Online advertising
p2pnet.net News:- Google has become obscenely rich because millions of suckers (oops, advertisers) believe surfers will rush out and buy, or use, whatever it is they’re touting online via Google Adsense nonsense, via pop-ups, or via whatever other means it’s currently using to stick ‘product’ into our faces.
And the same applies to any of the thousands of companies raking in eye-popping revenues through online spamvertising.
But although the implicit and undeniable message is, ‘You’re stone dumb’ because you’re expected to take all this bilge seriously, it must work, mustn’t it? Otherwise, company owners wouldn’t be spending all that money trying to persuade you that their whatever it is is better than someone else’s whateveritis? Would they?
Of course, not everyone bothers about advertising or trying to compete with the competition.
Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, for example, prefer to take a short cut. They try to sue potential, existing and ex-customers into buying ‘product’.
And not all ads are hard-core. Some represent sponsorship.
Be that as it may, “The dirty little secret of Silicon Valley is that no one knows exactly who is going where on the Web,” says BusinessWeek Online. “That flies in the face of the impression that online advertising is the most dependably trackable ad medium of all time, a big reason spending on Web ads is expected to grow 33% this year, to $16 billion. But confusion over traffic measurement could cast a chill over the Web 2.0 craze. Valuations for startups such as Facebook Inc. and YouTube Inc. appear to be doubling every few months, but those numbers are based on traffic figures that could be misleading.”
What! Misleading, you say?
“From the start, measuring online traffic was a juggling act,” says the story. “Rather than simply relying on a Web site’s traffic reports, advertisers traditionally compared that data with information from Nielsen//NetRatings Inc. (NTRT ) and comScore, independent services that recruit Web surfers to record their mouse clicks. Those outfits argue that there are many reasons not to just count the clicks off a Web site’s server logs. For instance, comScore points out that servers would count pop-up ads as a page view if the tracking service didn’t filter them out.
“Independent traffic analysis becomes more important as bigger chunks of advertising flow online and the threat of “click fraud,” which inflates ad bills, grows bigger. “No wonder that a host of newer services, such as Alexa and Hitwise, are highlighting the weaknesses of the older traffic-measuring companies and are muscling onto the scene with alternatives. By providing some free traffic data via their Web sites, these outfits make it easier for anyone to publish an estimate. But they also have their own blind spots and are making side-by-side comparisons vastly more confusing.”
And so on.
However, the bottom line is what’s important and, “Some observers expect that in time a variety of metrics, such as time spent online, will be applied to different services until one measurement that combines a set of factors can emerge,” says BusinessWeek Online.
But, it adds, “Until that happens … the Internet will have to deal with the discrepancies. And Web metrics, like company valuations, will remain a crapshoot.”
Meanwhile, spamvertisers will continue to pollute the Net with ad displays which quite possibly do more to turn people off than turn them on.
Also See:
BusinessWeek Online – Web Numbers: What’s Real? , October 23, 2006
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October 18th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
This site advertises. Thanks for sticking *product* in my face.
Hypocrites.
October 18th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
— And not all ads are hard-core. Some represent sponsorship —
p2pnet isn’t an entrepreneurial site. I’m here 24/7, I have a family and a mortgage and the income from the sponsors barely supports us and the site.
I could have a lot of advertisers promoting gambling, porn, and wanting pop-ups and so on. But I turn them all down. And that’s the truth.
Cheers!
October 18th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
You really piss me off. WHat gives you the right to spout your crap at us anyway and who says you should be paid for it? There are thousands of other sites that do theyre thing without expecting anyone to pay them for it.
October 18th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
If you don’t enjoy this site, then please take advantage of the “thousands of other sites” that suit you better. I don’t mind the ads here, because I can focus on the content, and I am glad it’s both entertaining and enlightening. Well done, Jon!
October 18th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
I appreciate that servers and on-line presence cost money and it has to come from somewhere. If the initial poster hasn’t figured out what to do to escape ads, that’s his problem. Still the costs of server hosting come around every month regularly and have to be met or there is no site. Not everyone is in the position of financial security when it comes to meeting those payment demands.
One of the biggest turn-offs to me is the ad. Especally those that jump in your face or like most of us are now aware of the spammers. For the spammer that comes here, I am sure he doesn’t take the time to read the responces. I don’t take the time to read his spams either. Once I get an eyeball of the leading text, I’m gone from that post without ever looking. So he is wasting his time as well as mine. I honestly resent this yoyo as he has forced the whole forum to deal with validation as a result without ever totally stopping his actions. Why in the world would I reward him for that behavior by a click beyond closing the post? I resent both him and his spam.
The popup, the popunder, the flasher, and spyware are all products of the advertisters and they can go suck on it for all I care. Just as I won’t reward the spammer, neither will I reward those who employ such tactics; not on the website and not in the store. Whenever I go to the store if I stand in front of a product, I don’t look at its placing on the shelves to indicate its value. I think about the last time I tried that product and if it was worth the money. If the answer is no; no sale.
The advertisers have fooled a lot of folks into supplying space to carry their wares and companies to pay for it. That doesn’t mean it works. It certainly doesn’t work in my case, I promise you.
October 18th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Online spamvertising is about to get very expensive if people choose to use a free (no charge as well as GPL -open source) program called SpammerSkewer. I have been working diligently on this program for several months, and I believe I finished the final tweaks.
SpammerSkewer works by downloading cryptographically signed instruction files from other people running who also run SpammerSkewer. SpammerSkewer then uses these instruction files to visit and post spam complaints to the sales forms of spamvertised websites. The idea is to shove our complaints back into the faces of the inconsiderate and pushy assholes who feel like they have the right to take a crap in our inboxes and pollute our screens whenever they feel.
All I need to do now is find a website ballsey enough to host the program as well as run a nework seeder. When this is done, I will release the beta program.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
likewise; i run a website and run ads on it to cover hosting costs. The ads i choose are ones that (shouldn’t) launch any pop-ups or other things that i find irritating while browsing (those dhtmls ones that expand on mouseover for example.) ads dont have to be a problem