Slashdot Mirror
New Online Advertising Model Riles Journalists
Wynken de Word writes "A new online advertising model linking commercial messages to individual words of editorial content aims 'to tap one of the last ad-free frontiers of the Internet -- the text of articles and message boards -- in what [company backers] bill as the ultimate contextual advertising play' according to this article at Ad Age, a leading advertising industry magazine. On the other hand, the article notes: 'If it looks like a pop-up, feels like a pop-up or interrupts like a pop-up, we might as well just assume consumers will outright hate and reject the format,' said Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer of Intelliseek, a Cincinnati research firm that tracks online consumer buzz."
This is what happens when you look at a successful advertising model, like google's AdWords, and learn the wrong lesson from it. Although I'd be willing to bet that someone sufficiently brain-addled will see "24x more clickthroughs than banner ads!" and think the idea is the best thing since the discovery of fire. Get your ads out of my content!
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Does this mean were going to start seeing a lot more ads from Microsoft here on slashdot?
Does any else rememeber the stupid text highlighting popup tosser that used to install along with things like gator? It used to highlight words in anything you read on the computer, making them hyperlinks to advertisements related to the words...
~~ Please keep your arms, legs, and outright stupidity inside the ride at all times. Thank You ~~
If it looks like an ad, feels like an ad, or smells like an ad...
I won't read it anyway.
thelikesofwhich.com
As long as GeoCities and Tripod exist, we won't have to worry about our text being turned into ads!
Free speech shall remain!
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
This is nothing new. This has been around for a while. For an example, check out www.experts-exchange.com. A lot of websites and forums already have this implemented.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Anyone else find it amusing that the banner ads supplied by Google on the article page are all for pop-up blockers?
Boy, if the hyperlinking habits of bloggers messed with google's pagerank algorithm, just imagine the damage this will do.
-Colin
If it's a pop up then my browser will block it like it does the rest. If it's not then I will just ignore it like I do all the rest that are all ready out there. Oh well.
Evolution or ID?
A wiki is a collection of community written documents, with useful links to related articles. For example Wikipedia, an encyclopedia written in Wiki. See those blue links scattered on the page? They lead to articles.
Seems like they took the idea, but they sell the words! It will be annoying.
For example See the word Linux on a page. Joe user will think great, I'm going to learn about linux! But get in your face adverts for linux support services instead!
Wikis are good, Adwords are bad!
I have a fetish for traffic cones
But we all know that it's not going to be like that. Someone's going to use the word 'prevention' when discussing Enron finances, and the link will jump to the site of Trojan prophylactics.
The best we can hope for is a few really badly conceived links, or news stories which start to look like an Everything2 node with fifty links per paragraph, so that this form of ad will fade away, too.
[
It will be less than a month before popular browsers have plug-ins to stop this ads, they are too easy to stop. Depending on how it's done they may be stopped by conventional pop-up blockers.
BTW, I think the ads down the side of that article show how a good ad's system works. Google has given 4 (nicely subtle) ads, all about stopping (not so subtle) ads. Great!
Maybe its because I'm from a journalistic background, but I really think that the one sacred ground is the journalistic content. You can add adverts and flying noisy banners, nags and clickthroughs, and i'll still read the article.. I won't like it, but it hasn't crossed That Line. This does.
Hiding adverts inside of the content, appearing as part of the context, is disgusting. I'm sickened by the concept.
News 20 years from now: "This just in... McDonalds tastier than ever! More at 11." I only can hope something changes to destroy this trend by then.
you had me at #!
On the Ad Age page, the topmost Google Page Ads were for Popup blockers. Go figure.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Isn't this the same thing as microsoft smart text, a feature where internet explorer would be "helpful" and add hyperlinks to microsoft sites in whatever page you were browsing based on keywords?
