Web Privacy Policies Confuse Net Surfers
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eBay Plans Keyword Bid-for-Click Ad Program

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the taking-a-page-from-Google dept

Wed, Jun 25th 2003 2:13am — Mike Masnick
Someone over at eBay has noticed Google's tremendous success with their AdWords program, and has realized that they can do something similar. Starting tomorrow eBay will let sellers buy certain keywords linking them to related auctions. Here's another case where pay-per-click keywords probably do make sense - since people are specifically searching. The question, though, is how does eBay guarantee the relevancy of the ads, and how clearly will they be marked as paid ads? Google has a pretty strict policy in place to remove any ads that their systems deem not relevant (and there are complaints that their system may be a little too quick on the draw). It's unclear if eBay will have anything similar, or if they just don't care.
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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2003 @ 3:23am

    F*ck ebay ads

    You look for Apple stuff and it shows you adds for Dell crap. IF I LOOK FOR APPLE IT MEANS I DON'T WANT THAT OTHER SH*T!!

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Michael Ward, 25 Jun 2003 @ 9:54am

    eBay Sells Ads

    A truly brain-dead idea.

    I spend a lot of time on eBay and their search engine already needs work: you simply cannot use enough qualifying terms to winnow out irrelevant items.

    This is just going to clutter the search result pages with even more things you don't want to see.

    eBay will make a small bit of money on ad sales, and lose a lot from irritated customers who find something better to do than spending their time and money on eBay.

    [ link to this | view in thread ]


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