Tag Archives | Advertising

Should Browsers Block Ads by Default?

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 7, 2009 at 9:43 am

T-Poll[UPDATE: There’s a great conversation spurred by this post going on over at Louis Gray’s FriendFeed.]

Windows IT Pro’s Orin Thomas has a piece up with the title In five years will block Internet advertisements by default. He isn’t quite that extreme in the story itself, but he does say that he thinks the popularity of the Firefox add-in Adblock Plus will inevitably lead to most users blocking ads.

Putting aside for the moment the question of what that would do to the Web economy (including, er, ad-subsidized sites like Technologizer), I don’t think Thomas’s scenario will happen in the sweeping form he describes. For one thing, ad blockers have been around for a long time, and if their inevitable domination of the Web is in progress, it’s happening really slowly. For another, every major purveyor of Web browsers except Opera is either a major advertiser or a major seller of ads, or both–even Mozilla makes millions from the Google ads its default home-page search displays. (I’d be very surprised but not utterly disbelieving if Google were to build ad-blocking into Chrome–but if it turns it on by default, I’ll eat my MacBook.)

Of course, as with everything on the Web, it’s ultimately consumers who call the shots–if enough folks use ad-blockers, the Web will have to adjust, one way or another. (I continue, incidentally, to have no problem whatsoever with the fact that a meaningful minority of Technologizer readers block ads–I don’t need everybody to see the ads as long as a critical mass of folks do.)

What say you?

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Bing Gets a Jingle

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 5, 2009 at 11:36 pm

Bing LogoI just this very moment formulated a new theory about search engines: It may be impossible to do good TV-style advertising for them. They’re free, you can try them at will, and if they’re not pretty self-explanatory, they’ve failed from the get-go. All of which makes it hard to spend thirty seconds saying anything useful about them.

With that in mind, my instinct is not to judge the user-generated Bing jingle video that won Microsoft’s contest too harshly. TechCrunch’s MG Siegler compares it to Hell; I just find it…odd. (Possibly intentionally so, and odd in a catchy way, at least.) And except for the fact that the lyrics wouldn’t scan, it could be about any other search engine on the planet, from Google to a tenth-stringer like Mamma.

(I’m not going to stoop for criticizing the ad for the fact that the queries shown, such as “Learn to dance like Jonathan,” don’t provide useful results in Bing or any other search engine.)

Also looking on the bright side: It’s nowhere near as odd and ineffective as years and years of Ask.com ads that cost that company way, way more money than the $500 that Microsoft paid its contest winner.

Ask.com

Another plus: Bing’s new singing, dancing spokesman doesn’t vomit onscreen.

(Full disclosure: Bing is an advertiser on this site, and I’m a contributor to the Bing-sponsored BingTweets.)

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Hey Pop-Up Ads, Get Outta My Xbox!

Posted by Jared Newman on August 4, 2009 at 1:27 pm

Over the weekend, I sacrificed the better portion of one evening to my Fight Night Round 4 addiction. Home alone, playing offline (but connected to Xbox Live) and grinding through match after match, I was confronted with this:

fightnightRIP

Aah!

After a moment of shock, I realized this was an advertisement for the upcoming film The Final Destination, and suddenly Fight Night Round 4 was stumping for it in every available nook and cranny. Each post on the corners of the boxing ring had a number you could text message to enter a movie-related contest, and the floor mat had the name of the film running down the center.

What most offended me was not the ghastly imagery, but the ads that appeared during the boxer recovery phase between rounds. I call them pop-up ads because they make no effort to blend with the game world, as most in-game advertisements do. They’re just plain tacky (by the way, these photos were hastily shot on my iPhone, so my apologies for the quality):

fightnight2

A similar set of pop-ups for Ford appeared in an earlier session, but I had no camera at hand to prove it. Keep in mind that I had already logged countless hours with the game before seeing either of these ads, and that I was playing offline, against the computer, while connected to the Internet.

It’s not clear whether this is happening on the Playstation 3 as well as the Xbox 360, but I’ve asked Microsoft whether this has anything to do with Silverlight ads coming to Xbox Live, and I’ve requested that Electronic Arts answer a few questions as well, such as how the ads are being delivered and for long we’ll be dealing with them. I’m hoping to hear back from both parties.

In any case, I hope these ads aren’t the start of a new trend. Buying this game, no one told me it’d be cluttered with ads that have nothing to do with boxing. While a bit of in-game advertising is appropriate when it fits the surroundings (such as street billboards in a racing game), blatant banners that cover up the game screen are just uncalled for.

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Yahoo-Microsoft Deal: It’s Nearly Official. Thank Heavens.

