jihadi-takfiri forums. Nonetheless, a great and funny catch, Charles!
February 7th, 2011 at 4:51 am
Hi Chris:
.
Thanks, good to know.
February 7th, 2011 at 7:02 am
targeted advertising and more than that – traditional advertising – is not going to go away… I’d like to give this discussion a bit of a spin around that…
When it comes to advertising on the Internet, concepts like AdSense have been extremely popular mainly because of the fact they are easier to use and there is no need to interact with the actual merchant to be able to host the Ad. In case of AdSense, the solution provider (such as Google or Bing) takes care of making sure that the correct Ad shows up in your “AdSense space”. In return they pay a commission. Often this commission is only 30 to 40% of what they actually get from the merchant on per click basis. Traditional Advertising is a method by which publishers and merchants contact each other directly regarding advertising. Thus, Traditional Advertising helps completely by passing any technology intervention such as AdSense.
February 7th, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Okay Gautam:
.
I’d still like to know why Christian clothiers, a university diplomacy department and some folks who train police officers think it appropriate to pay money for advertising on a site that is at least somewhat supportive of jihad.
.
Does that make any sense at all?
.
I understand that my professional work as a student of religious violence leads me to visit sites with Christian, Islamic, academic, political, diplomatic and law enforcement content, and that this shows up in advertising algorithms.
.
But shouldn’t there be an intermediate step involved, in which a “match” is verified between the type of business advertising and the types of site on which their ads are displayed?