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Google's Smart Advertising Leads to More Clicks
The New York Times has a story discussing the sophisticated technique that allows for the spot-on advertisements Google serves up on pages across the internet. From the article: "Hidden behind its simple white pages, Google has already created what it says is one of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence systems ever built. In a fraction of a second, it can evaluate millions of variables about its users and advertisers, correlate them with its potential database of billions of ads and deliver the message to which each user is most likely to respond. Because of this technology, users click ads 50 percent to 100 percent more often on Google than they do on Yahoo, Mr. Noto estimates, and that is a powerful driver of Google's growth and profits. 'Because the ads are more relevant," he said, "they create a better return for advertisers, which causes them to spend more money, which gives Google better margins.' (Yahoo is working on its own technology to narrow that gap.)"
Apparently, not too many since there are still sites with not one but two giant flashing banner ads that adds stress to our daily lives.
Charles Jo
It figures that one of the most sophisticated AIs ever developed would find its use in advertising.
And not at just google. Here's a few great examples of placement I have seen:
- In an article about three boys being found in a trunk (a story a few months back, they were playing and got locked in) and how the father of one found them and fell to his knees, is a tower ad. on the right side about "get the perfect car" with a guy hunched down hugging the bumper of a car
- Google word ads. for "LED/LCD Digital Signage" on a forum "Sign in" page
- German car ads in a news story about a holocaust anniversary
My point is that while often great, automatic targeted ads. often seem completely off-base or even insensitive.
And now, the same people are screaming about privacy rights, google's "monopoly" and evil public shareholder interests, and now you guys are using google's resources, infrastructure and all their hard work by ignoring cookies and blockings ads.
IT ISN'T THE SAME PEOPLE. If you can demonstrate that it actually is largely (or even moderately) the same set of people, then I'll eat some humble pie, but I really, really doubt it.
They combine everything you want in one place. Google is getting that way, but at the start they were a pure search engine. Yahoo gives you news, mail, chat, your own webspace/blog, music streaming and collaborative filtering, their own messenger service and chatrooms, frequently-changing information that you want to check repeatedly in the same place (music charts, sports league tables, television listings, a selection of cartoons,...), and of course directory and search if they don't have what you want. On a typical day my internet use consists of checking my email, chatting on irc, reading a few webcomics, some bashquotes, slashdot, k5 and plastic, and then possibly looking something up via wikipedia and/or google. For a typical user I'd add blogging and watching some streamed videos to that. You can do basically all of that (without always those specific sites, but yahoo's versions do the same thing, or at least try to) from yahoo, without going anywhere else, possibly only needing a single page if you set up your personalised homepage properly. The value they provide is in being a one stop shop where you can do everything you want to on the internet.
I am trolling
What's gullible about it? I mean, seriously - why so anti business? The internet doesn't run for free and someone has to pay the bills - that someone is business - business needs sales, ads drive sales. The fact that when I am buying cool stuff online, and using google to find it they offer me a selection of ads at the right... is actually very handy. Especially as google knows that I am in the UK, so the ads are pre-filtered down to only those companies that will sell to the UK - it saves me time and helps me find what I am looking for. Hating technology like this because someone makes money from it is just a warped worldview.
I ran a blog for a year, and after six months was achieving very high traffic. However, the AdSense ads being served up to my market were so utterly irrelevant (and clicks so rare) they were compromising the quality of my blog content. I pulled AdSense, and went with a competitor.
The key problem was that AdSense places ads purely on the basis of word content, but NOT context. So, for example, if a web post mentioned the Bible or cars, I'd get ads for Christians or cars, neither of which my target audience was remotely interested in.
AdSense needs to allow users to specify the type of ads in serves up.
WTH! You owe it to Google !!!!
Imagine, google goes out of business and you can't just click on the right top corner of your browser and type a few words which will get you the answer you need. Imagine the old age of cluttered search engines where each result was bought out by the corporates in auctions or by threatening.
IMHO, we have a moral responsibility towards Google to keep it alive, to make them innovate further, be no evil than they are right now.
Regarding your private life, why do you think only Google can track you. When you leave traces all over the internet, sign up with scores of those sites, do you think you are protecting your privacy. For all practical purposes, this is no age for cribbing.