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Jayvee Fernandez

Google Interest-based ads sounds promising for feed advertising

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Just recently, Google announced a little beta tweak into their ad system, allowing for interest-based advertising to take place in their ad units. By interest, they mean data that’s based on our browsing history, much similar to how GMail shows ads based on keywords that appear in our inbox. Whether we’ve reached another argument on privacy issues is one thing. What I find more interesting is its application into “feedvertising.”

We believe there is real value to seeing ads about the things that interest you. If, for example, you love adventure travel and therefore visit adventure travel sites, Google could show you more ads for activities like hiking trips to Patagonia or African safaris. While interest-based advertising can infer your interest in adventure travel from the websites you visit, you can also choose your favorite categories, or tell us which categories you don’t want to see ads for. Interest-based advertising also helps advertisers tailor ads for you based on your previous interactions with them, such as visits to their websites. So if you visit an online sports store, you may later be shown ads on other websites offering you a discount on running shoes during that store’s upcoming sale.

Google argues well with the “stickiness” of more relevant advertising, and who is to complain with all things taken into account? However I do think that this meddles with the logic of why bloggers, especially network bloggers do stick to niches of interest: to get relevant advertising alongside content.

There’s a huge difference though in the browsing philosophy in seeing ads pop up on feeds. As opposed to active browsing where a reader is engaged in looking for content, pulling feeds into feed readers is more of a passive endeavor. In fact, your readers may not even read the feeds up till several hours later. Ads that pull from your browsing history make more sense in this case, as it doesn’t take into account a “moment” of engagement as much as actively clicking on links on your browser.

The Saturation of Top Tens and Lists

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There is a men’s magazine I enjoy reading, and I’m sure you’re all familiar with it: Esquire. It has been around since 1933 and apart from having some of the best cover designs in the print industry today, by no fail I anticipate a particular feature that they regularly run — their lists. Be it the Worst 10 Men in Congress to teh 75 Most Influential Men in the 21st Century, I await these lists because I know that the headstrong staff put a lot of effort in building these lists.

I’m not sure if I can say the same for blogs. About a few years ago “Top 10” lists have invaded the blogosphere not so much as an editorial feature, but as a tool for link baiting — and I must say that it still works to this very day, but with less effect. Truth is, with all the hype on link bait tips to score more traffic, the list seems to be the easiest to manufacture: choose a topic, pull out pop culture knowledge as reference, and there you have it — a list.

There’s a reason why Esquire succeeds in the list making:

1. they don’t do if often
2. they’ve got more than 70 years of credibility backing them up
3. their lists are well researched

Of the three, bloggers can probably work on number two and three — before building lists, maybe it would be a good idea to establish yourself first as an authority in something. Because of the way things work, people tend to categorize and remember you for one thing only. So ask yourself, if you want to be authoritative in something, what would that be? You can’t be good in everything.