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The deal turns up the heat on a rivalry between Google and Overture--two of the dominant forces in one of the Web's hottest marketing sectors. In particular, it gives Overture access to visitors of its chief competitor and it helps the company broaden its own advertising search network onto a new platform.
hhhmmmmmmmmm.... I hope this comes back to bite OV in the a$$. With the possibility of losing MSN or YAHOO!, a sign of desparation? It makes AdWords a much more compelling value (at least from an ethical - and hopefully a business perspective), particularly if OV doesn't offer the ability to opt-out of this new "feature'.
OTOH, sometimes the "numbers" with Gator do show good results. Just makes me cringe though. :(
And all moral and judgemental issues aside, quality vs quantity is no contest. I don't know about you, but I get paid for quality traffic that creates conversions, not potentially disatisfied traffic through popups and popunders [i]that people didn't actively choose to open[/i]. I like visitors who chose the search engine, query and clicked on my listing. This is the traffic that gets ROI. Otherwise I would just be optimising sites for "britney spears" and all the variations ;)
>>anything remotely leftfield or even slightly controversial
This is way off the mark if you're describing gator.
I also don't want the many people who discover that gator has somehow been installed on their machine without their knowledge to associate this with my site. And make no mistake that most people don't know they have Gator installed. They use activex trickery to try and install their software from banner ads, or otherwise popup an unidentifiable dialog box that can fool novice users (see http://news.com.com/2100-1023-877568.html). They call it 'one-click opt-install' and it's used on their partner sites.
I think the net is the perfect place for groups of people to take a stance against unethical firms who make the net a hard place for the inexperienced. If that makes me a techo snob, then so be it.
Love the include errors in the ads.html above :) Gstor really look like they know what they're doing.
[edited by: Receptional_Andy at 7:29 pm (utc) on April 5, 2003]
Overture being on Gator isn't going to make us leave Overture.
Result: I have instructions to let the Overture funds run out, and expand what we're doing at Adwords and elsewhere.
LOL :)
No pie-throwing from me - everyone makes their own choices.
[webmasterworld.com...]
I'd extend it a little more and say the problem is with advertising as an industry. In other types of business, firms try to offer more value to their customers to increase market share. The nature of advertising is to set marginal ROI to zero.
I think the problem is that as Google ventures more and more into advertising they will hire more and more advertising people and no matter how many Dutch Boys stick their fingers in the dike the fundamental characteristics of Google will change.
Witness the recent launch of their content ads:
1) the program is opt-out instead of opt-in
2) they steadfastly deny that quality of clicks is lower than on search results
3) they run some silly little study on google groups than claim the unpublished results not only support their claims in number 2 but are generalizable to the entire internet - what arrogance.
The advertising industry is inherently scummy - get off your moral high horses and measure ROI. If it is positive advertise, if not look for other channels.
I dont buy the argument that by piggy-backing search requests you somehow denigrate your own products - I maintain that the more choice you provide for a user the better served that person is in finding the result that he is ultimatley seeking.
Relevancy is important here and so long as you are delivering this and a user is happy to click on the option provided why should this tarnish the process to any great extent.
>>>>> quality vs quantity is no contest. I don't know about you, but I get paid for quality traffic that creates conversions, not potentially disatisfied traffic through popups <<<<<
Quality does not reduce simply because someone has decided to click on a Gator link or ad - not in my experience anyway. Conversion results from relevancy and if a user is happy with what they see on your site then regardless of how they got there or which gateway they passed through - they will make the purchase.
But we're not talking about choice in the same way as normal overture listings - we're talking about unrequested popup windows opened up by covertly installed software - where's the choice in that?
I have no direct experience of advertising using Gator so I can't really judge it's effectiveness. Maybe the ROI is great, I don't know. I can't see that it will be any better than normal PPC traffic, but I can think of many reasons why it wouldn't be. In my experience targeted search listings = good, popups = bad, but this is probably biased because I personally find popups and websites that employ them irritating and so I avoid using them.
There are so many ways to get traffic, why use flagrantly unethical firms?
Should I install gator on my second computer so I can eat away at my competitor's ad spending?
(of course I won't do that but there will be people who will)
On that subject I heard (probably unfounded) rumours that people that currently target Gator will now also include Overture. I can't remember where I read it, but it was about groups targeting high profile Overture listings with mass clickthroughs. I'll see if I can look it up.
In any case, not a good idea to make enemies if you ask me...
If they (OV) had any sense, they would have waited until consumer holiday shopping season to implement this. They could have shown better initial results, and a lot of advertisers would not take a chance on losing holiday traffic from OV regular results during high season.
</devil's advocate>
I normally tell him to bugger off, but occasionally if I'm in the mood I'll see what his deal is. These people scrape a living but they aren't getting rich. I'd wager the Overture deal works out the same.
