April 9, 2008 @ 2:04 am
Advertising has its limits!
99% of anything free runs on advertising. That much is true. I don’t have anything against adverts, heck I work for an advertising company and I go early for movies to catch trailers.
But intrusive advertising only serves to turn people off, a kind of reverse branding.
Straight to the point, from the newly redesigned (i.e. more space for ads ) Star Online:
Riots in Tibet? Time for DiGi!
Sunbear dies in zoo? Time for DiGi!
Two girls die in fire? Time for DiGi!
Heck it’s even in headlines:
Yes, it’s time for DiGi!
First of all, I am intensly against textlink ads in newspapers. I thought NST’s fullpage redirect ads were bad enough, but I call it unethical when you put text ads in articles. Yes you get clicks and views, but these are more likely to be from people thinking that they link to more information. Even the bare minimum of double-underlining ad links isn’t adhered to.
The algorithm is also positively inane:
Picking up “friend” and “family” is a huge stretch by itself given how generic the terms are. More suitable would be “handphone”, “phone call”, etc. But “1″, “5″, “10″? Are you freaking serious here?!:
God the person who did this should be shot. I have to say I’m not surprised Star found such innovative way to prostitute itself even more, and again it might give nice view rates, but hey so do flyers I find stuck on my parked car that I use to wrap fish with later. Where’s the link to that boycott group on Facebook again??
[edit]And yes, I am aware of the irony that the DiGi ad is on my NN ad unit at the time of writing.. but it’s not intrusive!!
[edit2] Forgot to mention that the fact that the algorithm doesn’t check for spaces or fullstops to confirm words reminds me very much of the buttbuttination phenomenon.
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Filed under: News, Rants
Tags: mainstream media, stupidity, the star
7 thoughts »
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syamsulariff.com thought that...
April 9, 2008 @ 7:06 pm
huhu..its too much..even the headline got ad..
davidlian thought that...
April 9, 2008 @ 7:53 pm
LoL! I was just surfing the Star Online yesterday and thinking the same thing! You beat me to the post :)
Anyway, just to add, my thought on this was how “contextual” advertising needs to be more contextual instead of just taking keywords and associating them with ads. Maybe the algorithm needs to take into account more words on the same page to form a context.
Tim thought that...
April 10, 2008 @ 9:54 am
Agree man. It’s just so lazy. At least check if it’s a word…
Faster to do it purely in js though I guess.
mIcheLLe thought that...
April 12, 2008 @ 3:54 am
this digi is starting to get a lil annoying with all the campaigns full blast now. They were at one utama cheating little 5 year old kids into eating WORMS. T_T
khensthoth thought that...
April 14, 2008 @ 12:02 am
Well, I used to take that as the norm too, until I discovered AdBlockPlus extension on Firefox. Use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, Install AdBlockPlus extension for Firefox, and subscribe to the EasyList. That will take care of most of the advertisements on the internet. Webpages load faster and looks cleaner.
However, to block the ads as described by you, incidentally used in all major Malaysian newspaper websites, you need to add the following url to the list of filter, in the preference section of AdBlockPlus:
http://*.innity.com/*
That will remove all those nonsense. You will then be able to enjoy your web experience more.
Tim thought that...
April 14, 2008 @ 2:45 am
khen, I’m using Opera and it has a built-in content blocker. I actually can’t access thestar.com.my any more at home and I’m guessing I’d already blocked some ad on the server! I can access it through FF or at work though ( where I don’t have such strict limits ). No big loss though :).
johnny ong thought that...
April 15, 2008 @ 2:45 pm
dont find it intrusive but distracting actually. u thot u can read in peace and every now and then, this pops up that pops up…..