Bill C. sent me this link a few weeks ago and I've meaning to blog about it. Go check it out.

I think he's got some good points there, specifically as to what advertising is when you boil it all away. It's an interruption wanting to sell us one thing when we're in the middle of doing something else. This is true. When you go to Needcoffee, there's a better than average chance you're probably not wanting to see an ad for singles dating service. So there's been a huge mismatch between what might be relevant for you to see vs. what you're actually seeing. I think this happens better online than it does in the real world–in "real life," I would constantly be amazed at the offers I'd receive via snail mail. For example, a special deal on replacing the siding on my house–while I was living in an apartment. It just takes a little bit of checking to know that my address was an apartment at the time–and yet here I was getting mail about an offer I simply could not use.

The internet knows where you are just by your IP, so I'm assuming you're not seeing the same ads I am in some instances. But still, it's not working the way it should. So while I agree with some of the author's ideas in that article, I think the answers are a little simpler and less advertisageddonish.

[[ Continued ]]

Some of you might have noticed, apart from the virtual server apocalypse, that we've gone back to a Google Adsense banner in the header of Needcoffee. For a while there we had a Project Wonderful banner. Well, I had promised earlier to let you know about my experience, and Mark over at Weblog Tools Collection jogged my memory.

Project Wonderful is a pretty nifty idea. You offer up ad space. People bid on said ad space. Highest bidder wins the use of that ad space.

There's other detail bits in there, but that's the gist. No click throughs…they're paying for ad space, which is what needs to happen anyway. If somebody puts up a billboard, they have no way of tracking how many eyes saw it. You can't clickthrough a billboard. So it's pretty much that simple.

Now…I agree with Mark Ghosh's post. The setup is easy. Once you've got them in place, there's little to do but any approvals you've set yourself up for. It doesn't clash with any Adsense you've already got in place. You can divide up ad space into smaller bits, like Ectoplasmosis does on their blog, for example.

There are some things I don't get. Mark says that the ad setup and code generation is confusing. I don't get that. It seemed pretty easy to slap together.

However, the site is slow. And there aren't a lot of advertisers, from what I can gather.

I had a banner across the top of my site and a skyscraper down below the fold. However, the deal is that after two weeks I was making less money off of the Project Wonderful banner than I was off of Google Adsense.

Now, perhaps when there's a better group of advertisers who want to buy the space, they'll be in better shape. And I've still got the skyscraper so I can keep my toe in the pool, so to speak. So we'll see. I like the concept well enough, I think they just need to evolve it a bit.

Here are the bits in their terms and conditions that I thought were interesting:

5. Exclusivity. For any webpage or RSS feed that includes the Ad Code, you agree not to display or link to any other advertising (including but not limited to any listing) that is mapped to or responds to the content of the Ad Page.

Fair enough. It kinda blows what plans I had to use YPN as an alt ad for AdSense. If one AdSense ad unit pops over to YPN, and not another–I'm in violation. So I'd have to run YPN exclusively on certain pages. I checked Google's terms of use and didn't see anything in here about this.

From 9, though, here's where we get the problem others have run into:

g. you are a US-based business and you are operating Your Site and/or Your RSS Feed solely for viewing and use by users within the US; and

Wait, what? I thought those other reports were kidding, but being an internet site that gets traffic from six continents I can't "warrant and covenant" this in any shape or form. Nor do I want to block non-US users. WTF is this? And people actually call Google arrogant?

From 13…

d. the right to use your information for any internal business purpose; and
e. the right to crawl, copy, index or otherwise use the content of Your Site and/or Your RSS Feed(s), as applicable.

"Internal business purpose"? And I have no problem with people crawling all over the site. Indexing is what search engines do, and they copy as well when they basically hold a cache of stuff. The Internet Archive copies for crying out loud. Just the fact that they feel the need to include this creeps me out a bit. Because basically they've given themselves the right here to print off hard copies of my site's content in hardback and sell them in bookstores. That would be kinda cool, and of course they don't want to do that, and of course anybody could probably go do that anyway–but it just seems odd they've given themselves such a broad thing here in writing.

