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From The New York Times: Opinion | I Used Google Ads for Social Engineering. It Worked.
Ad campaigns that manipulate searchers’ behavior are frighteningly easy for anyone to run.
[...]Kevin Hines had one thought as he plummeted toward the Pacific Ocean: I can change anything in my life except the fact that I just jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge.
“One sentence could have stopped me,” Kevin wrote. “Had any one of the hundreds of passers-by engaged with me, it would … potentially have showed me that I had the ability to choose life.”
No person stopped Kevin from trying to kill himself. Could a Google ad have?
[...]Could Kevin have been redirected? Could he have been persuaded — by a few lines of ad copy and a persuasive landing page — not to jump? I wondered if I could redirect the next Kevin Hines. The goal of my first redirect campaign was to sway the ideology of suicidal people.
The problem my campaign addressed: Suicidal people are underserved on Google. In 2010, Google started making the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline the top result of certain searches relating to suicide. It also forced autocomplete not to finish such searches.
The weakness of Google’s initiative is that not enough variations of searches trigger the hotline. A search for “I am suicidal” will result in the hotline. But a search for “I’m going to end it” won’t always. “I intend to die” won’t ever. A lot of “higher-funnel” searches don’t trigger the hotline.
I hoped my redirect campaign would fill the gap in Google’s suicide algorithm. I would measure my campaign’s success by how many suicidal searchers clicked my ad and then called the number on my website, which forwarded to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Nine days after my campaign began, the ads were accepted by Google. My ad was the first result across the United States when someone Googled with suicidal intent. I showed unique ads to suicidal people who were physically located around the Golden Gate Bridge.
Nearly one in three searchers who clicked my ad dialed the hotline — a conversion rate of 28 percent. The average Google Ads conversion rate is 4 percent.
The campaign’s 28 percent conversion rate was met in the first week. Not counting people who thought I was associated with lifeline or who did not read the ad or language on my website, that leaves a rate suggesting there’s a need in this ad space that is not being met.
[...]Mr. Berlinquette is a Google certified partner, and the founder of the search engine marketing consulting firm Berlin SEM.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:18PM (6 children)
Are you really going to make me read TFA to find out if Kevin is fictional or lived through his jump?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Rupert Pupnick on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:44PM (5 children)
Kevin wrote about it after he jumped, so I presume he survived. Either that, or we have possible evidence of Quantum Teleportation.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:23PM
Or Kevin is just one of many personalities residing in that bag of flesg. Or Kevin is a narrator of a mindstate of a particularily depressed hpuse cat, who became suicidal after using the Internet. Or Kevin is just a Jew, making shit up as jews do.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:37PM (3 children)
presume -- so don't know? This feels so click-baity to me. Either Kevin jumped and survived (which should be stated in TFS) or it is a fictional account (which should be stated in TFS). I refuse to click on click bait, but that doesn't mean it doesn't bug me, and I want Soylent to not stoop to that sort of thing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rupert Pupnick on Thursday July 11 2019, @05:38PM (1 child)
Point taken, but I’ll save you the trouble of clicking. In a reassuring display of causality, Kevin wrote the article about jumping after he himself jumped. Admit it, though, you’d like to find out how he survived. You won’t.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @08:13PM
It seems pretty obvious how someone would survive jumping off a bridge... Like most failed suicide attempts, he managed to not do enough damage to kill himself, and was rescued in time (apparently someone who saw him jump called emergency services and he was picked up by the coast guard).
According to wikipedia [wikipedia.org], "About 5% of the jumpers survive the initial impact but generally drown or die of hypothermia in the cold water. ... The fatality rate of jumping is roughly 98%. As of July 2013, only 34 people are known to have survived the jump. Those who do survive strike the water feet-first and at a slight angle, although individuals may still sustain broken bones or internal injuries."
Apparently Kevin wrote a book about it.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:13PM
The whole damn article is advertising copy for this guy's enterprise. There are yet other firms that arrange for fake testimonials and advertising "press releases" to get time on television and column inches in newspapers. Amongst other places, in the "Opinion" section of the New York Times. And I don't want SN stooping that low either.