[LINK] Federal government web ads

[Craig Sanders]

On Mon, Jul 02, 2007 at 08:25:46AM +1000, Tom Worthington wrote:
> These use Google AdWords 
> <http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/adwords.shtml>. The Australian 
> Government could set up their own equivalent of this, given some of 
> their web sites are very popular, rather than pay Google money.

why? the point of the ads is to direct traffic TO the government sites.
not much point advertising to people already there.

or are you suggesting that .gov.au sites should run commercial
advertising? that's just plain wrong.


sure, the government could run it's own banner-ad program so that
.gov.au sites could advertise OTHER government sites....but it
would be unlikely to be anything better than random placement, not
context-sensitive like google adwords (admittedly, random banners may be
good enough for the job at hand). that would be OK if it worked, it's
not such a bad idea.

but, given the amazing ignorance within government about the web and how
the web works, i really can't see it working. these are sites run by
people who STILL don't understand the difference between relative and
absolute URLs, nor get the fact that file:// URLs can't actually be seen
by J. Random User on the internet (but it looks fine to the web designer
because their workstation has access to the file URL, so it must be OK,
right?).

and worse, by organisations who spend many millions of dollars on crappy
web sites by over-priced consulting firms that don't work (or perform or
look) anywhere near as well as sites by smaller, clued-up companies and
individuals for a tiny fraction of the cost.


craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>