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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. :(
Hello Hooloovoo,
Thank you for your inquiry.
I understand that you may have some concerns about Gator. There has been a lot of recent media coverage about applications that embed themselves into an Internet user?s browser and possibly track online behavior. Overture has evaluated Gator?s practices and determined that its strict operating guidelines provide a high-quality user experience.
[removed 4 paragraphs and CS sig per TOS #10]
[edited by: Mike_Mackin at 6:39 pm (utc) on April 6, 2003]
Gator doesn't give you a choice to install or not. It just install by itself when you using M$ IE which has "install-on-demand" enabled by default. They will only prompt you when you disable that option. And that option is only available on version after IE 6 if I am not wrong.
I got it in my system while visiting some sites searching for drivers.
No Slyolddog, unfortunately they don't ask you first.
Precision Time and Date Manager are the lesser evils if you considered some other Gator wares that are sitting in your system without you knowing and without any "icons on taskbar that suddenly appears". Do a search on your hard drive for *.log and if you something like gator.log in it, Gator is already lurking in your system.
That is flat-out unethical, and installing spyware on a person's computer without their knowledge OUGHT to be illegal (not to mention impossible, but take that up with Microsoft).
This is the only benefit to the public that I can see coming from this deal.
"I would like to see much greater control over where overture listings are shown" Receptional Andy
and more so the
"the lack of a pause feature, lack of max. spend feature, increasing min. bid and editorial policy irritating" 1milehgh80210
These are particular bug bears and are not difficult to set up on their system. The pause feature is really quite basic, but obviously that would lose them money and who wants to go back through the very unpredictable editorial procedure!
Our ROI has been steadily dropping and their overall strategy seems to be to drive the smaller advertiser away. MAD! The GATOR deal only adds to the feeling they either feel their time is nigh or they are just plain greedy!
TW
;)
Elisabeth Archambault is a member here and I consider her our resident expert on parasite ware. Email me and I'll give you her phone number.
I find it interesting that you have taken an interest in this issue ;)
I think it should be more like: that it used the standard security setting of your IE browser
That's why it's scumware.
I received the standard response that has been mentioned a couple of time in this thread but when I responded to that email I did receive a personal reply from Overture Client Services which included the following :
"For example, Dealtime, which is an affiliate partner of Google AdWords, displays listings through Gator pop-under ads. Some of Overture?s other competitors, like Sprinks and FindWhat, also have deals with Gator."
Now the point of my post is that many of the people here have a great dislike for Overture and will put the boot in at every opportunity. Those same people worship at the feet of the Google God. They're so far up the arse of GG that they shouldn't be white hatters, they should be brown.
Anybody that dares to say a word against Google is pilloried and mocked, yet here's GG in this very thread acting shocked and concerned about what's going on. Come on guys, get real, he knows exactly what's going on. He knows that Google ads are shown on Gator via Dealtime but he's more than happy to see a 100 message thread slagging off their main advertising competitor. Where's the outrage against Google?.
As figment88 said earlier "The advertising industry is inherently scummy - get off your moral high horses and measure ROI."
It is correct that Dealtime displays Google Adwords on their site, and they may distribute their own ads through Gator. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they will channel your Adwords ads through to Gator as well. In fact, I'm fairly certain that doing so would be a violation of their contract with Google.
This is in contrast to Overtures setup, who basically garantee that your ad will turn up in Gator pop-unders whether you like it or not.
It seems like your Overture rep has fooled you to think that the two are doing the same. While in reality the approaches could hardly be more different. Talk about dishonest marketing.
