Quote:
Originally Posted by mark777
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When I put that link on BadPhorm, I was more
concerned about Revenue Science. Kent’s quote about monetising the war in Iraq wasn’t the stand-out line for me. He’s been using the Iraq example for a while now.
He used a more generalised version of that example, in his presentation at the Phorm Town Hall Meeting.
Phorm Open Meeting Video Footage
[the user is] browsing the web. And, this is where it gets interesting. They arrive in front of a blog, ok. How much money do you think that blog today is making from on-line advertising? The answer is almost certainly zero. If it’s making money, it’s pennies. And, why is that? Because they’re not big. Because they might not be about a subject category that is relevant to advertisers, so it might not be about cars. It might be about social policy. It might be about, I don’t know, the war in Iraq. Ok. Not really advertiser-conducive subject categories…
…Let’s say that this random number is now going to another page. It’s a newspaper site. People are reading fewer and fewer newspapers, and yet, when you move on-line as a newspaper, the numbers don’t stack up. So, what happens? The press disappears? This is a system that allows you to show adverts based at who’s looking at the page. 
This was picked up in an IDG News Service article by Jeremy Kirk.
Controversial Ad System Keeps Its Eye on the Money
Ertugrul claims the technology especially appeals to newspapers, since it's hard to find an ad – even for reasons of taste – that would match a news story about a bombing in Baghdad. Instead, the ad is disassociated from the content on the page and aimed directly at a user.
While Kent’s latest quote may have been particularly clumsy, it doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about the world. Bad news sells. Therefore, advertisers often want their adverts snuggled up along side that bad news.