I ranted recently about how having advertising on my blog made me feel dirty. After saying that, it’s been kind of bugging me, especially since someone whom I deeply respect provides marketing and branding creative for companies.
I’ve been thinking about it, and the part that made me feel dirty was because I had changed the rules of my blog. I’ve always considered it to be nothing more than just my own personal outboard brain – a core dump indexed by Google. Changing the nature of the beast to become a “monetizing engine” would have subtly altered what/how/when I posted. Perhaps not right away, and perhaps not even visibly (to anyone but myself – hey, another circular reference – if it’s primarily for me, wtf do I care what anyone else thinks? 🙂 ) but it would have altered it enough to become less useful to me. I would have started writing for accumulation of Google Juice™, rather than just documenting thoughts and actions.
Anyway, I just wanted to think out loud about this for a bit. Marketing and branding are important activities. It’s advertising for advertising’s sake that sucks out loud. The need to drive up ratings to sell more (or higher priced) ads is what makes TV and radio suck so badly. It’s what infested the ‘net with punch-the-monkey popups. Intelligent and creative marketing and branding shouldn’t have to be a zero sum game – it shouldn’t detract value from an experience in order to derive value for a company.
Maybe the whole iTunes/iPod video store, with high quality first-run TV shows available for a nominal fee without advertising, will act as a catalyst to help us emphasize and reward creativity rather than continuing on with a business model based on pandering to the lowest common denomenators of society.
There endeth the sermon 🙂
I ranted recently about how having advertising on my blog made me feel dirty. After saying that, it’s been kind of bugging me, especially since someone whom I deeply respect provides marketing and branding creative for companies.
I’ve been thinking about it, and the part that made me feel dirty was because I had changed the rules of my blog. I’ve always considered it to be nothing more than just my own personal outboard brain – a core dump indexed by Google. Changing the nature of the beast to become a “monetizing engine” would have subtly altered what/how/when I posted. Perhaps not right away, and perhaps not even visibly (to anyone but myself – hey, another circular reference – if it’s primarily for me, wtf do I care what anyone else thinks? 🙂 ) but it would have altered it enough to become less useful to me. I would have started writing for accumulation of Google Juice™, rather than just documenting thoughts and actions.
Anyway, I just wanted to think out loud about this for a bit. Marketing and branding are important activities. It’s advertising for advertising’s sake that sucks out loud. The need to drive up ratings to sell more (or higher priced) ads is what makes TV and radio suck so badly. It’s what infested the ‘net with punch-the-monkey popups. Intelligent and creative marketing and branding shouldn’t have to be a zero sum game – it shouldn’t detract value from an experience in order to derive value for a company.
Maybe the whole iTunes/iPod video store, with high quality first-run TV shows available for a nominal fee without advertising, will act as a catalyst to help us emphasize and reward creativity rather than continuing on with a business model based on pandering to the lowest common denomenators of society.
There endeth the sermon 🙂
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RSS ads… Hmm… mwahahaHAHA! er. yeah. never.
Actually, what I was trying to get at was that the change of rules would have affected me. I couldn’t care less what joe Google Searcher thinks of what I put here… It’s my braindump. But, if I start altering it such that I’m trying to make a buck or two on what goes into this bit bucket, then that will start to alter what/how/when stuff gets published, making it less useful to me (although likely not making it any more/less useful to the Google masses).
It’s your blog and you can do as you want to, you can change the rules at any time, and you drop the whole technology thing and devote your writing to posts about Spanish soap operas. That’s the whole point, that you are not tied to even what you sermonized last year.
Frankly you’ve done a lot of work to create a space that others visit, and if you can wrench a few cents out of some Google ads, go for it. Make a few microbucks. If it becomes too obtrusive, some will not return. I don’t care since I browser by RSS, and would likley ignore any ads that gets blitzed to a sidebar. Just don’t be shoving ads into RSS 😉
Daily Update — October 24, 2005
Today’s news update focuses on the ongoing battle over Google Print, planned e-mail and data upgrades from Cingular, gasoline prices, and why Doom (the movie) may be important to education. On the edublogging front, we link to posts on the changing de…
i say… who cares? the ads wont affect your work if you dont let it…i used to be apurist myself ie, advertising=the devil. however, not all marketers are evil, not all ads are evil, and furthermore you are not the devil (i think). so if you have ads on here… SO WHAT! the intetnet is inundated with that stuff anyways. so do your thing, but dont let it buy your soul.
Slick – thanks. My point was that I’m an obsessive personality with little impulse control, so once I opened the door to the Dark Side, there would be no turning back 🙂