Monday, December 13, 2004
How much would you pay?
With all the greedy salivating around its dot.com stock, Google has a lot of attention these days. For good reason, really - hard to find anything useful on the Web that they aren't involved with. Its corporate servers are even bringing you this message. Useful?
My favorite Google toy is Adwords. Adwords is responsible for all those little blocks of advertisements for spermgirl.com that line up along your bukkake search results (even when you accidentally spell it bukake). But that's not the cool thing. Google has turned this groovy little advertising engine loose for the entire world to play with.
For a nickel, I can buy a click. All I need is a pithy little text message and a smart set of search words to associate it with. And I get traffic!
That's especially cool if I'm selling crap. I loved playing with Adwords and trying different messages but I was severely lacking in purpose. I didn't have a need for traffic. I didn't sell crap. I didn't really have anything to push.
During the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, I found something that needed pushing. So much crap, really. I had to push back on the focus the election was taking - the evil was so thick that even the demos became war mongers. I didn't want the message to be 'we'll kill terrorists too!'
So I started my first EffectiveCPM project -- I would advertise for Kerry in the way I wanted his message to be shared:
Can Kerry cut your taxes?
Yes! See the Kerry plan
to strengthen the middle class
www.johnkerry.com/issues/
The message was displayed every time somebody in the "battleground states" (AdWords enables geo-targeting) searched Google for "bush tax cut," "tax cut" or "tax cuts." 51,000 times in the 2 weeks before the election with a healthy 1,000 clicks!
It didn't really help sway things. But it gave me hope. I got 2% to read about the part of Kerry I wanted them to think about. Not the misguided spin to turn him into some kind of terrorist hunter.
And all of this fun for a mere $200 or so. I realized quickly I better keep my hobby limited to smaller issues. The election sputtered out but Adwords is still there and ready for us to put to use. The only limit is money and creativity. Now that I've got something to push, I just need the cash. Donate today :)
I'll post shortly about other recent and currently live EffectiveCPM projects. My intent is to make this a forum to choose causes, refine the messaging, arrange funding and spread the word.
My favorite Google toy is Adwords. Adwords is responsible for all those little blocks of advertisements for spermgirl.com that line up along your bukkake search results (even when you accidentally spell it bukake). But that's not the cool thing. Google has turned this groovy little advertising engine loose for the entire world to play with.
For a nickel, I can buy a click. All I need is a pithy little text message and a smart set of search words to associate it with. And I get traffic!
That's especially cool if I'm selling crap. I loved playing with Adwords and trying different messages but I was severely lacking in purpose. I didn't have a need for traffic. I didn't sell crap. I didn't really have anything to push.
During the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, I found something that needed pushing. So much crap, really. I had to push back on the focus the election was taking - the evil was so thick that even the demos became war mongers. I didn't want the message to be 'we'll kill terrorists too!'
So I started my first EffectiveCPM project -- I would advertise for Kerry in the way I wanted his message to be shared:
Can Kerry cut your taxes?
Yes! See the Kerry plan
to strengthen the middle class
www.johnkerry.com/issues/
The message was displayed every time somebody in the "battleground states" (AdWords enables geo-targeting) searched Google for "bush tax cut," "tax cut" or "tax cuts." 51,000 times in the 2 weeks before the election with a healthy 1,000 clicks!
It didn't really help sway things. But it gave me hope. I got 2% to read about the part of Kerry I wanted them to think about. Not the misguided spin to turn him into some kind of terrorist hunter.
And all of this fun for a mere $200 or so. I realized quickly I better keep my hobby limited to smaller issues. The election sputtered out but Adwords is still there and ready for us to put to use. The only limit is money and creativity. Now that I've got something to push, I just need the cash. Donate today :)
I'll post shortly about other recent and currently live EffectiveCPM projects. My intent is to make this a forum to choose causes, refine the messaging, arrange funding and spread the word.
