SaTC: CORE: Small: Studying Problematic Content in the Web Advertising Ecosystem

在线广告渗透到所有网络用户的日常生活中，并支撑着当前网络的财务模式。除了为合法产品和服务精心设计的广告外，许多广告包含的内容对看到并点击它们的人来说可能是有问题的。例如，广告可能使用误导，欺骗，在某些情况下，非法的做法。这些广告会在经济上对网络用户产生负面影响，浪费他们的时间和注意力，并传播欺骗性或误导性的声明；它们可能包括错误信息、骗局和恶意软件。这些广告潜在的有害影响可能会破坏网络作为值得信赖的信息来源的理想角色，以及合法在线广告收入的声誉和有效性。该项目旨在系统地研究和分类出现在网络广告中的问题内容，并衡量其对浏览网络的人的影响。研究结果最终将为技术或监管解决方案奠定基础，以提高网络广告生态系统的质量和真实性。在这个项目中，研究人员正在对网络上有问题的广告内容进行系统调查，利用包括网络爬行、广告检测和野外用户研究在内的技术。该研究借鉴了计算机安全预测或预测系统误用的观点。研究人员对在线广告生态系统中问题内容的普遍性进行了表征、分类和测量，以发现存在哪些问题广告内容、出现在哪里、针对哪些人以及哪些广告提供商为其提供服务。该研究使用定性和定量的方法来研究人们对这类内容的看法和互动，询问用户认为哪些是有问题的，以及这些内容对用户的时间或注意力有什么影响。这项研究为在网络广告中显示和传播的问题内容的技术和政策防御奠定了基础。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Online ads pervade the daily lives of all web users and underpin the current financial model of the web. In addition to well-designed advertisements for legitimate products and services, many ads contain content that is potentially problematic for the people who see and click on them. For example, ads may use misleading, deceptive, and in some cases, illegal practices. These ads can have negative impact on web users financially, waste their time and attention, and spread deceptive or misleading claims; they can include misinformation, scams, and malware. The potential harmful impact of these ads threatens to undermine the web’s aspirational role as a trustworthy information source and the reputation and effectiveness of legitimate online advertising revenue. This project aims to systematically study and classify the problematic content that appears in web ads and measure its impact on people who browse the web. The findings will ultimately lay a foundation for technical or regulatory solutions to improve the quality and authenticity of the web advertising ecosystem. In this project, the researchers are conducting a systematic investigation into problematic ad content on the web, leveraging techniques including web crawling, ad detection, and in-the-wild user studies. The research draws on perspectives from computer security that predict or anticipate system misuse. The researchers are characterizing, classifying, and measuring the prevalence of problematic content in the online ad ecosystem to discover what problematic ad content exists, where it appears, who is targeted, and which ad providers serve it. The research uses qualitative and quantitative methods to study people’s perceptions of and interactions with this type of content, asking what users consider problematic, and what impact this content has on users’ time or attention. The research lays a foundation for technical and policy-based defenses for problematic content shown in, and spread through, online ads.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.