Selling Out

By Kevin

You might have notice the color-matching Google Ads in the rightmost sidebar. I won't tell you to click on them, because you won't even if I plead.

I have not added them because I need the money. I have added them to capture funds from all those people who find T&B by searching for Truck or Barter or automobile insurance companies that covers a mobile unit truck in iowa or difference between s&p and moody's credit rating.

T&B's usual content is only tangential to these searches, leading people to go elsewhere quickly. And I'd like to profit off their exit. Regular readers won't even look at the ads unless they're funny--which they're not, since Google perceives T&B to be about credit and investing.

-- June 10, 2004 10:49 AM |

Comments

Kevin Brancato wrote:

Also, I'll remove them if they're just taking up space.

-- June 10, 2004 10:59 AM ∞

Ian wrote:

Good idea. I was thinking about suggesting that the other day.

One question though. Should we be worried that a lot of the ads are for Stress Disorders, psychologists, schools for troubled teens and depression issues?

-- June 10, 2004 11:08 AM ∞

Kevin Brancato wrote:

Are you seriously suggesting that you're not getting ads about credit reports and investing?

-- June 10, 2004 11:14 AM ∞

Ian wrote:

Not at this end.

Lots of stuff from "www.behaviortherapy.info". Do those things run according to stuff it finds on the target computer? (My cache would have stuff on behavioral drugs since I was researching it recently.)

-- June 10, 2004 11:44 AM ∞

Kevin Brancato wrote:

I guess they do target individual computers, but also target content to the website; yesterday, I was doing research on Kiplinger's personal finance and on Greenspan's latest speech.

I'll see what options they give for modifying ad content.

-- June 10, 2004 11:51 AM ∞

Michael wrote:

All the ads I see are for credit rating. AdSense analyzes your pages to figure out what ads to display. I dont think it has anything to do with the user's computer.

-- June 10, 2004 12:44 PM ∞

Michael wrote:

oh, and if your site is like mine, the vast majority (more like all) of the isitors from search engines hit an individual archive page. I'd suggest putting the ads there instead, or as well. Then you'll also be able to seehow the ads differ based on the content.

-- June 10, 2004 12:46 PM ∞

Kevin Brancato wrote:

Now I'm getting cognitive therapy and residential treatment ads!

-- June 10, 2004 2:58 PM ∞

triticale wrote:

The initial news report about Saddam's capture, with a description of his spider hole, had google ads for ventilation equipment. The shopnav "search assistant" which was hijacking my browser was even stupider.

-- June 13, 2004 7:56 PM ∞

Dan wrote:

Kevin,

Why don't you put ads at the bottom of the archives pages?

From my experience, "random" users rarely visit the front page of a blog.. They get to the entry through the search engine and do not continue browsing the whole blog.

For example:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=iraqi+dinar
get you to
http://truckandbarter.com/mt/archives/000098.html

Now you "lose" exit traffic as they do not have google ads to click on.

Dan

-- July 22, 2004 8:12 AM ∞

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