This all begs the question of “what is an acceptable ad?” As far as Adblock Plus is concerned, and I think I agree, it’s an ad with no animation or sound, no attention grabby images, and a maximum of one script so that it doesn’t bog down page loading. Basically, acceptable ads are the ones that aren’t super annoying, a group that is also known as “the vast minority of ads.”

It’s that last bit that Adblock Plus is aiming to change with this alteration. The idea boils down to the fact that advertising is a necessary evil, especially when it comes to financing all the content that comes to you for free. By allowing acceptable ads, Adblock Plus, and you, are giving advertisers an incentive to not be dicks, and you’ll doing your part to help out the sites that are working with advertisers that aren’t being dicks, all at the minor inconvenience of not reading some non-intrusive text at the side of your screen. Everybody wins.

The reason that this box is going to be checked by default is simply because most users probably wouldn’t turn it on. Instead of asking users to go to a menu to allow some ads, Adblock will now ask more easily miffed users to go to a menu to turn off some ads. Really, it’s not that big of a deal. The change was spurred, in part, by a survey of users that turned up the interesting fact that only about 25% of Adblock users are vehemently against all advertising. Most are against the annoying stuff (or certain stuff) but would be willing to see some advertising so long as they have control over it. This could be the first step in a good direction and provide incentive for advertisers and sites to be more measured about their advertising instead of forcing an ad vs. Adblock arms race.

(Adblock Plus via reddit)

Relevant to your interests

• It’s always good to block these customization app ads though, they’re pretty questionable
• AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo! teamed up for some crazy ad plan
• Ads pressed onto your skin? There’s something I’d like to block.

How Reddit tells it, someone — presumably poptent user trunstyle – was assigned to make an advertisement for a film class. This unofficial, in no way endorsed, ad for the Sour Patch Kids candies was the result. Like the candy, it attempts to be sour, then sweet. Unlike the candies, it starts really weird, gets okay, and then gets really, really weird.  See the video below, but the above image is only a taste (pun) of what is in store.

(Reddit via The Daily What)

Relevant to your interests

• There is a Sour Patch Kids video game involving Method Man
• This is a really big gummy bear

Costolo said:

“We’re expanding Promoted Tweets.

You’ll start seeing them from companies you don’t follow. We’ve been super cautious about that, we didn’t want to sacrifice user experience.”

And yet, here we are. The Promoted Tweets, however, won’t just be a random sampling of ads from Twitter.

Instead of choosing ads at random, the Promoted Tweets that will appear in the main stream will be determined by similar Twitter accounts one follows, based on the interest graph said followed accounts. So, if a user follows Pepsi, they’ll probably get Pepsi Promoted Tweets, but if a user doesn’t follow Pepsi, but follows other soda-related accounts, they’ll most likely get soda-related Promoted Tweets appearing in their stream.

Costolo also mentioned that Twitter is working on sharing ad revenue with third-party developers that show Promoted Tweets in their Twitter apps, and that Twitter is also working on refining their ad targeting, two things that will probably rake in the cash a little more. So, at least now when people ask how Twitter makes money, instead of shrugging and wondering the same thing, you can provide a few answers before you say “but that can’t possibly support the whole company, right?”

When the new Promoted Tweets take hold of our athlete-and-celebrity-following platform has not yet been revealed.

(VentureBeat via Hacker News)

Twitter‘s relationship with advertising has been a bit of a saga, but now it seems that “promoted tweets” are finally going to be put into action. In short, promoted tweets, or what you might call advertisements, will now start showing up in your main tweetstream, if — and only if — you follow a particular brand. For instance, you won’t have to deal with promoted Coke tweets if you are a devout Pepsi fan, as doubtless you are.

For the moment, this new promoted tweet thing will only pertain to certain beta-testing companies like Starbucks, Groupon, Dell and Gatorade. (Full list here.) On the upswing, it appears that promoted tweets will also be available to charities as The Red Cross and the Make-a-Wish Foundation are included in the beta organizations.

The fact that promoted tweets only pertain to brands you follow should make this change a little bit easier for Twitter users to swallow. Of course, it is worth mentioning that promoted tweets only pertain to brands you follow…for now. Things may not necessarily move in that direction, however. For the time being, advertisers only pay when a promoted tweet is interacted with, so there’s no strong incentive to force unwanted tweets down the throats of users who have no interest. Hopefully things will stay that way, considering that because these ads take the form of standard content, they may be invulnerable to various kinds of ad-block, at least for a little while.

(via AllThingsD)

Google has released the first US edition of its marketing magazine Think Quarterly. Print copies of the magazine will be sent to a limited number of businesspeople and executives through the mail. If you aren’t lucky enough to be on Google’s mailing list, never fear, you too can browse through the magazine, you’ll just have to settle for the online version. The print edition is apparently pretty luxurious with a magnetic cover, heat-sensitive end paper, and a blue ribbon fastener.

