Putting Ads On Others' Ads
from the this-is-going-to-get-complicated... dept
A few different sites today are talking about a new service, called Oodle, that lets people do a meta-search for classifieds in specific locations. In other words, you choose the city you live in (they don't offer many yet), and you do a search for "bicycle" and you'll get ads from Craigslist, eBay, the local newspaper and others. It's an interesting idea, but some are wondering about the legality of it. The business model of the company is to put contextual ads along side the results. Deep linking to stories has been shown to be legal (in most places...), but does it get more complicated when you're deeplinking into ads? The obvious answer is that it shouldn't matter at all. Services like this one drive more traffic to the ads, which should make everyone happy. Either way, what's most interesting about this development is that it's, yet another example of how people want advertising that's relevant to them and which they have control over. Classified ads are ads after all. So, is there really a business model in placing contextual, machine generated ads next to ads that people are specifically searching for? It seems like a stretch.
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
Speaking of business models
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Very feasible
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Very feasible
[ link to this | view in thread ]