I think widespread consumer criticism about hijacking webpages put the kibosh on that. But I use firefox, so I don't know what IE is doing these days
More music, fewer hits
Recently a National Cash Register executive related a story in Business 2.0 magazine. I'm paraphrasing but the short of it goes like this:
Joe is a new salesman and brings in his first order from a customer. The processing clerk tells Joe he has to take the order back because it's not filled out correctly. Joe's manager drops by to see how the new salesman is doing. Down in the mouth, Joe relates the story about how the processing clerk is sending him back out to the customer to get a corrected order.
The manager is livid. He marches to the processing clerk and tells him: "When my man comes in here with a sale, you get up and shake his hand because he's keeping you employed! If there's a problem with the order, you fix it!"
So where does this relate to this story? Easy: the bills have to get paid. There's bandwidth to pay for, computers, journalists salaries or freelancing fees...something has to pay for it. You can argue all you want about whether or not some of those things are paid at the level they should be (high executive salaries, high sales commissions)...but they still have to be paid. And after all that, mass media conglomerates have shareholders to think about, too.
Plus...there's a glut of freelance journalists out there. Freelancers especially should be glad they get their stuff published anywhere. It may leave a bad taste in your mouth to see links in your article or pop-ups because of keywords in your article, but it could be worse: your article could have not been published.
If this "trend" is all you've got to worry about, you've got too much time on your hands.
My sigs always suck.
Great, now when I read an article full of links, I don't know if those links have relevant information put there by the author (like slashdot stories)
Or if it is just garbage trying to sell me yet another penis enlargement kit.
CWS.WINSHOW has been hyperlinking random web text on Internet Explorer for weeks now. Rather annoying. Anybody know how I can remove it permanently? I use the the Shredder, but the little bastard keeps on coming back.
If this linking takes place at the content provider end, then we either don't return there, or we develop a plug-in to block them...
If they try and weasel it into the browser-end, then HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
awww crap
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
It's like the old adage says - you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Or, as my college roommate postulated, you can present me with the material, but you can't make me care. Or can you? That's the challenge for advertisers, I suppose.
'If it looks like a pop-up, feels like a pop-up or interrupts like a pop-up, we might as well just assume consumers will outright hate and reject the format,'
Didn't Einstien say that insanity is doing the exact same thing over and over again expecting different results?
They keep trying with the boorish, intrusive ads as if an irritating ad wasn't necessarily an irritating ad. All web marketers must be insane. Or stupid. Wait wait... let's not be narrow-minded about this.... they could easily be both.
On a more serious note: whatever. I don't care. Go ahead and put ads right in the context of something I'm trying to read. It's really irritating trying to read a forum post or an article and having the text keep changing color because there are ads weaved into it. Put that on your site, and you can rest assured that I'll leave in a heartbeat and never come back, just like I've already done with some sites. Hell, even I can remember from the one marketing class I had to take that ads were supposed to heighten interest in or raise awareness of a product in a positive manner. Yet, these bumbling morons keep turning the advertising into the content, or pushing the content out of the way in favor of the advertising so that people get pissed off by a popup or whatever, THEN see what's being advertised.
What good does it do me to have to struggle with ads to read content? Why should I come back? If the ads destroy the value of the site.... how is it even an idea worth trying? What good does it do the advertiser to raise product awareness with a medium that's making them MAD. What, you want people to be angry when they think of your car? Idiots...
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
I quit reading OSnews for this very reason. Then I found OSVIEWS which is better but doesn't help with my BeOS addiction.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Now that's news!
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
I wonder if writers will start using obscure words and literary allusions in order to confuse these ad-words systems (And Google's GMail). Deft use of langugage should help both elevate reader's vocabulary and muddle the automated systems.
Time to go see if the Amazon ranking for Thesauri are up.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Osnews have started to use this technique of advertising. Personally I find that the ad can get in the way of the article, very annoying!!
So when we get our next serial killer story, we will see an ad for a better, more powerful gun?
When we read about a tanker truck accident on I-94 outside of Battle Creek, MI will we start reading ads about Kellogg's Corn Flakes (based in Battle Creek)?