The magazine is essentially a very pretty advertisement for how wonderful Google is, with a feature story highlighting the positive work done at Google. In addition to several pages dominated by advertising executives, the magazine also has several essays on the future of the Internet and society.

The UK version of Think Quarterly launched in March 2011, under the clear distinction that it is not intended to be a consumer magazine. Through Think Quarterly, Google may be taking steps to change its image from a familiar search engine to a group of innovative thinkers and strategists who have a real impact on the world.

But change their image with who? Well, potential advertisers of course. They are the people getting the snazzy print version, after all. The rest of us Googlers are just left with our Internet.

(via The Atlantic, image via The Guardian)

Many of the ads sell products from companies like HCG Ultra Lean Plus, using a formula copied by many other marketers. But placing an order for a “free” sample through one of these sites usually leads to something much worse. From the Washington Post:

Someone who orders a sample offered by one hCG marketer, for example, is technically agreeing to pay an additional $79.99 for another shipment of the product two weeks later, and another $79.99 six weeks after that, according to the disclaimer. The charges and the product keep coming until the buyer calls a toll-free number to cancel.

The ads were made by a cadre of companies operating independently of each other and spending around $10 million in total to place the ads. All told, this seems to have brought in billions of pageviews for the advertisers, which the FTC claims led to huge profits. 

From the report, very little about the ads appears to be real. For instance, the ads posing as “investigative reports” by a fictitious news agency used a picture of French TV news anchor Melissa Theuriau, who was understandably surprised to find her face had been used in the scheme. Furthering the fiction, the fine print on one such site run by IMM Interactive contains this rather amazing catch-all cop-out:

This website, and any page on the website, is based loosely off a true story, but has been modified in multiple ways including, but not limited to: the story, the photos, and the comments. Thus, this page, and any page on this website, are not be taken literally or as a non-fiction story.

In addition to fake news anchors and suspicious endorsements, the marketers tended to go after high-profile websites like Facebook or online news outlets. The sheer saturation of ads and the reputable backdrop likely played a role in the ads’ success.

Despite the slew of lawsuits by the FTC, the ads aren’t likely to be going away anytime soon. There are apparently dozens of other marketers who have noticed how successful these ads have been and have copied their formula. The actions by the FTC is certainly a good start, and perhaps will take a chunk out of this business, but it could be a while before Internet denizens can go a day without being assaulted by these ads.

(Washington Post via Techmeme)

These moves could prove risky however, as Twitter users have become accustomed to the present level of advertising and have responded aversely to changes in the past. When the Twitter for iPhone app introduced the ‘Quickbar’, which gave promoted tweets some preferential treatment, users complained loudly enough that the feature was ultimately removed. For the moment, there’s no telling what advertising changes will actually be made on the service, but users of any service usually don’t react well to more advertising. Twitter definitely makes a good platform for ads, but this may prove to be a little too much a little too late in the game.

(via Financial Times)

Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI) might be an artistic statement, an economics project, a prank, a subversive attempt to take down “the man” or all of the above. But whatever its motivations, the creators of GWEI have sent a clear message about their feelings toward Google and online advertising. Little by little, a giant corporation can be disabled.

The idea is simple: Use Google’s own marketing practices against them. GWEI earns money by generating fraudulent clicks on Google ads on a series of hidden websites. With the money earned from clicks on the ads, the owners of GWEI “automatically” buy shares of Google.

By buying bits of Google through the company’s own advertising, the users have set up a model where Google “eats itself,” taking down the company from the inside out. The the owners of GWEI describe their project an “autocannibalistic model” where global advertisement mechanisms are forced into a “surreal click-based economic model.”

When they buy up all of Google through its own advertisements, the GWEI owners intend to hand over ownership of their Google Shares to the GTTP Ltd (otherwise known as the Google To The People Public Company.) The shares will then be distributed back to the users (people who clicked on the ads.)

But, Google executives can rest easy. At their present rate of expansion, the owners of GWEI expect to own all of Google 200,000 years from now. That should be plenty of time for Google to plan their counteroffensive.

(Google Will Eat Itself via Reddit via Boing Boing)

If you pulled your hair out over Skype requiring a paid account for group chats, than you’ll simply love this news: the VoIP company announced that they will be bringing advertising to their service. Starting this week, ads will appear on the home-tab for windows users. No word yet as to other operating systems, though they are sure to follow in short order.

Thankfully, the Skype developers are well aware that this has the potential to blow up in their faces. They promise that the ads will be useful, unobstrusive, and apparently also infrequent. From their blog:

You may only see ads occasionally. Our initial plan is to show an ad from one brand per day in each of the markets where advertising is being sold.

