Gaming Gmail Ads
from the fun-and-profit dept
Oh, those crazy unintended consequences. TheRegister is pointing out that the contextual advertising aspect of Gmail may lead to some interesting business opportunities. For example, you could try to buy up the keywords around your competitor (or, better yet, if you can figure it out, their standard "signature" file in emails) and guarantee that any emails they send out come complete with advertisements for your company. Even more sneaky, they pick up on Karl Auerbach's suggestion that a company would process outgoing email to add to it certain keywords to guarantee certain advertisements would show up within Gmail. This seems a bit far-fetched, and I doubt it would be all that effective - either in getting the right ads to show in Gmail or in being a worthwhile endeavor for advertisers. I do think, however, that the issue of competitors' ads showing up in email may upset people much more.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Blocking ads
Quite likely that Gmail will offer a similar blocking ability.
[ link to this | view in thread ]