Will an Amtrak derailment story prompt Greyhound ads?
Where the hell does this stop?
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
We should all be aware of Google's threats to our liberty. The almighty search engine's practices have become more and more worrisome. For example:
Its no wonder that more and more people are questioning their motives. Read Google Watch if you don't believe Google is evil.
What I don't understand is that ever since the first ad was put in a magazine it was just fine to have the ads appear above, below or beside an article. Print advertisers never felt the need to infest the content with ads the way web advertisers do.
I guess it's because, unlike print ads, we can measure how successful a web ad is by how many times the link is clicked and they now realize that people have been ignoring print ads for years.
I know we need advertisers so we can pay for the content and delivery but there has to be a better way than the annoying, in-your-face techniques they have come up with so far. I don't know about anyone else but slapping me in the face to get my attention is not going to make me buy your product/service. In fact, it will have to opposite effect.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
This just requires a more advanced "media literacy" as you need to be more aware of where the link leads to. I guess most /.ers are used to glance at the status bar before following any link - a thing that most web users do not do, of course.
It would be considerably more alarming if a practice of obfuscating the links would become more common. Relevant-seeming links would redirect you to commercial sites - this could potentially render the whole experience of internet browsing very, very annoying.
have been using misleading links for years for years
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Seems like they took the idea, but they sell the links! It will be annoying.
That last sentence I do agree with. I've no problem with AdWords, however, as long as they are unobstructive (no pop-ups) and properly distinguished from the content, which it doesn't look like these will be. What's the alternative? Subscription Google?
Users are happy, status quo is maintained yet again. There really is no situation where i can see this not being a total annoying pain in the ass, and there is no way this will stand.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
Not only is it annoying see these types of ads on news sites and what not but one of the places I enjoy playing CS/DOD/NS at(shameless plug http://www.dexworld.org) has started putting the same types of ads into our POSTS in the forums.
So when i'm posting in the tech support forum or whatever and mention one of 9-16 keywords they have relating to different companies from IBM to Nvidia to ATI those words automatically get highlighted and linked to a site where you can buy those companies products..
I don't particullary care for this because while I'm not sure of the legality of it, I don't want MY post and MY thoughts to be the vehicle for targeted ads that I may or may not support. Its one thing with banner ads n such.. but on my posts? i find that to be a new low and now I make sure to use spaces to defeat it.
And to all of you who will say it pays for the site blah blah.. I donate to the site regulary to help keep it running.. I just don't like my forum posts being turned into ADS!!
Is this why I keep seeing a million "Please buys animated smileys from us" popups all over the place? :S
in that article. Woohoo!
If you're familiar with the Prisoner's Dilema, you can understand ad agencies... if only one ad out there is intrusive, it will bore its way into the conciousness of a huge number of people. If they all do it, people get irritated or just filter it out.
So, if everyone plays nice ads are modestly effective. If one person plays dirty, they win by a good margin. If everyone plays dirty, ads are less than modestly effective. Human nature being what it is, nobody wants to play nice if the guy playing dirty will beat them... so everyone plays dirty and everyone loses.
Also, ad agencies don't care if they ruin the quality of everything their campaigns touch, so long as the client sees enough effect from the effort to pay for the next campaign. They get their souls from the same place as most lawyers, and Darl.
I see some people comparing this to Microsoft's failed "Smart Text". However there's a HUGE difference. Here it is the web site owners that are receiving the revenues and deciding whether or not to put these text ads. With Smart Text it was Microsoft that decided universally what a user sees on ALL websites, while no ad revenues go to the respective site owners.
I for one don't see a problem with this model. Here are my reasons:
#1. The rightful people are receiving the rewards for their hard work. And why not? The more ad dollars you allow them, the better and more content we all get. Do you really want more subscription-based content sites, or is free more appealing to you?
