Monthly Archives: August 2004

Google AdSense – the small print

Posted on by

Verne Kopytoff summarizes recent disclosures regarding google’s popular adsense advertising program:

Google is among the Internet’s biggest destinations for advertisers. The company had nearly $1.5 billion in revenue last year, 95 percent of which came from advertising.
Targeting the pitches
Underpinning Google’s business is AdWords, a program that allows advertisers to make targeted sales pitches alongside search results. For example, a shampoo company could choose to advertise for queries that only include the words “hair,” “dandruff” or “split ends.”
Google also runs the ads on partner Web sites including America Online, Ask Jeeves and Earthlink.

2005 Mustang Blog?

Posted on by


Ford is running a Mustang blog (rather quietly at this point). Interesting angle on promoting their new sports coupe. I don’t think they should run this off of the mother ship’s domain (ford.com). Peter Delorenzo thinks that Ford has many, many product problems, including several new models due this fall:

But by any measure, the upcoming Ford 500, the Fusion and the Freestyle sport wagon are not only uninspiring to look at (in spite of being built on the outstanding Mazda6 platform architecture), but they’re going to be indistinguishable from their competition. These new cars may be perfectly competent, but as we all know by now, being merely good enough just isn’t good enough in this business anymore.
Ford continues to make great waves and have fun with their feel-good “heritage” cars, but their passenger cars appear to be falling behind before they even hit the starting gate.
Ford desperately needs a Grand Slam home run – a “standard” Ford that possesses all of the attitude, heritage and legacy of performance that its greatest passenger cars once had. And no, I’m not talking about some Yester-Tech Nostalgia Rod here, but a contemporary automobile that unapologetically says “Ford” in the very best possible way.
Ford executives continue to watch their car sales plummet (the July figures just in were dismal again), yet they dismiss and deflect any criticism by suggesting that when they get their new products “on-line” – everything will be all better again.
But at some point, it needs to sink in at Ford that consumers have actually gotten used to the fact that Ford has nothing to offer them – and that when Ford finally says, “Here you go, folks, check out our brand spanking new product lineup!” – a lot of people will just keep right on walking by.

Related, sort of, article by Thomas Content on Detroit’s health care cost problems.
Meanwhile, Wes Raynal reviews the new Corvette (C6).

Olympics Online – Just not in the US!

Posted on by

How ironic, given that Madison’s All City Swim Meet is available via internet video stream, that Non US internet users will be able to watch the olympics online, via streaming video; while captive American sports fans are stuck with cable/broadcast TV…. Anick Jesdanun summarizes the money and politics behind this absurdity (I’d be happy to pay for a real time video stream).

After conducting trials involving about 100,000 homes during the past two games, the International Olympic Committee is permitting more than a dozen broadcasters to show video of the Aug. 13-29 Olympics online.
But the footage will be highly restricted to protect lucrative broadcast contracts, which are sold by territory — $793 million paid by NBC alone. Web sites must employ technology to block viewers from outside their home countries, so U.S. Web surfers won’t benefit from the BBC’s live coverage. They’ll have to settle for highlights posted after NBC broadcasts, which are already largely tape-delayed.
On top of that, U.S. viewers must verify their identity using a credit card from Visa — an NBC advertiser — though they will not be charged.
Not a Visa cardholder? You’re out of luck.

Record Lobbying Spending

Posted on by

Stacy Forster summarizes record Wisconsin special interest spending

Aside from the biennial budget, the so-called taxpayer bill of rights was the most lobbied bill in the session, representing 10,631 hours of lobbying, most of it this year. That was nearly equal to what was spent on the next nine most lobbied bills, according to reports filed with the state Ethics Board.
During the first six months of 2004, special interests spent $11.4 million, or 30% of the $37.8 million.