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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. :(
-S
Is it time to disable javascript, activex and install-on-demand on your Internet Explorer, Microsoft users?
I'll be curious to see how webmasters react as word of the Overture-Gator partnership
It is somewhat more reprehensible than Google content ads but of the same ilk. If Google wants to take the moral high ground they should make distribution to content ads opt-in instead of opt-out and setup a parallel bid market.
If I found out that Overture were not going to make the Gator ad display optional, I would drop them.
Overture advertisers have wanted the ability to opt out of having their ads displayed on certain partners' sites for a long time. AFAIK they never gave advertisers this feature and are unlikely to in the future, but I am no longer an advertiser so I could be wrong.
I think Gator's a pretty cheesy traffic source, but I'll be keeping my accounts at overture until I'm convinced they no longer make me a decent return.
Although paying for an ad to be on a site is more moral than "hijacking" the spot, so long as it's not illegal, I don't think it's illegitimate.
By the way, just to report my bias, I bought some Overture shares a few days ago.
Frankly disappointed , although certainly not surprised.
I hope Google will continue to lead by example (and avoid associations with people like Xupiter that I've been hearing about in connection with Google?)
[edited by: tigger at 9:49 am (utc) on April 7, 2003]
[edit reason] requested by Receptional_Andy [/edit]
Gator has been something of a changeling over time. It started out as a program that remembers entries in web forms and fills them in when you ask it to. It had the questionable feature of collecting information about surfing habits and sending them back to a centralised server where the information could be sold to marketers. From there it progressed into covertly installed ad delivery/clicktracking software that runs in the background on your PC and opens popup ads when you visit certain web pages. There is also evidence that Gator is using techniques to modify the content of pages visited by inserting additional ads etc.
For more detailed information (with an anti-gator stance) go here [cexx.org]
I've already heard rumblings from more militant anti-scumware people of a concerted attempt to generate worthless clickthroughs for top bidders in order to drive them off Overture.
The twist is this.. Gator traffic is pretty worthless in any case, so advertisers are going to be getting very poor quality traffic, but at premium prices.
Sell those shares and cancel your accounts NOW is my advice.
I'll admit to having gator on my 'puter for 2 days.
Based on that experience I'll be shorting OVER shares when the market opens monday.
For those that remember, It's akin to that not oh so great l$ business decision to unilaterally change the TOS of their submit a site subscribers via 'upgrade' to ppc.
"Greedy man loses all his got" Dejected betting shop punter circa 1964
We have been slowly weeding out the high traffic general search terms from Over (due to very questionable spikes in traffic) and have just been keeping the very specific ones. If traffic from Gator shows a good response we can't turn it away however it's really disappointing to see Over dealing with such scum. They don't allow pop-ups on the url's they publish - why do the opposite with gator?
Good point.
WebDiversity, I think the difference between the Google toolbar and Gator is that Gator is normally installed without your permission. The Google toolbar is your choice - and there are two choices, with or without pagerank. The one without pagerank does not send data back to google (so they say). It is opt-in whereas Gator is opt-out, and is difficult to opt-out as well as the adware and spyware remains behind even after uninstall.
Looks like gsx and I posted the some observation simultaneously. ;) As for the one without PR enabled possibly sending data back to Google, no way. If Google tried this, people with firewalls and such would have spotted the toolbar phoning home without permission.
>>A while back Espotting had a whole bunch of "rogue" partners
Espotting are currently using Gator I believe. Someone correct me if I'm wrong: [webmasterworld.com...]
To be fair, Gator does spell it out when you install it, but last years "Friends Greetings" trojan also spelled out what it would do, and the bottom line is that no-one reads that stuff anyway.
BUT.. when you install the Google Toolbar, you get the Google Toolbar. When you install something like the "Precision Date and Time Manager" what you're actually getting is the GAIN plugin to bombard you with popups.
