Comments on: Advertising to Explain Where Polygamy Isn’t

By: Do Mormons Practice Polygamy? | A Soft Answer

Do Mormons Practice Polygamy? | A Soft Answer — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:04:21 +0000

[...] about actively spreading word that the LDS Church does not condone or practice polygamy that it was advertising the Newsroom.lds.org [...]

By: little light

little light — Sun, 25 May 2008 03:23:52 +0000

i think the ad about the polygamy thing is a good move.

By: David H. Sundwall

David H. Sundwall — Fri, 23 May 2008 13:29:46 +0000

Mike,

I suspect you are right. It appears to be a gimmick to just target Mormon eyeballs and lead them to various semi-related businesses. Just sneaky and not very helpful.

By: Mike L.

Mike L. — Fri, 23 May 2008 01:30:17 +0000

My guess on the garment thing is that it’s just a generic ad that tries to be too smart. It sees, based on your gmail, search history, page content, etc. that you are into Mormon stuff, and then tries to figure out, based on complicated algorithms, what kind of things Mormons need, based on the content of other pages its indexed, and thus customizes the ad accordingly. Of course the complex algorithm fails to realize that Mormons would not want to buy garments online from “shopzilla”, even if they were available. I think I read something about how google uses word association heavily in its algorithms. So the word “Mormon” is strongly associated with the word “garments”, which is why you get the ad.

So it’s nothing malicious. Just a technological anomaly. I could be wrong, though.

By: NortboundZax

NortboundZax — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:15:24 +0000

it is curious the amount of effort the church spends to distance itself from a practice it only gave up under duress.

By: Bryce Haymond

Bryce Haymond — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:26:47 +0000

Yea, I’ve got the Church’s Google Ads running on my site. I guess they consider it an important enough issue to issue ads on the subject.

By: Proud Daughter of Eve

Proud Daughter of Eve — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:19:37 +0000

Eh, it’s just a Google Ad thing. I’ve got Gmail and the little running ad link along the top frequently has “Bargain Prices on Mormon Garments!” I’m thinking of writing to them about it.