Archive for the ‘advertising’ Category
Sunday, January 8th, 2012
One time British Prime Minister Harold Wilson is often credited with coining the phrase ‘a week is a long time in politics’. When it comes to the internet things move even faster…. but the speed of these changes might be likened to ‘dynamic inertia’ (in both politics and blogging). The phrase ‘dynamic inertia’ has been used to promote the shake weight ‘exercise’ fad of recent years – and appears to have been coined for this purpose. Shake weights were marketed with adverts that featured women grasping these light dumbbell-like objects in their hands and jerking them about with their arms. The infomercials featuring this imagery went viral online because many saw in such hand and arm gestures a connection to onanistic sexual activities. There is now also a slightly heavier shake weight for men. The female shake weight has been marketed as trimming women’s arms and making them slimmer – whereas the manufacturers claim the male equivalent enables men to bulk up (although obviously what are essentially the same set of exercises cannot do both these things)!
Despite spurious claims by those marketing the shake weight, there is no scientific evidence to back up their assertions this expensive branded product is at all effective as an exercise aid. What the shake weight represents is a triumph of marketing over common sense – as do many other recent exercise crazes such as the power plate. Obviously any exercise is better than no exercise, but there are far more effective and less expensive ways to workout than using a shake weight or a power plate. What the people selling the shake weight have usefully done is provide us with a term to describe our current cultural condition. The phrase ‘dynamic inertia’ perfectly encapsulates the political and cultural situation we find ourselves in – which is no longer postmodern but has simultaneously failed to move on from the postmodern. This is a world in which capitalism (and thus official history) can only go backwards – and one where the products of alienated labour are still being falsely presented by our exploiters as having transformed themselves into ‘pure image’.
Obviously the only way to go beyond this post-postmodern condition is through the revolutionary transformation of capitalist social relations. This will be an overflowing in which we’ll be able to realise every aspect of ourselves as human beings, and together enjoy the wealth of this world in a truly collective fashion. Although it will number among the more minor benefits of communist revolution, I will at last be able to dispense with my spam filter, something I currently require to block ‘messages’ such as the following: “Discover The Untold Secrets Used By The World’s Top Cat Trainers To Make Their Kittens Listen To Their Every Command” (link removed). It should go without saying that we don’t want a society of ‘order givers’ and ‘order takers’ (or even one divided into ‘hep cats’ and ‘kittens’), we want a society of equals!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: alienation, blogging, capitalism, communism, dynamic inertia, exercise, Harold Wilson, hep cats, hype, kittens, onanism, post-postmodern, postmodern, power plate, pure image, revolution, scam, sex, shake weight, spam, spam filter
Posted in advertising, mass media, scam, spam, Web 2.0 | 20 Comments »
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
“How To Make Money Fast” is just one of thousands of spam comments my filter prevented from being posted on this blog. If the spammer in question actually knew a good way of making money fast, it’s unlikely they’d be telling other people about it. My filter is also repeatedly blocking spam comments from someone offering to write cheap blog posts for me and my readers. This seems to rather miss the fact that I prefer to put my own spin on shit – not to mention that with all the spam that comes my way, I’ve more than enough material from which I can write blogs fast, so I don’t need to pay someone else to do it for me. I could probably spend hours taking the piss out of the spammer offering to add Facebook fans to profiles on that platform… Fake fans aren’t about to bring anyone fame or money… and ultimately it’s more satisfying to engage with people than have them look up to you for no good reason. The star/fan relationship ain’t exactly a groove sensation – and using social media to replicate it online seems to completely miss the point of web 2.o, which is that it should give people the opportunity to interact on a more equal footing.
During my spam deletion process, I tend to pay slightly more attention to those comments offering search engine optimisation services (SEO) and free backlinks, than virtual pitches for lawyers. plumbers, escorts, watches, baby clothes, handbags, diets and designer shoes etc. However I wouldn’t click on SEO cowboy links or allow their outrageous claims to appear on my blog – because they’re likely to lead to some virus infested scam site. What all this bot-driven ‘activity’ ultimately reveals is the desperation among those who think social media is the new Klondike and that they’re about to strike gold. As I’ve said before, focusing on content will ultimately result in getting people to engage with a site – building links may raise you very slightly up some search engine rankings, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to anyone looking at what’s on your pages. Content is still king and ninety-nine percent of the time monetisation is a pipe dream – which is one of a number of reasons why there are no ads here!