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 28, 2009 at 5:07 pm

BinghooMultiple reliable sources are reporting that Microsoft and Yahoo have finalized a deal to work together on search and advertising, and it’ll be announced tomorrow. It’s not the merger that Microsoft wasted an immense amount of time on last year, and it’s apparently not as sweeping an arrangement as some folks thought the company would strike. But it’s still a big deal.

For consumers, the major net effect will apparently be that Bing (or some variant thereof) will power Yahoo’s search. Unless you love Yahoo’s current engine or hate Bing, that’s nothing to fear, and it won’t have a major impact on your life. (Or any impact at all if, like the majority of folks, you do your searching at Google.)

For Yahoo, it’s yet another new search strategy. (Once upon a time, the company outsourced search to Google, then decided it was a core part of its business and built its own search engine; now it’s once again something it’s decided it can outsource.) For Microsoft, it helps scratch the must-take-on-Google itch that the company’s had trouble taking care of.

I still think that when the history of Microsoft is written ten or twenty years from now, it’ll be obvious that  search engines and Web advertising  were distractions that kept the company from focusing on its real businesses–operating systems, programming tools, productivity software, and a few other related related areas. For now, though, both Microsoft and Yahoo can end their odd tango and move ahead with a partnership. And we tech journalists who have spent a year and a half writing about all this get more time to devote to other, more concrete matters. Like, for instance, the existence or nonexistence of an Apple tablet that’ll be released either in September or sometime next year…

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Microsoft Corrects Laptop Hunters Ads. Sort of.

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 24, 2009 at 8:03 am

Lauren and SueLast week, Microsoft COO Kevin Turner said he was turning cartwheels in the hall over Apple’s apparent request that Microsoft stop running “Laptop Hunters” ads that quoted out-of-date pricing for Macs. This week, Microsoft is rejiggering at least one of the ads to…stop quoting out-of-date pricing for Macs.

As Ad Adge reports, Microsoft has tweaked the “Lauren and Sue” commercial to remove a reference to a the price of $2000 MacBook Pro that no longer costs that much. Good. But the company doesn’t seem to have done a sweep for all info in the ads that’s no longer true: The ad with a shopper named Sheila that Microsoft posted on YouTube still has her saying the best MacBook Pro under $2,000 has only 2GB of RAM and shrugging in disbelief and/or contempt. But after Apple’s last round of price cuts, you can get a MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM for $1499.

I dunno why there’s any controversy here: Of course Microsoft should update its commercials to reflect the facts of the current PC-vs.-Mac situation. It’s not about the Microsoft-Apple war, it’s about accuracy. Anybody want to argue otherwise?

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Starbucks Gives Away Ice Cream on Facebook

Posted by David Worthington on July 7, 2009 at 4:41 pm

Starbucks on FacebookStarbucks Coffee Company has turned to social media to promote its new ice cream brand. The bean peddler is giving Facebook users complimentary prints of ice cream–provided they install an application to solicit their friends with offers for free Starbucks ice cream.

Starbucks is paying Facebook for ads to promote the application among the social network’s 200 million active users. To be clear, Starbucks is NOT giving away 200 million pints of ice cream; the offer is limited to 20,000 people in the U.S. between now and July 19.

When I installed the application, I was told that there would be no free pints to “surprise a friend” with for about another hour. It did, however, direct me to a Starbucks Web page where I could fill out a form with my personal information to receive a $1 off coupon to redeem at my local grocery store.

Whenever I do something on Facebook, such as install an application, my 500+ ‘friends’ that tune into my event stream are notified. That’s not such a bad reach for Starbucks. In fact, it’s almost viral. If I cared enough about it to send free ice cream to my friends, Starbucks’ frozen concoctions would receive even more exposure.

Could Starbucks become Facebook’s sweet success when it comes to figuring out how to make advertising effective on the service? Starbucks will doubtlessly be monitoring how well its campaign is working.

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Microsoft Discovers, Belatedly, That Vomiting May Offend Customers

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 2, 2009 at 11:37 am

Oh My God I'm Going to PukeThe Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft has pulled the online ad for Internet Explorer that showed a woman puking after viewing her husband’s apparently-disgustingly-pornographic browser history. The Journal quotes a Microsoft spokeswoman as saying that “While much of the feedback to this particular piece of creative was positive, some of our customers found it offensive, so we have removed it.” People offended by a browser commercial involving onscreen vomiting? Imagine that!

Me, I nominated the ad as a strong candidate for the honor of being the worst tech commercial in history. Lots of folks agreed with me; many said they liked it. It would be a boring world if everybody agreed on this stuff.