And although the ads may involve an exchange of “non-personally identifiable demographic data,” they are providing tools to let you opt out of such exchanges.

After years of ad-free, unlimited use from Skype, it’s very hard not to scowl at the recent changes. But to stay relevant, Skype will need money. Hopefully they’ll continue to keep their focus on providing the service so many users have become reliant on, while working towards profitability.

(via Geek.com, Skype)

There is no word as to why AdSense is not on the approved list, only that it will no longer be operating with Facebook. In the past, Google has often cited AdSense as a vital asset producing most of its revenue. It’s possible that Google found some aspect of Facebook’s new policy unacceptable, and opted not to be involved.

The change has started rumblings on Facebook’s forum, with many former AdSense users upset about the change. Many are concerned that the approved companies have bad track records, or are too young and small to handle the advertising needs of users. Facebook’s representatives are quick to point out that new providers can be added to the approved list at any time, opening the door to AdSense in the future. But for now, the message is clear: if you’ve been using AdSense for Facebook ads, it’s time to find someone else.

(via Geek.com)

New Zealand clothing store Suprette had this great advertising idea: “Make benches uncomfortable by putting metal plates in the shape of our ad on them, which will then press the ad onto people’s skin if their legs aren’t covered up.” The above picture shows the fruit of that labor. The wacky ad agency behind the campaign explains it a little further:

We put indented plates on bus stop, mall, and park benches, so that when people sat down, the message was imprinted on their thighs. This meant that as well as having branded seats, a veritable army of free media was created, with thousands of imprints being created and lasting up to an hour.

There’s a bit of skepticism regarding the legitimacy of the campaign, as most people will realize two things: One; a perfect storm of having to sit in the exact spot in a fairly precise position, wearing clothing short enough, and having to press one’s legs hard enough against the metal plate without declaring it uncomfortable and moving away from it is required to leave the leg imprints, and two; many people probably won’t be too happy with people staring at the back of their legs for the length of the ad’s lasting power. But hey, short shorts are on sale.

(The Presurfer via Neatorama)

It’s being widely reported across these great interwebs that Taco Bell’s beef is not what it seems. People are shocked, shocked to discover that the tacos they’d paid less than a dollar for and been heartily scarfing down for nearly half a century fall a little short of what you would normally call “beef.” It seems that “Taco Meat Filling,” as Taco Bell calls it, is actually 36% meat. But is that really all that surprising?

The recent news centers around an Alabama lawsuit filed against Taco Bell. The suit accuses the Tex-Mex giant of false advertising since, according the plaintiffs, the substance Taco Bell calls “beef” does not meat meet the defintion of “beef” or “meat taco filling” as defined by the USDA. But let’s all remember that we’re dealing with the same organization that once tried to define ketchup as a vegetable. Moreover, the USDA’s definition of “meat taco filling” is 40% meat, leaving Taco Bell’s concoction only 4% below, as reported by Gizmodo. Folks, that’s not much of a difference.

While that legal battle moves forward, much attention has been paid the actual ingredients of Taco Bell’s “Taco Meat Filling,” which follows below.

Water, isolated oat product, salt, chili pepper, onion powder, tomato powder, oats (wheat), soy lecithin, sugar, spices, maltodextrin (a polysaccharide that is absorbed as glucose), soybean oil (anti-dusting agent), garlic powder, autolyzed yeast extract, citric acid, caramel color, cocoa powder, silicon dioxide (anti-caking agent), natural flavors, yeast, modified corn starch, natural smoke flavor, salt, sodium phosphate, less than 2% of beef broth, potassium phosphate, and potassium lactate.

Now, this may be disgusting to some, but it should not be a surprise. To reiterate, these tacos are sold for less than a dollar. Within that price range, it’s unreasonable to expect carefully prepared beef of the finest quality.

Furthermore, it’s worth asking yourself if this is list of ingredients is actually disgusting. To my admittedly untrained eye, this looks like a veggie burger hybrid; coupling some meat for flavor and familiarity with soy and oats for texture. In fact, when comparing the ingredients to a veggie burger, the only ones which stand out as odd are maltodextrin and silicon dioxide (silica), both of which are common food additives.

One way to look at this revelation (read “common sense discovery”) is as a triumph over the stigma of fake meat. Veggie burgers and other fake meat products continue to be a niche product, even as Americans are continually told that they eat more meat than recommended — 20% more according to the USDA (jokes about them aside). But Taco Bell has passed fake meat off for quite a while without anyone being the wiser. True, their food could never be considered a gem of a dietary choice and probably contributes to the over-eating of grains indicated in the same USDA study. Sporting 210 calories (21g carbohydrates, 10g protein, 4 fat), a soft beef taco packs a lot in to a small space. But, for a nation that has become notorious for eating too much meat, it’s almost optimistic that we could have so readily embraced Taco Bell’s “Taco Meat Filling.”