If you want a good technical analysis, look at Andrew Clover's excellent Doxdesk site (darn this no URLs thing, just search in Google for doxdesk and it's the first match).
But having said that. I think it is ugly. And if we want to keep the web beautiful, this must be curtailed. Google represents part of the "beautiful" web, and it would do them a lot of harm to indulge in something like this.
You say it works but does it? If you asked me to name the brands I dislike the most on the internet, those two names would crop up pretty high in the list. They have business built on the hope that if enough people see the name, some of them must buy something. This approach also alienates a large number of people who might otherwise be buying off you. I regularly buy thngs on the internet but even if I wanted one, I wouldn't buy an X10 on principle.
Maybe i'm in the minority, but even if this is the case, what do people who use popups think of creating this kind of impression. In general their attitude is 'we don't care'. I've found that companies who employ less ethical techniques to promote their products generally have this attitude reflected in their customer service too.
Thats what i want to know about. What is Google planning on doing about that? I don't want pop-unders happening on my Google listings and Adwords. Hopefully Google Guy will read this or somebody could ask him, Brett?
[edited by: cindysunc at 7:11 pm (utc) on April 5, 2003]
Looking at the threads it seems to me that some Overture bidders don't know why webmasters are recoiling in horror. If you want a full lowdown, have a look at the ODP category - http://ch.dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Business/Allegedly_Unethical_Firms/Gator/ - which has a good variety of articles and opinions about Gator and its business practices.
Overture, like Gator, has made their share of enemies. Well, they say, birds of a feather flock together, right?
If traffic from Gator shows a good response we can't turn it away however it's really disappointing to see Over dealing with such scum.
Overture has a choice with whether or not to deal with such scum as do you (or your clients).
Ted
I think you are missing the point a little. I'm more than happy for my Overture listings to be shown on Yahoo or MSN or any number of reasonable search engines, but I don't want to also have to make visitors endure popunders that don't get response rates or good returns and mainly succeed in annoying people. And the more experienced users have nearly all learned to kill popups/popunders, or simply ignore them, so this isn't even a very forward thinking solution.
I don't care about Gators figures showing how good they are at tricking people into viewing sites.
A real classy move!
zeus
Just about everybody in this forum takes the view that this is a negative almost desperate move by Ov - Im no fan of spyware/scumware or whatever you want to call it, their interference is a pain in the bum (or f@nny depending on which side of the pond your on)and we could probably all do without it. But its here - its staying and it has its place in the market and thats the unpalatable truth.
You watch TV you see the same old adverts all over again and think wheres that remote - if you dont like the commercial you switch channels, ignore it or maybe on a soft day even buy the darn product. If you dont want the gator screen you close it - pain though it is its not a big deal for most users particlularly if the content is relevant (as opposed to seeing a casino pop up every time you connect). If Gator offer users another relevant option or two then whats wrong with that?
The sanctamonious claptrap that some people spout when faced with anything remotely leftfield or even slightly controversial makes me laugh. What are we all paid to do? Deliver traffic and lots of it to our carefully managed websites and thats it. Yes we would like quality traffic and yes we would love it to be 100% pure just like the driven snow but does it really matter if Ov use Gator IF a customers traffic grows by an extra 2 or 3%?
If you have a customer who wants pure traffic then fine - pat on the back for morals and ethics and all that and bye bye to the extra traffic and business.
Sometimes I think we lose sight of our objectives in jumping on the whats right and whats wrong bandwagon. Skilled experience IT people can be such techno-snobs - this site to its credit has a majority of evenly balanced people who speak their minds, offer quality advice and spend time helping the less gifted. I do think sometimes though we get a snowballing unobjective sheeplike tranche of postings and here is one such thread.
Remember what your paid to do, remember that the searching the web is all about looking for options to answer queries or satisfy needs. There are various ways of delivering and ultimately WE are there to promote business not turn it away.
There ... I said it.
Feel better already
C
