"Smart Tags" Advertising

Do you remember the Microsoft "Smart Tags"?

[ggrot]

They were a failed plan that was designed originally by microsoft to select particular words on a web page and hyperlink them to various websites they thought corresponded to those words (for example - link the word microsoft to microsoft.com). Publishers screamed foul at having their content changed without their permission and it was retracted. Kazaa then tried a similar thing with a browser plugin but seemed to stop for similar reasons.

Well, what if you, the publisher, decided to seed your content (automatically w/ a database) with keywords and affiliate links corresponding to them. For example, you would link ever instance of the word hosting to your favorite hosting affiliate program.

I think that this could work theoretically if you had a large quantity of text content, and a large quantity of traffic (it wouldn't work on a small scale). Very popular forums might cut it (WebmasterWorld would be a good example). Free hosting sites might pull it off by converting user content to this hyperlinked system. Other sites might work well too.

What do you think of this? Would it piss off the visitors much? I mean, it would be targetted advertising, not some random unrelated banner. And you wouldnt have the same problem as Microsoft and Kazaa as it would be your own content. You could even use CSS to make a distinction between the advertised links and navigational links so that uninterested users wouldn't have problems distinguishing between the two. Any feedback?

[Key_Master]

I've been doing pretty much the same thing in one of my forums for the last year or two. The visitors post their messages and the forum script converts each keyword (one instance each per message) to a link. The link points to content elsewhere on the site relevant to the keyword. My visitors appreciate it although I don't think they would react favorably to straight out advertisements.

[chiyo]

interesting idea. might work with one-off visit sites, but regulars will get confused and it may put them off clicking on "real" links. You will lose a lot of context as any automated scheme like this can never do a good a job as a "person" deciding what a relevant link is.

I would expect a "hosting" hyperlink to go to a definition of hosting or a directory of hosts, but I would expect a "here is a good host" to go to an ad. So you would need to have an index of phrases rather than words I would think, but still not as good as a human editor who can more accurately summarise the context around the link and therefore what is an appropriate link.

You may risk breaking one of my (at least) rules for building brand loyal customers to web sites - "no surprises". And another one - the less links you have in each section, the more important each one is.. both to reader and SE.