A World Free of Advertrocities?
In this interview (brought to my attention by MarketingWonk's Tig Tillinghast), Bob Garfield is so lucid, I just ordered his book!
Cool quote (Bob Garfield says...):
"It’s not about who’s the funniest, who can come up with the best jaw-dropping digital effect, or who can come up with the best celebrity; it’s about selling shit to folks. And my definition of creativity, is figuring out, is marshalling your imagination resources to sell shit to folks, without making them go elsewhere with their remote control or whatever.
"And one of the reasons I’m so charged up about the Internet is because I believe it’s going to force people in the business to entirely rethink what constitutes creativity. It’s not that I’m not dubious of their ability to discard their old values, and their worst habits, and their worst impulses. I’m not particularly sanguine about that, but I think when they encounter failure using the old paradigm, they’ll understand that a gigantic opportunity awaits if they’ll only start thinking straight."
Posted by Andrew
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Wednesday, November 12, 2003
"Eddie" the Googlebot Lands on IRC
According to this article, a Googlebot named "Eddie" has recently been spending some time on Internet Relay Chat (IRC).
The bot's precise attraction to IRC is unknown. Maybe it's the compelling chatter of file swappers, or perhaps the romance that blossoms between lonely users. Regardless, Google says the bot is no big deal. According to the company, Eddie is simply "an experiment aimed at improving Google's search quality." I'm not sure how hours of text conversations will help Google improve its search, but then again, I'm not an engineer. I'm definitely curious, though.
Posted by Adam
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Tuesday, November 11, 2003
New Traffick Article:
Partner Traffic from PPC Affiliate Programs: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
By Andrew Goodman
If you're interested to see just how a company slated for a massive IPO has chosen to conduct itself lately, read carefully. I don't really like to dump on Google considering how far they've taken so many aspects of online search and advertising. But ... well ... read on. It wouldn't be right to simply put a lid on it.
Posted by Cory
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Monday, November 10, 2003
IE Add-On Enables Digital Rights Management
Why is it that this recently released "rights-management" add-on for Internet Explorer makes me queasy? Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is a hot growth area for content distribution, and in theory is a good thing because it protects digital content from piracy, illegal duplication and so forth.
Yet, somehow, when Microsoft gets involved, it's gotta make you wonder what they're really up to. With their operating system monopoly, they have in the powerful position of being able to control a vital component of the global economy and society.
Industry observers already know that MS is trying to woo Hollywood and become the standard online media format, complete with their vision of DRM. But, if it were up to me, I'd be very suspicious of Microsoft's intentions. Why not throw Apple a bone for its Quicktime format, Hollywood, and keep the computer industry more diverse?
Sheesh, don't you just get tired of Microsoft trying to be the master and commander of everything that's built with zeroes and ones?
Posted by Cory
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Sunday, November 09, 2003
Fox News Directs Users to Paid Search Ads
While browsing FoxNews.com for "fair and balanced" news, I noticed that their news articles now have built-in links to search results about designated keywords. See this article, "Internet Tax Ban Stalled in Senate," for a look-see.
Notice in the third paragraph, there is a reference to "electronic commerce," which links to this search results page, which is a page powered by Webcrawler. It's no surprise, then, that these "search" results are led off by paid ads syndicated by Overture. Looks like their idea is to "encourage" pre-built searching, and in the process achieve a sort of contextual advertising with more relevance. Very clever, Fox News.
Webcrawler, that long dead search engine that is essentially riding its own coattails thanks to some semblance of brand recognition, left the search engine business years ago, and is now owned by Infospace. They are now mainly a purveyor of metasearch engines that lean heavily toward paid links to make their money. I can't say I blame them for trying to make greenbacks, but I don't find such metasearch engines particularly useful (why not just go straight to Google or Yahoo?).
As far as I can tell, this is the first time a major news site has found a way to legitimately direct visitors to paid search listings, but I think it is very smart, and shows that, due to the lucrative nature of paid search ads, this practice will only increase. It probably won't be long until other major news sites start doing the same.
Posted by Cory
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