Internet Advertising

Is it just me or does insanity still rule the internet and internet advertising?

The other day the Wall Street Journal ran a story on a kid who decided to try paying for his college education by selling advertising space on a website. This site is just a page he put up with nothing but ads on it. Despite this he has sold a significant amount of ad space. It was theorized that the uniqueness of what he was doing helped not ot mention the fact he was mentioned in lots of blogs (by himself to start) and then in the media (note the WSJ article).

This reminds me of the person who asked everyone to send him a penny to help defray college costs and people did. Once started it fed on itself and the media promoted it and folks sent 1 cent in an envelope with a 32 cent stamp (or whatever the cost at the time).

I forget the specifics but the latest kid has already made over $40,000 (or maybe that was in Euros). Companies can't possibly believe they will get their moneys worth out of this endeavour. The attention will fade and the website will join others (like this one) in obscurity. If you are an investor in a firm that bought space on this kids site you should sell your stock- FAST. On the other hand I have to take my hat off to the kid who thought of it and actually pulled it off. He is laughing all the way to the bank. P.T. Barnum would be proud.

Switching mediums - how many of you click on banner advertisments on websites? I can't remember the last time I did this. I can't remember EVER clicking on one of the paid listings on the search engines. Despite my habits someone must be clicking on these links or Google wouldn't be earning a dime in revenue which is clearly not true.

I even signed up for the banner ad program on the blog just in case someone actually reads this - why pass up free money.

I suppose this is yet another opportunity that I have failed to capitalize on.

Even though I don't use the ads, I do purchase products on the internet fairly regularly. I must admit that the simpler the product the better - my experiences with Dell have been less then stellar. They best hope I am the aberation. Then there are the Norton Security products.......