[LINK] Great, Google "Targeted TV Ads"

[Tom Worthington]

At 07:20 AM 8/21/2006, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
>... the world of targeted advertising has been around for years, and 
>online I have yet to see a 'targeted advertisement' which did 
>anything to make me buy ...

Google is making tentative steps with video ads on web pages 
<https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=40042&ctx=sibling>. 
These appear as a still image until you click on them to play the 
video <https://www.google.com/adsense/samplevideo>.

Google's demos look more like computer animation than digital video, 
making them bandwidth efficient. This makes them much less intrusive 
for the viewer, but advertisers may not like them as a result.

Revver.com insert a still image ad on the end of video 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2006/01/video-downloads-with-advertising.html>. 
Like Google, this is relatively low annoyance for the viewer, but 
much less targeted. As a result I suspect advertisers will not pay much for it.

>Moreover, imagine what happens when the 'search spammers' work out 
>how the algorithms work? ...

Google's ads work reasonably well. Most seem relevant to the topic 
and so unlikely to cause annoyance. But some advertisers seem lax in 
specifying keywords for Google 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/adwords.shtml>. For example 
advertisers around the world pay money to put ads about apartments on 
my web pages, when it is likely only people in Canberra would be 
interested 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/2001/sa/city_edge_apartments_townhouses_canberra.shtml>. 


Other ads are very well targeted, such as both Defence and Crikey.com 
advertising on my talk at ADFA on podcasting from the Joint Strike 
Fighter 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/podcasting/warfare.shtml>. 
Defence advertises for recruits and Crikey for articles on defence 
overspending, which is a nice juxtaposition.

I have set an assignment question for ANU students to work out how to 
use the Semantic Web to create better targeted advertisements 
<http://cs.anu.edu.au/Student/comp3410/assignment1.html>. I am not 
sure exactly how to do that, but if someone comes up with a good 
answer, we can patent it.  ;-)



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Director, ACS Communications Tech Board   http://www.acs.org.au/ctb/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml