Monday, March 24, 2003

Big brother is... uhh... trying to sell you something

Maybe everyone else figured this out long ago, but I just noticed that Blogspot targets its ads based on the content of the blog. How cool (and slightly spooky!) is that?

I noticed this because I was checking out Abbie the Cat and noticed that the page had ads for "I Love Cats" magazine and "Persian Cat on eBay."

Eager to test my theory, I went over to My Side of Things, where Laura recently wrote a post about a bird getting stuck in her air conditioner. Sho 'nuff, the BlogSpot ads inquired boldy whether I had a problem with bird droppings or pest starlings!

So then I tried a random blog from the blogger front page. At Where does it go?, some college student included a bit about how she got hotel reservations in Portland through Priceline. And the ads were for -- you guessed it -- "Homestead Portland Hotel" and "Residence Inn."

I'm a bit insulted by the fact that my current ad is "Visual Editing for Blogs." What, do they think I need some help? :-)

I assume this uses the same basic technology as Google AdWords, but I don't know if it's related to Pyra's recent entry to the Google empire.

It seems like there's got to be some way to turn this little revelation to my advantage, but I have no idea what it is!

No comments: