Web pr0n
Posted on June 10th, 2009 –
I gotta be honest with you, when I finally spotted that big red ball, my hopes were about as deflated as it was. It was folded neatly in front of the cube van in an alley on Elm Street, thus dashing my vision of watching them rolling it up Yonge Street in rush-hour traffic.
So I decided to come home and do a bit of surfing through the local newspapers. I maintain that “surfing” is still used among webby people. As alternatives, we sometimes use “slacking” or “pr0n hounding”.
Anyway, most of it sounded absolutely dreadful. In fact, if it wasn’t for one thing that kept bugging me, I would’ve just flipped to Wipeout so as to at least try to quench my unfulfilled desire for a big red ball.
Because I’ve been whoring this site out quite a bit lately, I’ve noticed that I’ve started to become keenly aware of not only ad placement but also of content. For example, on almost all major news sites, there’s a banner above the main story and the “sweet spot” of advertising gold sitting in the site’s left armpit (your lower-right).
Please allow me to demonstrate:
Here we have a heartwarming reminder about father’s day and a rather cheap looking credit score ad at the top. Usually these ads are placed here based on context or relevance to the article. At least, that’s the idea.
When I started to take more notice of these and the content they were connected to, it highlighted how open the market for contextual advertising still is. Monkeys, infants, and hamsters could all do an equally compelling job.
In the mess above, the computer responsible for deciding which ads go where concluded that a dead guard would probably remind you of your father. The mood called for a murderific Father’s Day gift, but not at the expense of your credit rating.
Here’s another interesting combination:
At least the computer here was being pragmatic. You got old dead man, you gotta wash that old dead man stink out. And hang on to your hard-earned dough ’cause you could be next, sucker.
Pragmatic but awful!
And what about this?
The computer may be trying to herd us out into the middle of the desert for something; get us all stinking drunk, no money, just sand and heat and scorching sun. That’s really the only connection I can see between murder and showing us where we should go to get away from it: Crime-free Nevada.
In case you need further evidence:
We all know that the OLG is run by shifty robots so that doesn’t leave much place for the humans. And they’re being left to die and rot alone in the cities, not like the cramped but happy humans being transported to the Las Vegas processing facility.
Or…the computer that decided to put these ads here is just dumb. Maybe you’ll never look at web sites the same way again. Maybe if I didn’t spend so much time slacking or pr0n hounding, I’d think of something more interesting. Maybe some real content tomorrow. Maybe a big red ball.
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