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Distastful Advertising Continues: "Gatoring"
iforgotmyfirstlogon sent us a link to an article on CNet about
Gatoring, a fabulous new advertising technique where advertising buy key words and pop up windows over competitors. The kicker is that this is a byproduct of a commonly installed activex plugin. And its only gonna get worse.
I figure it's a matter of when, not if.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
A while ago. But the only reason was because I did some testing and discovered that you can make the ancient RealPlayer 5.0 (that didn't have a lot of spam included in its user interface) work just fine with RealPlayer G2 and RealPlayer 8 streams, by simply fux0ring around with the DLLs in C:\Windoze\Program Files\Common or somewhere like that.
Basically, you take a RP5 install, do a recursive DIR or ls over the filesystem.
Then (on an expendable system, naturally, that you've replicated from your production box), you install the upgrades required to play files encoded with the newer RealMedia codecs, and do another DIR or ls.
Then you diff the results and copy any new or modified DLLs onto your production system. Presto! RealPlayer 5 with "up-to-date" codecs.
Of course, that doesn't prevent Real from including spyware/phone-home in the DLLs, nor does it prevent RealPlayer 5 from auto-nagging you every few months to upgrade.
But it's a workable solution for all those old South Park episodes I acquired in 228K .RM files (a mixture of RealPlayer 5, G2, and RealPlayer 8 codecs) format before DiVX appeared.
Which, come to think of it, is about the only use I have for RealPlayer, since I don't have cable.
In traditional media outlets, particularly newspaper and radio, companies can specifically request or be GUARANTEED that advertisements for competing products or services will NOT appear within x-many column inches of newspaper or x-minutes of radio play.
If I were advertising my theoretical car dealership, what is the effectiveness of that ad if a SECOND companies' commercial runs right behind mine? What if they KNEW they could get that slot and intentionally undercut all my sale prices in THEIR ad? I'd cancel my ad run and refuse payment to the station, among other things.
This situation actually happened when I was working at a Northeast-Ohio computer company, when a popular area FM radio station ran OUR ad with a COMPETITOR'S ad right behind it! We actually called the competitor, said "do you know they are doing this?" upon which BOTH of us called the station manager threatening to cancel BOTH ad runs unless they were scheduled at least 3 minutes apart, per their agreement.
This has to be one of the better, shining examples of the "wild west" cowboy cavalier attitude so predominant on the internet running smack into the brick wall of common sense.
Hey, perhaps Microsoft should approach Andover, offer them four times their standard banner rates and plaster WindowsXP ads all over Slashdot.
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Linux is not an option for this man ... he has to ask questions like 'Is it okay to delete kernel32.dll?'
/vmlinuz?" Tell him "go ahead and try - the system will stop you if it's important."
You're wrong.
Linux is the only option for this man. Set up the system with the apps he needs, and let him be.
Show him how to log on (as a normal user), and how to start programs.
Then when he asks "Is is OK to delete
And then rejoice at the fact that you'll never have to go back there to remove Melissa, or ILoveYou, or SirCam.
I just say no to:
I you didn't buy into all this crap that you don't need then people will not be able to take advantage of your machine.
If enough people say no, then the web pages have to cater to the masses if they want the eyeballs.
Think adversiting DoS. Even if you actively agree to do something, if you are misled (they don't tell you what's going to happen, do they?) then that's fraud (in my book anyway).
Madness takes its toll. Exact change please.
Well, when my daughter is just fucking around with her bottle (chewing on the nipple, spitting her formula back out, etc.) my mother-in-law calls it "gatoring."
This practice seems similar. The page owners are fucking around with our browser windows and stability, our irritation levels and patience, and accomplishing no REAL positive results. I know that it makes me less interested in visiting them.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
So what the heck, I click on it. They're trying to gather some information to help with their advertising. No problem, that's what these surveys are usually for. I'm merrily filling out the survey, and everything's fine, until I hit this question:
Did you notice that second item?Now I'll be wondering if the articles themselves have been bought by advertisers...
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Where does Burger King build a new store? Generally across the street from a McDonalds, right? They do this why? To attract people who are interested in their competitor's similar products.
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I myself majored in advertising, and this is exactly what you are supposed to do. You hit people who are interested in your product. If I go to a site looking for memory, and another site pops up an ad with free shipping on all memory orders, this ad is going to have a much higher success rate then if say, it were at the top of the page on
You're right, pop-up ads will get worse. Significantly, but these ads aren't the beginning of the end. It's the end of the beginning. The industry is starting to wise up and realize that silly banner ads don't work when they aren't tuned into you. The geeks and traditional advertising washouts are getting out, and people who know what they're doing are taking over.
These types of ads are going to be much more successful, because we will learn to live with them. This may seem underhanded, and it may very well be, but people will tolerate them because they don't want to pay for content. Banners caused the same response as this.
At this point, the last thing you need to do is shove more ads into people's faces trying to get them to buy your product. Instead of trying to force people to buy what you make, you should be making what people want to buy.
You're a marketing major? That will be your job someday, bud. Your job is going to make people need what you have to sell. People don't want the product? Fix the people, or hit the street.
If you're a marketing major, and afraid to piss people off (or piss on them, for that matter), or think that ethics should get in the way, you're best of to change your major. Geology would probably be nice because you don't have to deal with people. A customer your competitor has, is a customer you don't have.
Marketing and Advertising are certainly not the place for people who are idealistic about privacy, or believe "the truth will set them free". Myself, I was lucky enough to get into programming.