#2. How annoying exactly is it? Ok I agree that the inline popups can be annoying, but then you're reading the article. Why in the world would you go mouse exploring all over the words if you're not interested in their ads? To me this type of advertising is NOT annoying at all. Much better than the popups or the skyscraper ads that pollute your screen.
#3. Whenever the issue of advertising arises, you see a boatload of people whining about how ads are not remotely interesting nor pertinent to their interests. Guys would be presented with tampon banners, etc. Well, here you have context-specific ads. If you happen to be reading an article about cars and you see a link for Mercedes (and you just so happen to be interested in that), you can now click on it and be happy!
eTrade SUCKS
I noticed a comment in the article by someone from Off-Road.com complaining about not being able to write "Jeep" without an ad being attached to it.
I went to the Off-Road.com forums, but couldn't see any instance of the word "Jeep" having green underlining.
Anyone seeing this actually work anywhere? Is it an ActiveX control or something that I'm blocking?
If it looks like a pop-up, feels like a pop-up or interrupts like a pop-up, you are not running Mozilla.
Boom!
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
I thought the theory/practice quote was attributed to Yogi Berra.
The sad thing about all the advertising that inundates us is that it simply pushes up the cost of doing business. Company A must advertise more because company B does, and the consumer always pays for it in the end. There is only so much money the consumer has to spend.
Very annoying!
-If the linked words are marked by another colour or underlined. A well trained reader has a few fixations of the eye on each row of text. But these markings would not be seen as standard text, and will thus generate more fixations and a "stuttered" reading experience.
-Trying to read a wiki text with a lot of references illustrates this point: It is OK if the text is short, but a longer text is virtually unreadable.
Go here and click the demo link to see what it's all about. The popup is relatively small and un-intrusive, so stop exaggerating things and find out for yourself.
_ pr oduct_page/how.htm
https://www.vibrantmedia.com/content/intellitxt
eTrade SUCKS
This seems like an ok idea as long as they dont take too many liberties, really its all about better browsers with more tools to help the masses stop annoying scripts. The reason advertisers take such liberties is because people dont care and will still buy a product that interests them - its exactly the same with sex - a girl/guy isnt gonna care if a hot guy/girl is being a asshole/bitch, they still wanna get off with them, don't tell me it aint true y'all.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
"i find that to be a new low and now I make sure to use spaces to defeat it." ...use the same method I use to get around swear filters when I want to. For example, if you're on one of those boards that uses tags bounded by [], then FU[B][/B]CK YOU will read as "FUCK YOU" in your post, but the filter won't be able to realize it. On all forums software I've seen with these ads, it works there too.
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
A good drink can Be anything, for sure. I like to Drink NesQuick. Is that your choice, too? It's much better then Ovaltine.
Gives me A reason to post. It's not Christmas, but that's my Story.
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Anyone remember when DejaNews did this?
Read about it, e.g., here.
As I recall, it lasted about a month.
Have a separate page, labeled simply "Advertisments". Put all advertising there. Keep it away from the news and editorial content.
Provide a visible link to the ad-page from your front page and in your navigational construct. (For example, Slashdot could put this link in the left-hand link list, under it's own heading or under, say, Services.)
Keep statistics for how much this pays off. Don't knock the idea until it's been thoroughly tried.
This will force advertisers to be truly interesting. Maybe sort the ads into categories, or prioritize ads that are related to recently visited pages.
The idea is to be maximally non-annoying.
As an aside, I find google-text-ad-style ads to be very intrusive since they are harder to block. There are periods in my life (for example when I'm flush for cash) that I am extremely disinterested in (commercial and other) solicitation, and exposing me to advertising then only causes me to feel hostility towards the advertiser.
Please, spread this idea.
We experimented with this in a paper magazine I worked for - putting all the commercials in a clearly designated spot in the back. Other magazines have tried the same approach. AFAIK, however, they haven't kept statistics and neither did we.
The effects on good-will this has will be interesting to observe.
