antinomian.com

Ok, so this is going to be kind of a rant and will be mostly facetious so bear that in mind, but here’s the thing… I just don’t get web advertising! I feel like I should get it, like I *have* to get it, like I’ve been born and raised and steeped in it for so long that I should be an absolute expert on the subject, but I just DON’T GET IT! I mean, I know I’m not alone, I know that the music industry and the film industry and the publishing industry are all flailing around like decapitated fuck octopuses at this point, but I don’t want to be part of that scene. I want to be the new hotness and the media revolution and the generation that finally BREAKS THE MOLD of these old, broadcast paradigms, but no… instead I’m just sitting here, doing research for work about new sites that we might be interested in advertising on, places where we might reach new audiences and find new markets and all that stuff and I’m still just stupefied by the most basic possible concepts of buying and selling advertising on the web: that people actually…

1. See the ads…
2. Click on this shit, and…
3. Buy things from the sites they land on!

Issue One: Have you people never heard of Adblock Plus?! I mean, seriously… It’s a miraculous piece of software! 100000 times more effective than Tivo at removing ads from your desired content, and it’s FREE. It takes 30 seconds to install and requires zero maintenance! It makes advertising disappear and gives you a total mindfuck of disillusionment when you turn it back off 6 months later because you can’t even remember which sites have ads on them and you just get overwhelmed by how LOUD and ANNOYING and CRAZY BLADE RUNNER ON CRACK DYSTOPIAN all these flashing banners and skyscrapers and buttons and crazy DIVs sliding around on TOP OF THE FUCKING TEXT all this advertising really is! So yeah… Why are you even looking at this shit at all, internet people? Are there “useful” ads out there, that are actually benefitting people in some way that I’m too dense to comprehend? Are you all just “good citizens” who wouldn’t dream of stealing impressions and revenue from your favorite blogs and news sites, much less MP3s from starving musicians? As I said before, I just don’t get it.

Issue Two: OK, so you didn’t install Adblock Plus. Fine, I can understand that. But answer me *this* then: When you’re cruising around on the web, reading about auto-erotic, Lovecraft-inspired, vegan-friendly body mods on BoingBoing (or whatever it is they are writing about these days) and you see a little button dancing around in the page margin, informing you about some “New Honda Innovation Theatre” or words to that effect, what is motivating you to actually go ahead and *click* on this little dancing button? What is the connection between the content that you intentionally sought out by coming to BoingBoing, and this other ad that you clicked on because, once again, I don’t get it! If you want to find out about people who attach RFID chips to turtles and turn them loose in a central american river to study the spread of tortoise language in a hostile environment then fine, go to BoingBoing. But if you want to read about how Honda is planning to increase fuel efficiency by 26 percent over the next 12 years in their mid-level SUVs then go to the Honda website! What is the connection here?

Issue Three: Fine… you clicked on the Gama-go ad while you were reading Gizmodo. I don’t pretend to know why. But I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised at this point if you go ahead and buy some shirts while you’re there. In fact, I’ve been misleading you this whole time by pretending to be some bitter old crank who thinks that anybody who clicks on a banner ad is a simple-minded sheep and worth of derision. Ha ha ha. I understand the whole thing completely, the shared demographics of advertisers and publishers, the competition for limited mindshare and resources of the purchasing public, the need to grow an audience by reaching the right people at the right time with the right message. It all makes perfect sense to me! And the pricing models for online advertising are so smart, so evolved, so market-driven. Content sites segment a market, ad networks aggregate audience channels, advertisers can target their campaigns more accurately and dynamically than ever before and the end user gets introduced to 1001 cool things that might have otherwise escaped his attention. Everybody wins; Ford’s in his flivver, all’s well with the world!

…or at least it will be until nanofabrication eliminates scarcity and/or CPU speed increases to a point where the emulation of consciousness becomes possible. But that doesn’t mean we can’t exchange some units of arbitrary value for goods and services until then, right?