times online caught out using seo subversively?

Waxy.org has done some detective work and found that Sitelynx is spamming social networks on behalf of The Times to help boost their search engine rankings. It seems pretty conclusive after reading the post. No comment as yet from the Times or Sitelynx.

Some people have commented that if they had just said they were The Times in the first place then all would be fine. I’m not so sure thats true. People have a habit of lambasting people/companies who try and promote themselves like this, but it is definitely better to be open about it rather then subversive. The New York Times seems to have done a good job of this by using sites like Techmeme to promote themselves openly.

At the end of the day, if your self promotion is helpful to the community site then more people will interact with it and the community wins overall. This has certainly been the case with Techmeme and The NY Times.

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apophenia wrote an article about “who clicks on ads? and what might this mean” which talks about that common phrase from people - “I never click on ads”. It then concludes that the majority of people clicking on ads online are from the lower socio-economic groups online, taking this conclusion from a study produced by AOL. Go here to read the full article.

AOL’s customer base has traditionally had a bias towards this demographic and this would certainly lead to them having a skew towards this demographic clicking on ads. Even more so, marketers advertising inside AOL seem to understand this and display banners suited to this demographic. Yet those same marketers do not seem to do this in the wider Internet. If this demographic is clicking in the majority on online ads, then surely the majority of agencies are wasting their client’s money online?

I don’t agree with this conclusion, not just because doing so would mean Google’s valuation would very quickly collapse

People do click on ads online, but they do so only when it is of interest to them (or to put it another way, when they benefit from clicking). Whether it is because they are in the market for a car and see a car ad they liked, or because they have seen a film trailer they want to find out more about. Marketers everywhere are trying to show an ad to the right person in the right place and at the right time. Achieve this and click-thru and economic returns would be sky high. This is why Google is doing so well, its technology is able to place adverts in front of you at a time when you are interested in a specific topic.

why is orange’s support email address 345@orange-ft.com. What’s wrong with 345@orange.com?

I can’t believe the figures being bandied about for the sale of Doubleclick.. even the initial figure of a $2bn bid by Microsoft sounded high. Now supposedly there is a $2.6bn bid by Google.

I can see the reasons for either party buying Doubleclick - Microsoft is losing the battle to Google in the advertising space and it will complement their offering. Google is already in this space so not sure if there is a benefit for them other than stopping Microsoft?

It would certainly be great for Hellman & Friedman who bought Doubleclick for $1.1bn only 2 years ago.

But there have been several acquisitions by Doubleclick recently (Falk, Tangozebra, Klipmart) so there are multiple ad tracking systems inside the company - I guess there must be some form of consolidation going on internally? Seems to me to be a difficult time to be buying Doubleclick at an expensive price when you look at their turnover. Maybe Atlas is a cheaper alternative? Though even they have just bought Accipiter.

A satirical look at the pitch process inside an ad agency.. hilarious

Cheers to License to Roam for pointing it out