If you still want to make money fast you’d probably do better ram-raiding a jewellery store.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: add Facebook fans, baby clothes, backlinks, blog posts, blogging, bot, build links, designer shoes, diets, escorts, free backlinks, handbags, jewelllery, lawyers, links, make money, make money fast, pitching, plumbers, ram-raiding, search engine optimisation, SEO, social media, spam, spammer, virtual pitches, watches
Posted in advertising, scam, spam, Web 2.0 | 22 Comments »
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
On Saturday night I read at Volatile Dispersal, a festival of art writing held at the Whitechapel Gallery. The event proved so crowded and popular that it was hard to take very much in. I found this ironic because after I’d used my FaceBook account to remind people about the event (I list all the public events I’m doing initially on my homepage), among the comments I garnered were the following:
“I like the idea of ‘art writing’; its the best phrase I’ve ever come across (Barry Watten?) to describe the efforts of those of us who spend anywhere between 5 to 50 to 75 hours on one text, which is little more than a page, only to have said text become tucked away appropriately in a ‘slim volume’ which no one in their right mind will pay 10 dollars for when all is said and done… go boy!” Volker Nix.
And: “Yeah Volker, writing that nobody will read, not even if you put it online for free…I used to see that as being somehow radical (and I still kind of do)…but now I think the only real reason for engaging in these practices is simply because you enjoy it (is that somehow radical?)” Robert Chrysler.
There were various events going on in different parts of the Whitechapel Gallery, I was programmed to read in a small upstairs space alongside a whole host of other ‘art writers’, and this segment was curated by Francesco Pedraglio. Since I was on last, I was more focused on getting into the mood for my reading than paying attention to what other people were doing. That said, it is decidedly amusing that some of those engaged in ‘art writing’ are clearly unaware of experimental poetry by the likes of Bob Cobbing, so they are able to cover old ground as if it is fresh (and I guess it is for them, if not me).
What I found particularly curious about the event was that a number of people were participating in Volatile Dispersal who I knew but I managed not to meet on the night. I was able to hear Sally O’Reilly read because there was a speaker system relaying the sound from the room in which I also performed into the adjacent bar – but the event was so packed that I was unable to get into this small gallery for the majority of sessions before mine. I looked out for Sally afterwards but it was so busy it was easy to miss people, and I didn’t ‘see’ O’Reilly at all that night. Others advertised as being present who I failed to clock at all included Babak Ghazi (whose downstairs event clashed with mine) and Laura Oldfield Ford. Yet more, such as Mike Sperlinger, I spotted across crowded rooms – but in most cases was unable to attract their attention before they disappeared.
Among those I did manage to speak to were Crow, Bridget Penney, Bridget Lowe, Katrina Palmer, Maitreyi Maheshwari, Gavin Everall, Jane Rollo, Nick Thurston, Anthony Isles, Jonathan Allen, Benedict Seymour, Maria Fusco, James Brook, Chris Horrocks, Jeremy Ackerman and Hilary Koob-Sassen. I also had a reasonably extended conversation with Rob La Frenais about Toshiba ripping off Simon Faithfull in their current ad campaign. Nothing wrong with plagiarism of course, but Toshiba and the ad agency they used initially claimed this blatant steal demonstrated the commitment of both parties to innovation. Ho ho! La Frenais was telling me corporations can’t get away with this kind of rip-off in the world of Web 2.0 because tweets, blogs and comments on sites like YouTube and Facebook have spread the story around the world and forced Toshiba to backtrack – so they’ve apparently paid Simon Faithfull some wedge to say nothing, and are now claiming the ‘innovation’ was not launching a chair into space using weather balloons (as Faithfull had five years before them) but in using this for an ad! Doh! If that’s Toshiba’s idea of ‘innovation’ then I think I’ll stick to using consumer electronics made by Apple, Asus, Panasonic and Sony (among others) and avoid Toshiba (unless they send me some nice freebies). And BTW, why so few mentions of The Association of Autonomous Astronauts in regard to all this too?
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Anthony Isles, Apple, Association of Autonomous Astronauts, Asus, Babak Ghazi, Barry Watten, Bob Cobbing, Bridget Lowe, Bridget Penney, Chris Horrocks, Crow, east London, Facebook, Francesco Pedraglio, Gavin Everall, James Brook, Jane Rollo, Jeremy Ackerman and Hilary Koob-Sassen, Katrina Palmer, Laura Oldfield Ford, London, Maitreyi Maheshwari, Maria Fusco, Mike Sperlinger, Nick Thurston, Panasonic, Rob La Frenais, Robert Chrysler, Sally O'Reilly, Simon Faithfull, Sony, Toshiba, Twitter, Volatile Dispersal, Volatile Dispersal: Festival of Art Writing, Volker Nix, Web 2.0, Whitechapel Gallery, YouTube
Posted in advertising, culture gossip & parties, literature, performance, Web 2.0 | 17 Comments »
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
Having blogged about click thru ad busting and related issues in the recent past, I’m now moving along to take a look at so-called ‘get-paid-to-blog’ sites. The bottom line with these frauds is that a bunch of suits use content you create to attract an audience for click thru ads. There are many different companies running scam sites of this type, and among the better known are Triond, Helium and Associated Content. It should go without saying that the sweated labour which monetizes such rip-off schemes is conned into thinking they’ll be ‘rewarded’ for their graft; but if they see any money at all, they only get a tiny percentage of the click thru income they’ve generated for the swindlers raking-in the real profits. The idea is that other people get rich at your expense!
