mediajunk

Google has agreed a deal with Lycos to deliver contexualized ads on the portal's member pages.

Lycos offers free web space to members, in exchange for the right to put annoying ads on the resulting sites (take a look at this random-chosen and typically ad-blighted Lycos member's page). Google will presumably use its infamous algorithm to glean the meaning of the page (though such rudimentary meaning-gleaning is a far cry from genuine AI), and thereby select an appropriate category of advertisements.

The move confirms widely held suspicions that Google is moving aggressively into hard-nosed business mode (at the risk, perhaps, of its heretofore pristine brand). But it also tells us something about the nature of advertising on the web.

The banner ad never really took off on the web. Advertisers learned that, when given a choice, users prefer to ignore ads, and certainly do not care to interact with them. Clickthrough rates for banner ads are typically less than 0.01%. The advantage that advertisers had in other media -- namely, the passivity of the audience -- has been lost on the web.

To counteract, then, advertisers have had to get smarter, and respond to the wishes of consumers. But is contexualization really enough to make web advertising take off?

I doubt it. Modern consumers -- especially young, savvy web users -- are techno-literate enough to understand how targeted advertising works and not to be unduly allured by it. Unfortunately, advertisers will therefore probably continue to adopt more underhand techniques, such as pop-ups; pop-unders; uncloseable windows; and other spammy strategies that have already been tried and tested by the most shameless of them all -- the porn industry.