Effectiveness of Context Sensitive Ads
By willfe
@willfe (149)
United States
April 12, 2007 4:41pm CST
I often wonder whether advertisers actually believe their messages are getting through, using simple "keyword context matching" to send ads they think might be of interest to me.
What prompted me to write this was spotting an ad for some $250 sweater (two hundred fifty bucks for *one* garment). Here I am, sitting on a couch, wearing $5 shorts and a $6 shirt I snagged at Wal-mart last night, snickering at the notion that someone actually thinks there's any remote chance in hell that I'll ever buy a single piece of clothing that costs $250.
Context-sensitive advertising isn't really all that effective, it seems; if they knew my buying habits, they'd know not to bother trying to sell me stuff that expensive. Or, at least, you'd think they would. Perhaps they'd try a different tack -- trying to "increase my standards," trying to convince me that an extra couple hundred bucks gives me some kind of mystical value I just can't see yet.
What silly context-sensitive ads have you seen on a Google search or even on myLot? I don't mean the idiotic eBay ones -- they paid for top-placement on just about every search with Google a long time ago and it's easy to make the engines say stupid things related to eBay.
1 person likes this
No responses