These people are an eyesore but they become part of the landscape, and eventually people stop even noticing them at all.
Seriously, ROI is only the shallowest way to look at this issue. Even if sales from Overture or Gator visitors did generate a net profit, don't you think you may be generating a lot of ill will towards your company that you can't measure? And do you want to be generating revenue for Gator and helping them survive and expand? And do you want to legitimize Gator and encourage copycat companies to release their own scumware?
I have my own truism I try to live by: actions have consequences.
It performs all the functions Gator did without the annoying ads and scumware.
You can also convert over your Gator passwords, if Overture was going to choose a partner this firm may have been a bettter choice.
[de-link]
[edited by: Mike_Mackin at 3:43 pm (utc) on April 6, 2003]
However, these moral considerations do not carry one-step removed. It seems to me the situation is similiar to groups that boycott advertisers for television shows they don't like. If they don't like the television show, they should not watch it.
How far down the chain are you going to carry your outrage. What's next - should we boycott companies that advertise on overture? Maybe we should boycott the ISP's that host the websites of the companies that advertise on Overture. Ultimately, I think I might have to boycott my own websites.
I did, both from within my own account and from the account of the merchant I mentioned earlier. The reply contained predictable sales spin, but the line that caught my eye was the bit about Gator being a "permission-based marketing network". What a CROCK!
I wonder if the webmasters whose content Gator is using as triggers for parasitic popup delivery would agree with that description?
I wonder if people who have been victimized by Gator's drive-by download installs would agree with that description, if they ever figured out where those #$^&*(** popups were coming from?
I wonder if the people who say "well, business is business, it's all about ROI" would say the same about a vandal who offered to spraypaint their ad on a building down the street? Ethically I don't see much difference between that and Gator (or other scum) popping windows on someone else's website without their permission!
I'd better shut up ... I'm getting worked up ...
Nobody's accusing Bill Gates of underhand tactics. In my opinion this is even more low down than what Gator does because you never have a chance to opt out at all!
I'm on a Mac and have never seen that, so my comments might be a bit off, but is it in any way triggered by someone else's content or by what the user does on someone else's site? Gator makes unauthorized use of other people's intellectual property, not counting what it does to people's systems.
Anyhow, both Gator and Microsoft are using deception to earn themselves advertising revenues. The only difference is that you have a choice before you install Gator.
What search button are you talking about? It creates a popup? What IE are you using?
Really? Not what I find. Gates and his grubby unethical corporation have stacks of detractors. Go search and you will find (for starters, try the ex-employees of those firms he has crushed through underhand tactics).
Jomaxx actually calls it about right. The ethics are quite simply that Overture stinks and on that level anyone with strong morals shouldn't go near them. Those who do will be judged accordingly.
However, even exclusively as a business decision, only a fool would fail to consider the intangible consequences of association with such an outfit. It isn't just straight ROI that you should consider, but longer term impact on reputation. In many cases that could actually dwarf any benefits of using them at all.
Be judged as those you associate with.
if it is by chance the final straw for Overture, well, not only do they go down, but they take FAST and AltaVista with'em...
It's a shame really, FAST had so much potential.
Well Google does this all the time - ever hear of products called Google Images and Google Groups.
Most webmasters have no idea that Google spiders and sorts their images for Google images or if they do, they don't know how to setup robots exclusion. I'm sure there are some cases, but by and large I don't see how Google images can benefit webmasters they are taking images from and it certainly harms them in terms of bandwidth and encouragement to hotlink.
Google Groups now that is outright theft of intellectual property. Don't tell me you can request to be removed. Their removal procedure is a joke. I have tried on several occassions to get my almost 10-year old postings removed to no avail.
By and large I agree with previous posters that Google has a higher moral stance than Overture or certainly Gator. However, some people are just so over-the-top in their admiration for Google that predjudices all of their judgements.
There are no WHITE HATS in the advertising industry.
[edited by: figment88 at 7:00 pm (utc) on April 6, 2003]
It actually allows you to download some of the internet's most popular software, totally free! One of the coolest features is the Gator eWallet that stores passwords and fills in online forms for you. Isn't all this worth it in exchange for targeted advertising that understands YOUR surfing habits and shows you things you want to buy?
And that's not all!
There's also the date manager that puts a 2-month calendar in the task bar. You'll never miss another appointment! And don't you tired of having to keep up with whether the time on your computer is precise? I know I do. With Gator's precision time feature, you can rest assured that you are on Atomic time, baby!
What are you waiting for? There is so much to GAIN!
(Gator Advertising and Information Network)
If you liked learning about Gator, I'd like to also tell you about how you can submit to over 100,000 search engines, while simultaneously targeting over 2,000,000 email addresses and making $10,000/month from home and never have to work again. Down on your luck? Sound too good to be true? This going to be perfect for you!