(For television, this would be analogous to putting all of a networks commercial spots on a separate channel.)
Sounds somehow like the SmartTags Microsoft introduced (also SmartTags aren't about ads only *g*)
What riles people is the notion that some link exists between news reporting, editorials and advertisers.
In theory, journalists like to think of themselves as crusaders, exposing the truth to the public. It's a noble goal and I'm happy they're carrying on the crusade.
But in practice, we're all conditioned by what we've been exposed to in the past, and much of what we read, see and hear only serves to reinforce points of view that were formed earlier.
The tie between money, media and politics is not new.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
AOL has been doing this very thing for years. Such promotional placements are more valuable because the ad is relevant to the context in which the reader sees it (more so than rotating banner ads,for example). Ad placements and intrusiveness will rise until readers reach the limits of their patience and traffic begins to drop off, or ad effectiveness (by whatever measure the ad industry prefers to use) fades. Since the web is still relatively young, no one quite knows where that point is.
Nuclear war would certainly set back cable--Ted Turner
5. What browsers does the IntelliTXT product support?
IntelliTXT currently supports Internet Explorer 5.0 and above. If the browser is not supported, then the user will simply not see any IntelliTXT.
Just another reason to dump IE, I guess.
The origin of these lays with a long-time wish for many writers of documents, such as technical documents.
Rather than explain on every single page what a "TFT" is, highlight the first (or first three, or every, whatever) occurance of the word on the page and have it create a small pop-up with brief description. Optionally, a link to another document could be offered.
This could be done manually, but instead including an external javascript (src="") is much easier to control and maintain.
In a way, it behaves like CSS - applying itself to word-elements, rather than mark-up elements.
Of course, ad-people quickly saw the opportunity to use it for advertising. That doesn't make the technology bad, though. Much like P2P services and those using it for illicit acts.
If you check the
FAQ you will see that this advertising only works in IE, so I guess most readers here are not going to be too bothered by it.
In some places, e.g. UK, the authors of a work can assert "moral rights" and object to derogatory treatment and so on - in France the ability to do this is stronger (interesting, the US consistently resisted implementing moral rights to satisfy Berne). It's impossible to transfer these moral rights: they _always_ remain with the original authors, even if the publishers own the economic rights in the copyright. I wonder if this kind of manipulation to the text could be objected to by the authors, on the grounds that it is subjecting their work to derogatory treatment. One of the problems with moral rights is that there is little case law: they've been _very_ hard to pursue, the court have been very relucant to give authors leverage over publishers and those who own the economic rights.
Popups clearly do not affect the work per se, they just add junk around the edges. Same goes for all other sorts of advertising. Also, some reasonable allowance is made for commercial purposes (e.g. splitting a work up into separate parts to make it easier for people to read it, or whatever). However, this new type of advertising is really quite insidious: it manipulates the text, and possibly it can be considered derogatory because the authors of the text may mean one thing, but the "subtext" of the advertising message may suggest something else: I mean, authors often leave words and phrases to the interpretation of the reader, but when you overload those words with advertising, the advertising may "suggest" something that the author did not intend. I think there's a lot of scope of problems here.
From the article:
"said Kelly McBride, member of the ethics faculty"
I just can't see the name McBride and ethics in the same sentence without recoiling in horror.
You could probably configure a personal proxy server like privoxy to filter out links within a body of text greater than X characters from certain sites, &c. In fact they already have this sort of functionality in an experimental feature that replaces buzzwords on the page with the word "bingo" (don't ask...) so ad texts, especially ones that differ from the context, shouldn't be insurmountable.
You may need to add an option to "de-link" words (or other parts of a page) that point to certain cites. Similar to the way I can choose not to load images from doubleclick. This will allow us to "block" the worst advertisers using this method. For an initial test, just have it de-link stuff that I already declared I don't want content from - i.e. share the blocking list.
For a period of maybe two years, I often watched the old Arsenio Hall show on TV. During that time, I noticed I spent less than $8 on things that I saw advertised.
