Contextual Advertising = Major Suckage

Posted in Google by Elliott Back on June 19th, 2005.

You all already know this, but contextual advertising isn’t actually that great. Take, for example, a search on google for my name. We get some identity-confusing silliness:

Who Owns Elliott?
Is the Name Elliott Available?
Find Out If Your Name Is Registered
my-name-is-my-domain.com

Who owns me? Well, my mother, maybe, or the IRS perhaps–or maybe my girlfriend. But not you, Google!

Find People in Elliott
Get current phone and address, find
anyone in the USA!
www.peoplefinders.com

This one makes me want to go to the doctor and get an x-ray. People inside me? Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

Find Elliott
We have what you’re looking for.
Elliott & much more!
www.eWoss.com

I pay my taxes. I have a public email. Why am I being hunted?

All of the above illustrate the problem with contextual advertising (say, Adsense). It makes a fundamental assumption that the people paying to put ads on keywords will choose the most relevant keywords. However, this is most certainly not true–especially with SEO–because human nature is corrupt. Thus, I get Ebay pushing ads to sell me to myself.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 19th, 2005 at 9:20 pm and is tagged with fundamental assumption, peoplefinders, ebay, google, x ray, silliness, human nature, irs, seo, girlfriend, email. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

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Jeanne 3 years ago 1 point
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Ha! I never thought of it that way. I've done a few searches on my name and always find some random family tree.
However, if you do a search on ebay, people make excellent money selling themselves. You could always say you found the image of Mary in your _______ (insert food item).

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