不仅仅是跳过。在线健康搜索中赞助内容对用户决策的影响
Not Just Skipping. Understanding the Effect of Sponsored Content on Users' Decision-Making in Online Health Search
摘要：
广告（ads）是搜索引擎商业模式的固有组成部分。广告商愿意付费给搜索引擎，以将其内容推广到搜索结果页面（SERP）的显著位置。这引起了人们对搜索引擎操纵效应（SEME）的担忧：用户的意见可能会受到搜索结果呈现方式的影响。在这项工作中，我们调查SEME和赞助内容在健康领域之间的连接。我们进行了一系列的用户研究，参与者需要评估不同的非处方自然疗法对各种医疗条件的有效性。我们向参与者提供了对某些观点有不同故意偏见的SERP，有或没有赞助内容，并要求他们仅根据提供给他们的信息来评估治疗的有效性。我们调查两种类型的赞助内容：1。直接营销广告，直接推销产品，而不表达其有效性的意见，以及2。在查询条件下明确宣传产品有效性的间接营销广告。我们的研究结果揭示了这两种广告类型对用户的影响之间的显着差异。虽然直接营销广告大多被用户跳过，但它们可以使用户的决策倾向于更积极的观点。间接营销广告既影响用户的检查行为，也影响他们对治疗效果的看法。我们进一步发现，间接营销广告和有机搜索结果中呈现的观点之间的对比在用户的决策中起着重要的作用。当对比度高时，用户表现出对消极观点的强烈偏好，而当对比度低或没有时，用户表现出对更积极观点的偏好。
英文摘要：
Advertisements (ads) are an innate part of search engine business models. Advertisers are willing to pay search engines to promote their content to a prominent position in the search result page (SERP). This raises concerns about the search engine manipulation effect (SEME): the opinions of users can be influenced by the way search results are presented. In this work, we investigate the connection between SEME and sponsored content in the health domain. We conduct a series of user studies in which participants need to evaluate the effectiveness of different non-prescription natural remedies for various medical conditions. We present participants SERPs with different intentionally created biases towards certain viewpoints, with or without sponsored content, and ask them to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment only based on the information presented to them. We investigate two types of sponsored content: 1. Direct marketing ads that directly market the product without expressing an opinion about its effectiveness, and 2. Indirect marketing ads that explicitly advocate the product's effectiveness on the condition in the query. Our results reveal a significant difference between the influence on users from these two ad types. Though direct marketing ads are mostly skipped by users, they can tilt users decision making towards more positive viewpoints. Indirect marketing ads affect both the users' examination behaviour and their perception of the treatment's effectiveness. We further discover that the contrast between the indirect marketing ads and the viewpoint presented in the organic search results plays an important role in users' decision-making. When the contrast is high, users exhibit a strong preference towards a negative viewpoint, and when the contrast is low or none, users exhibit preference towards a more positive viewpoint.
机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来，可能存在错误，请以论文正文为准。