I think the pool of poorly educated people who would buy something because they saw an ad is diminishing.
Froogle is great for people like me who buy things after doing research.
Has anybody, anywhere, ever found a pop-up ad both in context and immediately useful?
Where are all the relevant, context sensitive ads we were promised?
For additional credit, did the X10 company go bust or did they learn a valuable lesson?
"We've seen response rates 24 times that of banners," Mr. Stevenson said, indicating Web users like IntelliTXT better than other forms of online advertising they encounter.
I though everyone already knew that new advertisement technologies always have dramatically higher response rates not because they are more effective, but simply because they are new. Personally I know that after I see it for the first ten times, I will spend a minute and add a filter to Proxomitron to never see it again.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
The ads are in a different color. Green. (Care to guess the symbolism there?)
Hopefully they are done in a uniform enough way that someone can just produce a CSS filter to make them look like normal text.
With click-happy guys like this feller on the Internet, nothing surprises me anymore.. Need is no longer a necessity ;P
Ads on television???
- 40 lbs of junk snail mail ( about the equivalent
of a box of computer printer paper ) for every
man, woman, and child are thrown away each year
- movie theaters are now showing television
commercials
- google is going to read email to target
advertising
- all sorts of businesses AND US governments
redistributing personal information without
permission.
Now this, where does it stop?
When does the right of a business to make the maximum possible profit ( not stated in the constitution ) __stop__ and the rights of citizens
to their privacy ( stated in the constitution )
begin?
Steve
Wasn't there some Microsoft plan in the mid to late 90s that would do this to any web page viewed with Internet Explorer? I think it died as quickly as it was made public.
Hmmm, what are these popups and why everybody hates them so much? /me clicks middle button on link to read article in another tab later...
I browse with popups disabled. Generally, I leave banner ads alone, but whenever I see one with ugly flashing colors or the ones that jump about like a Chihuahua on meth, I block all images from that server.
When advertisers started using flash to get around that sort of thing (and drag the poor little laptop I use for casual browsing to a crawl in the process), I added the flash blocker where you can click to actually load the flash.
Simple ads have supported newspapers and magazines for years, there's no reason it can't work on the web. The problem is, advertisers are determined to ruin the commons in their race to the bottom. If enough people block the really annoying stuff and leave the unobtrusive, perhaps darwinism can take effect.
At least their ads don't distract me with colorful animations.
It's easy enough to disable this on your own system, even if you have IE, just add the following line to your hosts file:
127.0.0.1 itxt.vibrantmedia.com
That will disable the in-line advertising. The larger issue, of course, is that other people read the things you create. You have no way of controlling the browser THEY use, and whether THEY disable it. So a clueless user who happens to use IE, and reads your post on some site that uses IntelliTXT, it will have ads embedded in it. And they might as well believe YOU put them there. But you won't even be able to see them on your own browser.
So a 3rd party has altered YOUR content that YOU created, without your permission, if it's read by an IE user... and there are a lot of IE users.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
You can see an example of them here, they only workq uestions/2004_03/ind ex.html
in MSIE, so it would seem. They're the green links
that are double-underlined.
http://www.off-road.com/jeep/
Go to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc and edit the
file named HOSTS, add the following to it:
0.0.0.0 itxt.vibrantmedia.com
Now close and reload MSIE for the change to take
effect, visit the site again, and behold: No more
IntelliTXT ads. I would assume this works at any
site that uses them.
Advertisers have been getting sneakier and sneakier and it's all the consumer's fault for not spending enough money. If everyone would spend a larger percentage of your paycheck on worthless garbage then popups, banner ads and all that would go away.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I know RC Universe has this for at least some months: http://www.rcuniverse.com/buynow/keyword.cfm
:)
But seriously, I just hope the idea will sink itself as the traffic to affected sites will (hopefully) drop.