14. Reserved Rights. In addition to any right not explicitly disclaimed or waived by Overture, we reserve the right to:
a. investigate you, Your Site, Your RSS Feed(s), your owners, officers, directors, agents, contractors and employees, at any time;

Whereas Google promises to investigate if they feel something's fishy going on, and then it's "activity" and the use of software to screw with clicks, YPN gives themselves the ability to poke into anything they want having to do with me. Man, they might find out I use pseudoephedrine! Oh shit!

And here's a fun one, from that same section:

c. provide Ad Units that contain content other than ″pay for performance″ advertisements, including, but not limited to, Ad Units that contain advertisements or links to Overture or Yahoo! services, charitable or non-profit organizations, blog posts, blog search results and web search results, without including such advertisements, links or results in the basis for payment under this Agreement, even if we receive payment for them.

They can hit me with ads and not pay me for them. Nice, huh? With Google I can opt out of charity ads if I feel like it. With Yahoo, they can advertise themselves all day long and I can't do shit about it. Nice. And I don't see anything in the Google TOS that says that those Google Checkout ads are freebies. Maybe they are. Maybe I'm making a penny off of them if anybody clicks. I dunno.

But as I'm reading this, by signing up I'm giving Yahoo the right to make me US-only, copy my site's contents and use however they want, investigate me, and basically make me run ads for free as they so desire.

No thanks.

And for the record, yeah, I like Google just fine. Some have problems with them, but some have problems with lots of things. But I'm not writing this to cheerlead for Google. I just thought I'd double-check the TOS for Google to make sure I wasn't being paranoid for YPN at a different level that I was for Google. And I don't believe I was. If somebody knows something I missed, let me know.

Kudos to Slashfood for presenting a problem, then presenting the solution.

Problem: kids watch too much advertising on television targeting them for stuff that's bad for them.

Solution: let them watch less television.

I know that sounds blindingly obvious, but it escapes many. Limiting the amount of television a kid can watch involves parenting, and that actually takes effort. So.

Oh, and here's what I love about the article they link to:

Advocates said the study adds to mounting evidence that food marketers are trying to hook the youngest children as lifelong customers.

Okay, hold up there, Sherlock. Let me keep anybody from straining themselves. Food marketers–whose job it is to market–trying to hook young children as lifelong customers? Um, fuck yes they're trying to do this. With every fiber of their being, you dumbshits. I'll take whatever leftover funding you had for your ridiculous study now. You're welcome.

Previous studies have found that kids as young as 3 who see TV ads are more likely to request and eat advertised foods high in fat, sodium and sugar.

Request? Yes, I can see that. So wait…they requested it from whom? God? The Maker machine in their kitchen? The dog? No, last time I checked, three-year-olds can't drive out to the store and pick up a pack of Twinkies or whatever stuff kids are eating these days. They have to have adults to do that for them. Usually adults that spend the majority of time with kids that age are parents, but if they're just giving kids whatever they want, with no regard for nutrition or anything else, then they're not really parenting, are they?

Diane Levin, of Wheelock College who is also a co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, criticized Disney and PBS for breaching viewers' trust.

You know, there's a really simple way to have a Commercial-Free Childhood, Diane. It's called Turn the Fucking Television Off. Last I checked, there weren't any advertisements in the best children's books. Nor do I remember in my childhood there being a bunch of billboards that followed me around while I was running about the neighborhood. Whose responsibility is it to protect kids from things? Right. That pesky P-word again. And what is "viewers' trust"? Who the hell trusts a channel on television, anyway? What exactly are you trusting them to do?

Now, it's not clear in here that anybody's looking to restrict ads through legislation–they don't mention the G word explicitly–but when we've got studies that are still searching for evidence that kids are being marketed to (which, in my mind, is like 60 Minutes doing investigative reporting about that fishy heliocentric theory) and this entire conversation happening without parents being mentioned (except here and on Slashfood–another blog), then I get worried. It's much easier to abdicate responsibility to Nanny Government than to actually tell your kid, no, you can't have a cupcake.