Re: Interesting Twist to BANNER ADVERTISING

From: Matt Magri <matt_at_netmeg.net>
Date: Tue 28 Dec 1999 18:32:55 -0500

FRED WROTE:
> So I said: "How about we come up with code that TRAPS
> the banner ads on ANY web page being surfed by anyone
> on our private (dial-up subscriber) WAN, and replace
> it with an ad for a local business?" They liked the
> idea, so they built the code.

Interesting... it's not even that difficult since there
are standard sizes for most ads and there are scads of
proxies with ad-replacing-ready code in them. The users
would have to go through your proxy, of course, or you
wouldn't have a chance to change the content.

> For instance: say any of the 60,000 dial up customers
> log on and surf to any site with BANNER EXCHANGE, VALUE
> CLICK or other banners purveyors on the target page...
> rather than seeing some ad for some web site they're
> not interested in, they'll be greeted ads for business
> right in their neighborhood. Local business they'd
> rather support. (Think about how many you'd rack up
> with Yahoo alone!)
>
> The nice part about it is ALL of those banner views are
> now logged to our ad demographic statistics as opposed
> to someone elses... and suddenly the "views" increase
> a thousand-fold, and the local advertisers get many
> more exposures to customers more likely to come and
> shop at their business! Sort of like "Think Globally
> -- Act Locally".

It's a -very- clever idea, from a technical standpoint. My
gut reaction would be to avoid it from just about any other
standpoint, tho. You are actually changing the content of
what the user has requested, which gets into all sorts of
weird and exciting new legal and ethical realms. I suppose
if you made it clear to your dialup customers that you
would be filtering the content of the webpages they see that
way it would be okay. You would be operating openly on their
behalf in making the content changes, much as the proxies
that filter the ads out completely do. The thing is, I would
think they'd start to wonder why they have to pay you for
access if you are making advertising money directly off of
their eyeballs. Are you charging the customers who use it
less for their access?

> So I told my head tech guy, "WHOA... what if the Post
> Office captures every incoming issue of NEWSWEEK and
> replaces all the ads with local ads before delivery to
> the subscribers' mailboxes!"

Unless it was part of some new "filtered" service they
would optionally provide at the receiver's request, I
suspect there would be jail time involved. I also expect
that Newsweek would go ballistic, in either case.

> Now, we're wondering if this is the same thing as the
> local cable operator who replaces network feed ads with
> locally sold ads? [ ... ]

I believe that is done with the consent of the cable channel
and that the cableco would lose access to the channel if
they did it without permission. I further assume that the
cable channel only allows a certain percentage (or certain
slots) of ads to be replaced. Of course, a call to your local
cableco would verify that easily enough.

That does raise the possibility of an ad network that would
provide an ad-replacing proxy that local sites could use
with the consent of the ad network. It's an interesting
idea...

> [ ... ] Or the movie theater owner who sells
> ads to air during the preview trailers of movies?

No, they aren't replacing any of the content with ads. The
movie thing is more akin to services that show the content
while diplaying additional ads of their own outside of the
content. The ultimate, most annoying, extension of that
would be ads constantly being displyed above and below the
screen while the movie is going on. Yuck.

What you are talking about would be more akin to the theater
replacing any products that appear in the movie with some
other product that the advertiser paid the theatre to insert.

> I've noticed attending the movies over the holidays,
> more and more local advertising up on the big screen,
> from Pepsi to the corner car wash.
>
> What are your views on this?

I'd rather see the snack bar video with the dancing food... ;-)

Matt
--
Matt Magri
Netmeg Internet




Received on Tue Dec 28 1999 - 17:32:55 CST