I am still angry and I have never ever written such a long post in english on this blog before. So please take some time and read this. If you don’t get it please email me (the comments are still “kaputt”) and i will correct it or republish it in german.
Read on…
Some stupid marketing prick must have had this useless and misleading idea. It just happened to me last weekend as i was reading an interview with one of my favorite artists in hip hop: Ghostface Killa (the new album fishscale is great)
Usually when you come across underlined words in the internet it marks an hyperlink. Now there is a company trying to make money with my surfing habits, as it sells double-lined words looking like hyperlinks. It’s pretty high tech, Ajax and all that, but not web 2.0. I was impressed and annoyed at the same time by Intellitext. So you read the text, see a double-lined word and think it’s a useful hyperlink to more relevant info. Literally your eye just notices a simple underlining – you won’t recognize that there are two lines because you are reading fast and your brain suggests hyperlinks – so you click. But instead of getting more background information you are directed to advertisement.
If you don’t click and just move the mouse over the link to check where it’s redirecting, you get a big javascript mouse-over-window with a lot of advertising. Right into the article you are reading.
And Intellitext is smarter than you because while you are reading the page it double-lines words within the content. Oops. So i bet they are reading out my google, amazon, iTunes and adsense cookies as well. Or why do i get so many graphic design related info and printing advertisment behind the mouseovers. They go even further. They know I listen to “The streets”. Get this straight. Ghostface talks about “balancing the streets with boardrooms” and i get an advertisement for Mike Skinner’s latest album on amazon.de (which is by the way not good and not worth the letters to write about – see i am still pissed and now mike has to suffer)
This is a big bad wolf in sheep clothes hiding behind your interests and cookies.
So why am I so anrgy?
Usually I do ignore advertising or consciously read it. I use adblockers in the web and I don’t have a TV. The program sucks and i can’t control the content. The ads who’ll get through my personaI firewall have to be good and smart. Put some effort and ideas in your campaigns. Nice graphics would be cool,too. No – now I expect too much but actually I am a very simple and easy to handle consume orientated part of society – not like your average yellow press target-group but I am happy with good quality, a product to believe in (compare any church running on money or apple) and real service at the right time and place.
And the internet is supposed to make it easier to find stuff and not to confuse me. Vibrantmedia’s method of selling relevant ads combined with content is nothing else than very intelligent spam leading to a more effective flyback rate for advertisers. It frightens and amazes me at the same time but i consider it as thread for my internet habits because i am driven by hyperlinks. Imagine wikipedia with double-lined hyperlinks hiding ads.
Unfortunately I can’t do anything against Spam or comment spam except hoping the provider will develop better filters. But i can do something against Intellitext because it’s user driven and needs advertisers and that’s where you come in. Don’t support them. Don’t sell your blog content to them and don’t click the ads. It might sound naive and most of the internet users are very naive (compare myspace – its owner Murdoch/News corp. sells $13 million in ad revenue each month) and you have to start at one point.
Intellitext will mark the difference between the “good and the evil internet” like sharing and DRM does. Furthermore it will make it easier for me to see who is just interested in money and who is putting up content as plain information.
Needless to mention that republish never had any ads or sponsorship on the site. We do this for fun and not become media whores of the industry like others. Enough C.R.E.A.M and elbows already.