Not that there was ever any question, but today I received more confirmation. Google served me this ad.
I rarely read ads, but I took the time to figure out the pseudo code on this one. Someone apparently knows how to get my attention.
Have I ever mentioned that I hate commercials. It’s not the concept, I understand they are necessary, it’s the way most of them are done. Right now I’m watching the Sioux-Gopher game on FSN. If you ever watch FSN you will see the same 5 commercials in rotation for an entire evening. Right now there are three culprits that are making me want to throw a rotten orange at my television.
The first is the Burger King “Angry Whopper” Ad. Now the Angry Whopper sounds like a thing of beauty. It’s spicy stuff and bacon on a burger, you can’t really go wrong. But the ad drives me crazy for a variety of reasons. First the farmer is such a stereotype it’s ridiculous, he has bad teeth, wears flannel, and looks like he hasn’t showered in eight days. The only authentic quality is his hat. I grew up in a farming community and most farmers are not like that. Second, the torturing of the onion is just stupid. And third who would order the Angry Whopper while wearing tie. This whopper is made for a black t-shirt, it’s going to be messy and you are not going back to work with the breath that thing would give you.
The second annoyance during this game has been the Car Soup commercial. These are always bad, but the current version where they say “something sells good” is ear and eye gouging worthy.
The third commercial that is causing me fits is the new McDonalds McCafe commercial. It starts out with two women complaining about their boyfriends, checking out guys and generally acting like your stereotypical women out with girlfriends. Then, at the end of the commercial it just happens to be that they just started talking and didn’t even know each other name. So they introduce each other after having this conversation and just walk away, no exchanging phone number or email addresses. Would this happen in real life, wouldn’t they at least give each other a business card if they hit it off that well?
Fine, maybe I’m just annoyed because Alex Kangas is playing out of his mind and it’s 0-0 after the Sioux played a much better first period. Hold on, the Sioux just scored at the top of the second. It turns out those three commercials don’t bother me that much at all.
I am dropping ads on this blog. I have been using Google Adwords for a while, but unfortunately Google doesn’t know what to do with my site. The contextual concept isn’t exactly driving huge click through rates. In fact in the four months that I have actually written regularly I’ve made a whopping $5.
I’m not complaining though, I want to make that clear. I didn’t start this blog to make money. And it doesn’t cost any anything to host it at this point, as traffic volume is low. I decided that having ads on the page, while it didn’t distract from the content, also wasn’t adding value. I just want to write and hope that a few people find me interesting enough to continue to visit once in a while. If my blog ever gets to the point where I need to pay for hosting, I may decide to put ads back in.
A couple other notes. I fixed my servers mail system so I can send mail again. This allowed me to re-enabled sending new posts via email to those who prefer email to RSS. Also, on the suggestion of Bill Roehl and Ed Kohler I’ve decided to add the ability to subscribe to comments via email. Hopefully some of you find it useful.
Edit: Well due to Bill Roehl, ads may once again grace the pages of this blog. His suggestion sounds promising.
