Lunch Seminar Series | Societal Concerns in Targeted Advertising

Tuesday, March 3, 2020
1:00 PM - 2:15 PM
(Pacific)
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Encina Hall, Second Floor, East Wing, E207
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

Abstract: The enormous financial success of online advertising platforms is in large part due to the advanced targeting features they offer. WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science at USC, Aleksandra Korolova will discuss recent findings showing how implementations of targeted advertising create new societal concerns related to privacy, manipulation of the vulnerable, and discrimination. Furthermore, Korolova will demonstrate that the ad delivery optimization algorithms run by the platforms can lead to skew in delivery along gender and racial lines, even when such skew was not intended by the advertiser. Korolova will conclude by introducing a new fairness notion, preference-informed fairness, that could serve as a novel step towards formally studying fairness in scenarios such as targeted advertising, where individuals have complex and diverse preferences over possible outcomes.

Based on joint work with I. Faizullabhoy (ConPro 2018), M. Ali, P. Sapiezynski, M. Bogen, A. Mislove, A. Rieke (CSCW 2019), and M. P. Kim, G. Rothblum, G. Yona (ITCS 2020, FAT* 2020).  

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Aleksandra Korolova
Bio: Aleksandra Korolova is a WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science at USC, where she researches algorithms and technologies that enable data-driven innovations while preserving privacy and fairness. Prior to joining USC, Aleksandra was a research scientist at Google. Aleksandra received her PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. Her PhD thesis, which focused on protecting privacy when mining and sharing user data, has been recognized by the Arthur L. Samuel Thesis Award 2011-2012, for the best PhD thesis in the Computer Science Department at Stanford. Aleksandra is also a co-winner of the 2011 PET Award for outstanding research in privacy enhancing technologies for exposing privacy violations of microtargeted advertising and a runner-up for the 2015 PET Award for RAPPOR, the first commercial deployment of differential privacy. Aleksandra's most recent work, on discrimination in ad delivery, has received CSCW Honorable Mention Award and Recognition of Contribution to Diversity and Inclusion, was cited in Facebook's Civil Rights Audit Report, and invited for a briefing for Members of the House Financial Services Committee.