The Future As Seen By Me In 2010

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Well looky here, things one has scanned in eh. (ignore the photo, that's some guy that made some accounting software, not sure what became of him ;) MIKE RIVERSDALE is fuming. The expensive headphones he bought in Sydney three weeks ago have just died. His first reaction is not to randomly spill expletives into his coffee, but to use his iPhone to vent his frustration to his Twitter con- tacts, under the moniker Miramar Mike. "I will also put, 'What should I do?' It's a conversation. I'm reaching out to the people following me." The council predicts hand-held digital devices such as smartphones will rule the world in 2040. They already rule the life of Mr Riversdale, whose company WaveAdept helps businesses adapt - their computing sys- tems to allow staff to work from anywhere - and with anyone. In order of fre- equency, he uses his iPhone to tweet (1136 followers; 8363 tweets since joining), e-mail, make phone calls and use online services, such as checki
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Google Ads = Masturbation, ie No-One Admits To Doing It

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It's a "theory" born in a pub with some mates quite some time ago and I think it now deserves to see the light of day. Here it is in full:
Clicking on a Google Ad is much like masturbation.

If you ask anyone if they do either they immediately respond, "No way!" or, "Never have!". However there is a very large and thriving porn industry that primarily exists to satisfy people who masturbate. Likewise, Google make almost all of their considerable profits through advertising.

Someone, somewhere is doing it ...

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  1. Joe Mahoney31 July 2008 at 13:20

    I've clicked on google ads when they've been relevant to my search. Mostly when I'm trying to find where to buy something. On the other hand, I don't think I've clicked a banner ad more than once or twice, and that would have been when they first appeared on hotwired.com.

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  2. Stuart Maxwell31 July 2008 at 20:26

    What if you click on your Google Ads - is that even worse?

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  3. Anonymous31 July 2008 at 20:42

    We use them, but very measured in our approach. We know how much works, and how much spend results in them not working...
    Here's some research we did:
    http://julian101.com/2007/09/google-marketing-pitfalls/
    and this:
    http://julian101.com/2007/10/free-marketing-vs-google-adwords/
    That second link shows a document you can download of our analysis over a year and paints a grim picture of Adwords - Becoming less effective and more expensive.

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  4. Mike Riversdale1 August 2008 at 09:17

    Julian: Thanks for the links. I don't think anyone really believes that they don't work (complete opposite in fact) but more that you can never seemingly find anyone that is an ad-clicker.

    More a comment on human life than Google AdWords, or indeed on masturbation.

    Stuart: Clicking on your AdWords would be blurring the boundaries between the two themes of this posting ;-)

    Joe: Interesting, so when an "ad" is seen as "information" then away you go. That echoes other peoples comments - if the ad is totally relevant it stops being seen as an "advertisement" and more a "supply of cool information/links" and therein lies the goal for Google ;-)

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The Future As Seen By Me In 2010

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