Choose Your Own Adventure Part One

In a previous post, Ways To Skin A Cat, I told you about the different types of marketing campaigns. I also promised you that I would break them down for you, and so I will (Bli Neder). This will be, G-d willing a few part series over time, so please bear with me. Ready? Here we go:

pop-up ads: I’m talking about this one first because I never want to talk about it again. It makes my skin crawl just thinking about it, so lets just get it over with. Pop-up ads, as the name suggests, are ads that pop up on your screen without warning. Pop-up ads are beyond intrusive. Imagine walking down the street minding your own business when some jerk walks right in front of you, blocks you from continuing and starts yelling at you. You cover your ears and hear him anyway. He’s not yelling at you because you did something wrong –  he is asking you to come into his store and buy a new laptop.

What type of sales person does that? What in the name of heaven is this guy thinking?

This is a pop-up ad. I’m online checking news or shopping, when a huge multi-colored neon ad pops up in front of me. I want to continue on to my destination, but I can’t. There is no button to “x” it out. Aaargh.

Please, oh please never use pop-ups. I need to move on. I don’t want to think about this anymore.

Now, L’Havdil Bain Chaim L’Chaim (to differentiate between life and death, that is to say I hope pop-ups die and never come back) let’s move over to real advertising, shall we?

contextual ads: First a disclaimer. Since this blog is owned and run by yidsense.com, a company that currently focuses only on contextual ads, I will be heavily biased. But I still think I’m right; I wouldn’t be a part of YidSense if I felt otherwise. Moving forward… The concept of contextual marketing is as follows: advertising to people in the most appropriate place. Meaning – when I am on a blog that talks about being frugal I should see ads for coupon websites and discount stores not an advertisement for a Club Med vacation. If I’m on WeightWatchers.com, an ad for Hershey Park is not so smart. You know what I’m saying.

[MJ Note: Caution, YidSense plug ahead]

Contextual advertising services, like Google’s AdWords (who? never heard of them) or YidSense.com, scan the context of the website and deliver advertising based on keywords found. This is a way to make sure that the advertising content is in line with website content.

I’m not going to go into AdWords vs. YidSense now as that’s a different post for a different time. In the meantime, you can check out the YidSense FAQ page here and here for info on that subject.

Besides, I’m still nauseous from all that pop-up talk.