I assume Microsoft had an inkling that some people might feel…well, queasy…at the sight of the ad before it gave the spot the OK, and decided to run it anyhow. It’s certainly possible to do effective advertising that evokes strong reactions and doesn’t appeal to everybody. But maybe one of the lessons here is that it’s not a great idea to do so for a product with a customer base as huge and diffuse as the world’s most widely-used Web browser. Some products have the luxury of offending people they weren’t trying to cater to in the first place, but IE, by definition, is trying to cater to most everybody. (There’s a reason why you don’t see people retching in ads for, say, gasoline. Or paper towels.)

Of course, conspiracy theorists may wonder whether Microsoft’s game plan all along was to release a revolting ad that appealed to some people, get (ahem) bloggers to write about it, catch flack for it, and then withdraw it…

One more thought on why I didn’t like the ad, and then I promise I’ll stop: I’m not instinctively opposed to gross humor. I might have even liked the basic idea if it had been a scene in a well-directed, funny movie. (Hey, I’m a Monty Python fan.) But as a consumer, I regard advertising as a company attempting to initiate a business transaction with me. And so I react better to ads with a certain level of decorum and respect than ones that try to gross me out. (The bar isn’t that high–some people seem more creeped out by the other, vomitless ads in the series than I was.)

That’s just me; multiple reasonable commenters feel otherwise. But it’s fascinating to see how Microsoft had to get real-world feedback before they figured all this out.

[UPDATE: Peter Kafka of All Things D reports that the IE 8 ads were directed by Bobcat “Shakes the Clown” Goldthwait. That explains a lot right there…]

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Worst. Tech. Commercial. Ever?

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 30, 2009 at 12:05 pm

I’m still having trouble keeping solid food down after having been exposed to the Internet Explorer 8 ad that involves a woman projectile-vomiting after accidentally seeing a site her husband had been viewing. But I’m moving on from being appalled to trying to answer an important question: Is it the single worst commercial for a technology product ever?

Until now, this 1980s spot from Commodore Australia would have been my nominee for that honor:

But looking at it again–hey, it’s not bad. Yes, it’s cheesy–it feels like a Mentos commercial from a time before there were Mentos commercials. Yes, the combination of the notion of “Keeping up with the Commodore” and people smiling vacantly and making cryptic signs makes me wonder if some forgotten cult is involved. But at least it’s all cheery, and the song is so infectious that it’s now stuck in my head, which helps to block out the IE 8 ad.

Another plus: Nobody in it projectile-vomits.

Speaking of vomiting, it’s worth noting that the Microsoft ad isn’t the first one for a Web-related enterprise that involves spitting up. The E*TRADE baby tosses his cookies in this commercial, though in a more dignified, less forceful manner–and hey, he’s a baby:

That’s a bad ad, but not bad enough to rival the IE one.

Anyhow, the Internet Explorer 8 is revolting on multiple levels; it demeans both Internet Explorer and its users; it doesn’t even provide a terribly compelling argument for choosing IE, since private browsing is a standard feature in most modern browsers. It’s the first ad from Microsoft or any other major tech company I can think of that can accurately be described by the word fetid.

In short, it’s my new candidate for worst tech product ad of all time. Any other nominees?

[UPDATE: Microsoft has pulled the ad. Sorry, vomit-lovers…]

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YouTube Tries Choose-Your-Own Ads

Posted by Jared Newman on June 15, 2009 at 4:57 pm

youtubeadchoiceIn a clever move by Google, some YouTube content will present viewers with a choice: Select from two advertisements to watch at the beginning, or intersperse a grab bag of ads throughout the video.

This idea, which is being tested on a small number of premium YouTube videos, is far more preferable to those floating ads that slide into the bottom portion some videos. But that’s not the only reason I like the idea.

Allowing user control over the advertisement engages the viewer in a way that television commercials cannot. If marketing groups create Web ads that are worth watching, and sell the ads themselves with a provocative title and screenshot (okay, the examples seen above aren’t what I had in mind, but give it time), we’re well on the way to seeing more value in online advertising.

That’s important, because Big Content’s reservations over online content are due in large part to how little online ads make compared to their offline counterparts. It’s the whole “analog dollars for digital pennies” argument for which NBC CEO Jeff Zucker was famously quoted. This imbalance explains why NBC’s Olympic coverage will be crippled next year and why Hulu’s content providers bend over backwards to prevent you from watching through the television instead of a PC. If it becomes viable for online video to cannibalize cable, sites such as Hulu and YouTube will evolve much faster.

Granted, there are other roadblocks — the thorny issue of licensing agreements between cable and content providers, for example — but choose-your-own ads are welcome in my queue.

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