I am still seeing this ad in gmail at the end of September:

"Dream Ticket - ABCNews.com - Obama Hits Clintons on 'Dream Ticket'. Read Full Story."

Presumably this is something ABC is mindlessly continuing to pay for on Google Adsense. I wonder when they will notice.

Tags: advertising, geek, politics, web

Is anyone participating in the Yahoo Publisher Network beta program?

This is shaping up tot be a true competitor to Google Adsense. And that would be a welcome thing, because it would be nice to see if there's a larger share of the profits that could be going to the publishers.

For those who don't know what the hell I'm talking about, it works like this:

You have a web site. Your web site is kinda popular and has interesting content.

There are products and services out there that relate to that content. And there are companies that want to advertise those products and services.

However, you're not so wildly popular that individual advertisers are willing to invest time and energy in deciding whether to advertise with you directly. Even if you are that popular, it's tough work figuring out which ads should go where.

Meanwhile, advertisers are already paying Google to display their ads adjacent to Google's search results for relevant stuff, via Google Adwords.

So Google got smart and said "we index all the web sites in the world. We know what's relevant to what. Let's offer to put ads on other people's web sites too. Then our Adwords customers will have more places to show their ads. And web publishers will have a way to profit from their sites. Oh, and we'll make vast piles of moolah as the middleman."

And so Google Adsense was born. When you enroll in Google Adsense, Google puts ads on your pages that it believes will be relevant to those pages and, over time, begins to favor the ads people actually click on. When people click on them, the advertiser pays Google. And Google pays you.

So what's the catch? Well, Google takes their cut. And Adsense participants like me aren't allowed to talk about what that cut is, even if we have an inkling. But competition from another company would be bound to decrease it, eh?

But what company could possibly have the resources? Microsoft, maybe. Yahoo, maybe. And Yahoo has a new service in beta that seems likely to fill the bill. Alas, I'm still waiting to hear back from them about participating.

There's a fascinating roundup of AdSense alternatives here, but no hard numbers. I get the feeling most of the existing alternatives are not popular with sites that are still welcome on AdSense, which currently has a reputation for paying/working better than much of anything else.

Tags: advertising, business, geek, web

A lot of people hang up on them outright. Some people even go in for variations on that fabulously nasty telemarketer hangup speech in "The 40 Year Old Virgin."

Others I've talked to say they always have a nice little conversation by way of saying no, but oh no, they never ever hang up "rudely."

My feeling is this: if the call comes in on the business line, is placed by a human being, and is for something business-related, I owe them the courtesy of a "sorry, I'm not interested." But then I hang up. And they are always still yapping away when I hang up.

Here's the thing: they are required to keep yapping. Always. Those are the rules. They are simply not allowed to shut up, except maybe four or five steps into a long script of fallback positions. Hanging up is necessary. They know it and I know it. Therefore: not rude at all.

What's your feeling, folks?

Tags: advertising, boutell.com, business, tom's life