Click for a Cure: Analyzing Healthcare Advertisements on Facebook and the Role of the Delivery Algorithm

Abstract

Advertisement delivery algorithms play a uniquely impactful role in our online experiences, determining what topics we see and what perspectives we hear. As ad delivery algorithms are powered by machine learning, their outcomes may be biased or skewed by gender, race, or age due to biases in the training data. Prior research has analyzed the role of ad delivery algorithms for their role in discrimination and bias in advertising domains such as housing, employment, and climate change. In this thesis, I initiate the conversation in the domain of healthcare. The objective of this research is to generate a holistic understanding of Meta’s healthcare advertisement space, and to study whether healthcare ad delivery may be discriminatory. Using healthcare-related keywords sourced from popular media, I collect advertisements across 204 of the most popular keywords in current healthcare discussion. I then conduct textual analysis on the ads within each keyword. I observe that the specificity of the keyword and the subcategory of healthcare under which the keyword falls are the two strongest indicators of a keyword’s popularity, complexity, formality, and point of view used. Beyond developing an overall picture of the composition of the Meta healthcare advertising space, I extend prior research about climate change advertisements and explore its intersection with healthcare. Specifically, focusing on climate anxiety, I find that the perspectives and themes reflected in the advertisement space parallel the discussion in news media. I further examine the role the delivery algorithm plays in influencing the delivery of such ads across demographic categories by running my own climate anxiety ads in conjunction with ads for nature, ChatGPT, and social media influencers. By comparing the demographic distribution reached across the different ads and observing that they are not substantially different, I conclude that, at least for these experiments, the ad delivery algorithm does not treat climate anxiety ads differently from ads in the other categories I study. Rather, the algorithm delivers all the ads to predominantly older male audiences, suggesting that advertisers aiming to reach gender-balanced or younger audiences should use explicit targeting features indicating these goals.