TY - GEN
T1 - Online Advertising in Ukraine and Russia During the 2022 Russian Invasion
AU - Yeung, Christina
AU - Iqbal, Umar
AU - O'Neil, Yekaterina Tsipenyuk
AU - Kohno, Tadayoshi
AU - Roesner, Franziska
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Owner/Author.
PY - 2023/4/30
Y1 - 2023/4/30
N2 - Online ads are a major source of information on the web. The mass reach of online advertising is often leveraged for information dissemination, at times with an objective to influence public opinion (e.g., election misinformation). We hypothesized that online advertising, due to its reach and potential, might have been used to spread information around the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Thus, to understand the online ad ecosystem during this conflict, we conducted a five-month long large-scale measurement study of online advertising in Ukraine, Russia, and the US. We studied advertising trends of ad platforms that delivered ads in Ukraine, Russia, and the US and conducted an in-depth qualitative analysis of the conflict-related ad content. We found that prominent US-based advertisers continued to support Russian websites, and a portion of online ads were used to spread conflict-related information, including protesting the invasion, and spreading awareness, which might have otherwise potentially been censored in Russia.
AB - Online ads are a major source of information on the web. The mass reach of online advertising is often leveraged for information dissemination, at times with an objective to influence public opinion (e.g., election misinformation). We hypothesized that online advertising, due to its reach and potential, might have been used to spread information around the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Thus, to understand the online ad ecosystem during this conflict, we conducted a five-month long large-scale measurement study of online advertising in Ukraine, Russia, and the US. We studied advertising trends of ad platforms that delivered ads in Ukraine, Russia, and the US and conducted an in-depth qualitative analysis of the conflict-related ad content. We found that prominent US-based advertisers continued to support Russian websites, and a portion of online ads were used to spread conflict-related information, including protesting the invasion, and spreading awareness, which might have otherwise potentially been censored in Russia.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85159346616
U2 - 10.1145/3543507.3583484
DO - 10.1145/3543507.3583484
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85159346616
T3 - ACM Web Conference 2023 - Proceedings of the World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2023
SP - 2787
EP - 2796
BT - ACM Web Conference 2023 - Proceedings of the World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2023
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
T2 - 32nd ACM World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2023
Y2 - 30 April 2023 through 4 May 2023
ER -