Google’s quality-score system tied ad placement to measured clicks
Evidence
A further brilliant stroke was to assign each ad a “quality score,” based on how often it was actually clicked on. Google insisted on running only ads that, in addition to being relevant, people had actually liked. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 890
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Google’s early ad-matching patents replaced guesswork with predictive behavioral data — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 245; Click-through pricing shifted ad value from views to measured engagement — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 258; Google’s ad quality score was an opaque behavioral-prediction metric priced by the firm — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 260 (+5 more)