Archive for the 'advertising' Category

Page 4 of 6

Yahoo! Toolbar is misbehaving

Published on October 4, 2006 in advertising. 2 Comments

Eventhough it claims to help you detect and remove spyware, the Yahoo! Toolbar – now included/suggested in lots of freeware downloads (Flash,)- practically behaves as a piece of adware itself.

I subscribed to a Yahoo Group (for Flickr users in Brussels) and the first time I wanted to access the group’s homepage, I got an ActiveX popup for the Yahoo toolbar. I know I don’t need the toolbar to see the homepage, but I guess a lot of people will think they do, and click ‘Yes’ automatically. I installed it too to see how aggressive the toolbar would be afterwards.

yahoo toolbarThe toolbar shuts down all your IE windows after installation, and a new window appears with the new toolbar. It features spyware protection (with Norton security), multiple tabs, Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Mail/Messenger integration. It tries to set your homepage and preferred search engine to Yahoo! but I did not allow that. The toolbar takes up quite a bit of screen real estate, with the tabs and all.

Let’s say you’re like me, and you’re not that impressed with the toolbar (I use Google’s toolbar and am quite happy with it). You would start with disabling the Yahoo! toolbar (View -> Toolbars). Much to your surprise, the next IE window you open, the toolbar would reappear. Even when you open a link in a new window: there’s the toolbar. Now that’s pretty annoying.

The best way to go is to remove it completely:
Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> Yahoo! Toolbar for IE

I’m not saying that Yahoo! is evil, but the way their toolbar is promoted and the way it keeps popping up even when you don’t want it to, reminds me a lot of ‘shopping toolbars’ and other malware. Certainly if they want to promote it as a tool to combat spyware and adware, they might do some effort to behave correctly too.

Adsense: The long tail of spare change

Published on April 26, 2006 in advertising, Google and Web2.0. 2 Comments

Google dollars

Last year, Google took in about $2.7 billion through ads on other people’s sites, accounting for 44% of its ad revenues. Most of that money probably came through big sites, but a decent portion must have come from the little guys. When you add up all the under-$100 AdSense balances earned by the Scott Karps of the world, the total must be a pretty impressive number. That’s free working capital for Google, or it can invest the stash and make even more money. It’s a devilishly good idea.
roughtype.com via kingsley2.com and google.blognewschannel.com

Nicholas Carr then goes on clarifying that if you have more than $10 on your account, and you officially terminate your Adsense account, Google will send you the money anyway. In any case, there are thousands of Adsense accounts with sleeping money that cannot be touched until they break the $100 barrier.

BUSINESSMODEL?

Let’s see, thousands of small $ amounts that are blocked, that still represents tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars. Let’s see if we can come up with a business model to recover some of that money without breaking the Adsense Terms of Service.
Goal: fill the bucket, i.e. reach the $100 mark and then leave.
Continue reading ‘Adsense: The long tail of spare change’

Adsense also looks at search terms

Published on April 6, 2006 in advertising and Google. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I had been wondering just how much information Google Adsense uses to select the right contextual ads. Specifically, do they use the referring page also. I just got part of the answer:
Adsense: after search on Antwerp
Continue reading ‘Adsense also looks at search terms’

Google moving into Interactive TV

Published on March 30, 2006 in advertising, Google and TV. Closed

Google is looking for a “Product Manager – Interactive TV”:

In this role, you will provide leadership on product vision and execution of projects that enable using Google’s search and advertising technologies to enhance users’ Television viewing experience.
(…)
These (trends) include but are not limited to the intersection of internet and Television technologies, video-on-demand, personal video recorders and emergence of next generation set-top-boxes with IP connectivity. You will then identify areas where use of Google’s search and advertising technology can enhance this user experience and define appropriate products to deliver these user benefits
from Google jobs

Google TV: with advertising?

Fewer people will be channel surfing, and more people will want to sit down and literally search for something to watch.
radioactiveyak via CNN Money

Continue reading ‘Google moving into Interactive TV’