Needless to say it opens some interesting possibilities. For example, whoever buys the most used terms first, gets all the traffic, exactly as with domain names some 10 years ago. Also, one can buy not-so-often used words like "scumbag" and link them to opponent's site
tagword.com has had this same thing for quite some time.
They do little dhtml popups over certain words. It works on the base HTML without having to mess with the page.
Same thing..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
The more you see what advertisers and corporations are trying to do to all forms of media one wonders how long it will be before even main stream consumers will just start tuning out of everything.
Advertising on everything, broadcasting flags to protect playback, single use devices, three or four corps controlling 90% of the North American market. So much for fair-use and free markets!?
Zombie's 2 Worth... Did I mention terrorists... I just did... good ok!
If you have more than 100 links in the same page, Google doesn't index it. I've had some pages kept precisely at 50 links and google visited once, then never returned. Content link-advertising would most certainly get the page banned by Google.
I bet the people at expert-exchange are kicking themselves in the ass for not patenting this one...hehe (or maybe they did!?)
If you must!
It is so much more than this. If it looks like an ad that is interrupting me, or insults me or my intelligence by attempting to sneak its way into the text I am reading when I have clearly rejected looking at the ad in a more traditional location (banner ad, popup, popunder, etc), it won't work.
In fact, if that happens I will make it my business to make note of the company, and make a vow never to buy from them again and make damn sure to spread the word.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
i've tested this on the auto channel website and intellitxt doesn't seem to work with firebird 0.7 on win32 or linux or with lynx (and presumably other text-browsers). also interestingly enough, the left links on the vibrant media website don't work in firebird 0.7 either.
*shrug*
i would have complained, but i guess now i don't really care. =]
I think this guy is being naive about what is really going on when he says in the article:
The response rate is higher only because surfers are not yet familiar with the new format. Over time, response rates will dwindle just like they have for every ad format, including banners and pop-ups.I'm not a hacker, so is this doable, anyone?
<clicks protect>
So, the [Trojan] condoms offer supurior protection...
<clicks trojan>
For only 29.95 you can get information on the Trojan War...
So in two clicks I went from virus protection to information on the Trojan War. The sad part is this might not be too far-fetched.
It was Albert Einstein I beleive that said something to the effect of, "The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again expecting diffirent results."
So by that definition, we can assume the advertisers are insane, correct?
All they do by showing people even more obnoxious and obtrusive ads, and worst of all, offtopic, (google adwords exempt) is create profit for the ad blocking companies. When are they going to learn?
I'm sure most people here wouldn't object to something like this when reading an article:
[Professional Apache Hosting at Reasonable Prices]
To set up Apache, you must first open up the Apache configuration file (Usually /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf) in your favourite editor... etc, etc...
[Classes in administering Apache]
Now, seriously, what would be so bad about that? All it is is ads that can easily be distinguished from the content, are on topic and unobtrusive.
(Please ignore the spelling and grammar errors)
This type of advertising is nothing new. Just do a search on 'scumware', and you'll that this sort of cr*p has been around for a while. It's just that until now it's been delivered via worms and other malicious software. (*cough* bonzi buddy *cough*)
This makes even less sense than popup ads for anti-popup software, and spam.
Sending spam is legal, ethical, and basically a good thing
Funny, haven't heard that name in a while. I was Pete's neighbor for a couple years, long ago. He was a good guy, but went a little too heavy on the drugs. He always seemed to want to be a politician, but it was pretty obvious his druggy past would come back to haunt him. Guess he went into marketing instead. It's good to see he's still fighting the good fight.
Go here and click the demo link to see what it's all about. The popup is relatively small and un-intrusive, so stop exaggerating things and find out for yourself.
I disagree. I did just check out the demo and I find it distracting even before you mouse over.
I completely sympathize with the journalists in this case. To a casual observer, it can appear as if the author manually added the link. This can discredit the author without even receiving anything in return. In any case, it's enough of a distraction to make an article harder to read.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I AM A GOAT FUCKER.
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