If you really want to try to make money from producing content that generates click through advertising, it is obviously more sensible to set up your own websites and blogs on which you run Google AdWords. While most of those doing this report very low earnings, their income is nonetheless far higher than if they’d allowed a third party like Triond or Associated Content to rake-off the lion’s share of this advertising revenue. My own view is that only a fool would try to make money from producing click thru content, but you’re an even bigger fool if you chose to work in this way on other people’s sites rather than your own. I regularly receive emails asking if I’ll accept click thru on this site, and I ignore them all because click thru screws up the web.
There are a lot of articles online advising you how best to write copy for sites like Triond and Associated Content. One of the key pieces of advice most of them contain is that you need to dumb down. Looking at them, I frequently came across rhetorical questions like ‘when was the last time you clicked on an ad?’ The proffered ‘advice’ then usually proceeds along the lines of: ‘since you’re obviously not dumb enough to think ads offering you the chance to meet Russian girls are worth investigating, and you only make any money if people click on the ads, you need to tailor your content for idiots.’ But then only someone with their brains housed in their asshole rather than their head could be fooled into thinking that generating click thru content for idiots, and further cretinising themselves in the process, will be financially remunerative. This is very definitely a case of dumb meets stupid.
Another piece of advice you’ll find in many web articles about ‘making money’ from ‘get-paid-to-write’ sites is that you should favourite your own efforts on Digg, Delicious and Stumble Upon etc. So you’re not only working for peanuts, you’re also on the case 24-7 generating traffic for the likes of Triond or Associated Content. Obviously you’d do much better putting all that effort into a blog you actually control, and why not help raise the general level of human intelligence and knowledge instead of actively playing a role in lowering it? Basing what you produce on the search engine optimisation (SEO) rules that ‘get-paid-to-write’ sites drum into their ‘content providers’ is a sure-fire way of diminishing both your own humanity and that of your readers.
According to James Boswell, Samuel Johnson once quipped: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Today this line should run: “No one but a blockhead ever wrote a hundred articles a year and spent several hours a day generating traffic for ‘get-paid-to-blog’ sites in return for the price of a cup of coffee.” The stark truth is you’ll spend more on the electricity to run your computer as you generate content for ‘get-paid-to-blog’ sites than you’ll earn for your efforts! So remember kids, if you want to have fun on the web only favourite and link to sites that don’t carry click thru ads!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: ad busting, Associated Content, blogging, click through, click through advertising, click thru, click thru advertising, con, Digg, get paid to blog, get paid to write, Google AdWords, Helium, James Boswell, make money from the internet, meet Russian girls, rip-off, Samuel Johnson, scam, search engine optimisation, SEO, Stumble Upon, Triond
Posted in advertising, economics, Web 2.0 | 26 Comments »
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
I want to look briefly at a specific aspect of one of the web’s greatest commercial success stories, Google. AdWords is the name for the pay per click service offered by Google to advertisers for the sponsored links that appear beside the queries entered into their search engine. Google explain their advertising system this way: “Concerned about costs? Don’t worry – AdWords puts you in complete control of your spending. Set your budget. There’s no minimum spending requirement – the amount you pay for AdWords is up to you. You can, for instance, set a daily budget of five dollars and a maximum cost of ten cents for each click on your ad. Avoid guesswork. We provide keyword traffic and cost estimates so you can make informed decisions about choosing keywords and maximizing your budget. (Estimate keyword costs) Pay only for results. You’re charged only if someone clicks your ad, not when your ad is displayed.”
So what Google does is match searches with relevant advertising. Now it is the advertiser who initially decides what keywords are relevant to their product, but Google helps them with this since they offer a search for effective AdWords function. While the advertisers determine how much they are prepared to pay both per click and in total, the more people click on an ad the less Google charges per click (their search engine dominance is based on ‘ relevance’ AKA ‘popularity’ and they are obsessed with preserving this). A simple mathematical formula is used to work out a Google AdWords rating but I won’t bore you by actually going through it here; suffice to say that the most effective ads are charged at lower rates and shown the most often. So to use AdWords successfully an advertiser has to write good copy and bid high enough on click payments to be displayed.
