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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 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'.
I believe Microsoft recently stated that their goal was to ensure that everyone saw at least one Microsoft ad when they surfed.
.NET ads on Linux websites.
It's just funny to see
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It sucked badly as it slowed page loads down while it scaned through the page looking for the keywords to highlight.
yes, but a wiki requires that you click on the blue link... these shove a mouseover box in your face when you hover the mouse pointer over it...
not only that, but it smacks too much like what Microsoft wanted to do with their browser putting "Smart Tags" on top of ordinary webcontent. That got shot down very fast as a breach of the writers copyright as they were messing with original works in an unauthorised manner...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
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!!
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!!
"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?
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.
They even target sick people using 'tele-screens'.
Seriously fucked-up psychology.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
That demo is a flash popup, not the same as a real page. According to that it has two effects on the page: selecting a normal ad to go on the page, and making double-underlined green links that give popups when selected. SO I suspect that you'll at least see the underlines, whihc would be a distraction, till a filter comes along a week later.
it stealses our precious vision!
There's been a lot of whinging about Micros~1's latest Innovation, with talk of the horrible nerve they have to "re-edit anybody's site, without the owner's knowledge or permission, in a way that tempts users to leave".
Aside from the usual Micros~1 practice of claiming others' technology as their own, and the icky ripoff of the Aqua GUI in their screenshot (What is with this fascination with white or almost-white backgrounds? GUIs, Web pages, everything. White backgrounds are too harsh and make reading difficult. One of the more significant advances between Win3.1 and Win9x was the death of the horrible white background everywhere, and now they're doing their best to revive it.), I see this as a good thing.
For once, they seem to be behaving somewhat responsibly in the integration of new functionality (although I wonder how true this would be were the specter of an antitrust breakup not looming over them). Smart Tags are quite visibly different, both in appearance and behavior. They aren't including any tag packages with IE (although I have no doubt they'll plug their ad-pimping package as much as they possibly can). All processing is done locally, which saves bandwidth and prevents a list of all the URLs you visit being sent to Redmond ("What's Related", anyone?).
Smart Tags scare Web "designers" to no end, because they exploit the most fundamental and useful feature of the World Wide Web: hyperlinks. Hyperlinks scare them for 2 simple reasons:
Obviously, these can't be used as arguments against the introduction of these tags, so instead they complain about how their sites are being edited behind their backs. But this is a lie and everyone knows it. Their pages are still stored on their server in exactly the same pattern of bytes as before. What frightens them is that the reader might be given the option to go read something else, and this is not right.
What they don't realize is that they never had the right nor the ability to control the presentation of their site. From the moment their pages are posted on a public server, I have the right to do anything I want with them. I can view the source. I can critique their site and their product. And I can disable their grotesque colors, their unreadable fonts, and their gratuitous JavaScript. I can see if their site contains any value to me, and if not, I can leave. A browser is not a television for them to flash pretty images on. It is a tool for me to explore publications, and as such I expect it to provide me with cross-referencing features.
There is public documentation on creating Smart Tag packages. Anyone can write their own annotations and distribute them to friends or the world at large. Of course, this ability is only useful to "the hate groups, the spammers and the junk marketers on the Web". I want to see Smart Tags in Mozilla. I want to see widespread grassroots dictionaries, references, and
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