Google AdWords for the Key Management Summit

Because I'm on the program committee for the 2010 Key Management Summit, I knew that there's a Google AdWords campaign happening now to increase awareness of the event. Despite this, I was surprised to see the following ad when I last read my Gmail:

Key Management Summit - 2010.KeyManagementSummit.org - IEEE Conference on Encryption Lake Tahoe, NV. May 3-7 2010

While I'm probably the right kind of person to target with this ad, I have to wonder exactly how Google chose to show it to me. I don't get work-related email at my Gmail address, and the email that's in my Gmail Inbox right now is stuff like announcements of end-of-year sales that various small presses are having (up to 75 percent off in some cases), information about my kids' Boy Scout camp for next Summer, and confirmations that various Christmas gifts have shipped. There's nothing there that's even remotely related to encryption or key management.

Maybe the logic behind AdWords is even more clever than you might first think. Or there might be terms like "encryption" or "key management" hidden somewhere in those emails about Christmas gifts.

Comments

[Luther Martin]

I just did a couple of tests of this and the results were identical to what I got when I wasn't signed in, at least on the first page of results. Even the first few Google ads were the same (I didn't compare the entire list of ads that appeared).

What were you expecting me to see?

[Rob Adams]

Ever search google while signed into your google account for crypto topics?