Where Google led others have followed, and a similar but less effective system operates on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Until last spring I had a number of profiles on MySpace most of which mentioned my passion for communism (anti-Bolshevik of course!), but the data miners didn’t seem to know the difference between real communism and fake communist tendencies that are now historically discredited – therefore when I was on MySpace I was often subjected to adverts with the following headlines: “School trips to Russia”, “All types of Russian Visas”, “Trotsky T-Shirts & Books” and even “Russian Beauties Seek Dating And Marriage”. Since like Bordiga and many others I view what happened in Russia under the Bolsheviks as a capitalist and not a communist revolution, these ads were of little interest to me and had been poorly targeted. Naturally the data miners are constantly attempting to refine their ad placement but since they never got me to click on anything, they were unable to learn much about what pushed my buttons, and I’d say the same is true for many readers of my blogs – a number of those from outside the UK wondered why after visiting my old MySpace pages they had been bombarded with ads for products associated with people they’ve never heard of; these were invariably British micro-celebrities such as Abi Titmuss who’d been lampooned – often just in passing – in my blogs or the accompanying comments.
That said, the data miners expect a certain failure rate, so the fact that they’ve been spectacularly unsuccessful at targeting ads at me and my blog readers isn’t statistically significant to them, but it does demonstrate that despite the hype their techniques are often too crude to work. What I haven’t worked out, but maybe someone else has, is when it would be more damaging to the click thru advertising industry for me to click on an ad that doesn’t interest me rather than ignoring it. Is there a way of driving up costs for advertisers by clicking thru to their product but not buying it that will discourage them from using click thru? Since this must vary from web service to web service, we clearly need specific equations to work out how to do click thru ad busting on specific sites such as Google and Bebo.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Abi Timuss, ad busting, advertising, AdWords, Amadeo Bordiga, Bebo, capitalism, click thru, click thru ad busting, communism, dating and marriage, Google, micro-celebrities, MySpace, pay per click, Russian beauties, Trotsky
Posted in advertising, Web 2.0 | 23 Comments »
Thursday, January 15th, 2009
As I was making my way through Liverpool Street Station this morning, several hundred people were dancing on the main concourse…. it could have been a flash mob but it wasn’t… for those who don’t know, a flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then disperse… It turned out a T-Mobile ad was being filmed. By lunchtime there were reports of this stage-managed media event in the British national press:
“There are many ways to kill time while waiting for your train – read a paper, grab a sandwich . . . break into a synchronised dance?
“It certainly got the attention of commuters at Liverpool Street Station, as 400 strangers – including tourists and Underground staff – suddenly leaped into action, busting out a co-ordinated mix of hip-hop, disco and ballroom moves right in the middle of the London station.
“The dance was an example of ‘flash mob’, which occurs when people arrange to meet at a certain place and time to carry out a quirky action, before disbanding minutes later.
“Flash mobbing is seen as an anarchic, freedom-of-expression act, although this one was organised by T-Mobile for an advert which will debut on Channel 4 and YouTube tomorrow.”
This definitely wasn’t a flash mob because the filming was still going on when I returned to Liverpool Street station an hour later. Coming back I noticed a sign that claimed if I went into the area being used to fabricate the ad, I had consented to being filmed… Not so, since I hadn’t seen this sign until after I’d been through the station once, and besides which not everybody can read English… Liverpool Street station is a public space and a lot of people have no choice about using it if they need to catch the tube or an overground train. Therefore I’m using this blog to notify T-Mobile that I have not given my consent to appearing in their advert. If T-Mobile want to use footage that shows me I expect to be paid: I want a 1K (a grand, £1000) for every second or fraction of a second used that shows me from any angle (including my back)….. and a further 1K per day for every day after tomorrow in which the advert is either shown on TV or left up on YouTube or used in any other public way.
The production of adverts such as this around London often pisses me off. A few years ago I was making my way back home around midnight and was grabbed by some guys who told me they were filming a car advert and I wasn’t allowed to walk where I was headed. I told them I lived in the block of flats they were trying to prevent me from approaching and that they could fuck off. The wankers who’d manhandled me had to stop filming while I went into the block. Advertising, it’s the antithesis of a groove sensation!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: advertising, appearance rates, Channel 4, City of London, flash mob, Liverpool Street station, public places, Stewart Home, synchronised dance, T-Mobile, YouTube
Posted in advertising | 42 Comments »