Though it’s hard to say how this story will play out, I can imagine a best case scenario where Taco Bell takes this story and runs with it. Instead of apologizing or “beefing up” their meat mix, I propose they head in the opposite direction: begin offering organic meat/fake meat hybrid products that are targeted to fit within lower-meat diet and sold at a slightly higher price. The same taste you know, but more sustainable and a little better for you as well.

Alternately, and still optimistically, consumers could decide that they are tired of being peddled the lowest quality product and start demanding better food. If they’re willing to pay for ingredients they can live with, perhaps we’ll see more investment in sustainable agriculture and get organic foodstuffs available to the public at reasonable prices.

So folks, let’s all take it down a notch. You always knew that Taco Bell wasn’t top-shelf stuff, and this list of ingredients isn’t nearly as shocking as you might expect. Put down the burning torches and pitchforks, and let’s take a run to the border. It’s almost time for Fourth Meal.

(WTOL via Gizmodo, image via WTOL)

Chilean add agency DDB prepared and utilized this dastardly box to seriously freak out apartment dwellers in Santiago, all in the name of ADT, the home security firm. To quote their video:

To prove residents that anyone could break into their homes unexpectedly.

What could possibly go wrong?

When not held flat, the boxes pop open to a cube, allowing them to be inserted under doors to lie in wait for the returning home owner.  The owner sees the terrifying sight of something that has gotten inside your home without your consent.  To compound the brief moment of horror, it bears the slogan “Breaking into your apartment is easier than you think” next to the ADT logo.

Are we the only ones who think that this sort of stunt would do exactly the opposite of endearing us to ADT’s services?

(via Copyranter.)

Twitter developers beware. TweetUp, which has been hailed as the “Adsense for Twitter,” was announced today at TechCrunch‘s Disrupt event. TweetUp is an ad platform that would give its advertisers access to analytics, an algorithm designed to rank keyword searches in a promotions-friendly manner, and, most tantalizing, a 50/50 revenue split. Basically, individuals and businesses could pay to promote their tweets to the top of any search with a relevant keyword in it, chronological order be damned.

But on the same day as the TweetUp announcement came today’s post on the Twitter blog, wherein Dick Costolo, Twitter COO, plays the part of the valiant knight defending Twitter’s integrity against those pesky third parties. In said post, he writes, “aside from Promoted Tweets, we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API.”

This all comes shortly after the announcement of Promoted Tweets – tweets paid for by advertisers including Best Buy, Red Bull, and Starbucks that show up at the top of searches. Everyone wants to make money off Twitter. Even Twitter! But now, apparently, only Twitter actually can.

But why, Mr. Costolo? What about the developers? What about the little guy?

Costolo’s justification:

“Third party ad networks are not necessarily looking to preserve the unique user experience Twitter has created. They may optimize for either market share or short-term revenue at the expense of the long-term health of the Twitter platform. For example, a third party ad network may seek to maximize ad impressions and click through rates even if it leads to a net decrease in Twitter use due to user dissatisfaction.”

The point seems fair enough, but when we look at Costolo’s overarching message, something smells fishy: “We believe it is our responsibility to encourage creative product development and to curb practices that compromise innovation.”

Put some faith in developers to have Twitter’s best interests at heart. TweetUp certainly doesn’t seem like a major threat to the Twittersphere. It actually seems pretty cool, not that I’d pay to have my inane musings launched up the charts. Let the free market be free, Mr. Costolo.

(Via Gizmodo; title image by Giz editor Jesus Diaz.)

We’ve heard of funny 404 error page Easter Eggs before, but … sponsored 404 pages? Strange. Apparently, that is the direction that Digg is headed, with an ad for Burger King set to appear on the error page that users hit when they type in a query with no results, BrandFreak reports. The ads, which were briefly up last week, are slated to reappear within the week. (The above picture is not an actual ad, but rather an artist’s rend.) The ads will be promoting Burger King’s “Tiny Hands” campaign, about a man with freakishly tiny hands who is sad because he cannot grasp a Burger King® Double Cheeseburger.

WalletPop grabbed the text of one such ad, which will be accompanied by a hypertext link to a “Tiny Hands” BK ad:

The error page is reported to say, “No results for ‘Your Search Error’ were found. Looks like your search had a typo. Blame it on your tiny hands. The beefy $1 Burger King Double Cheeseburger gives tiny hands some trouble, too.”

We’re conflicted:

On the one (tiny) hand — ads on 404 pages? Do you really want to associate your brand with people who can’t even type in what they’re looking for correctly, the poltroons? More seriously, there’s a healthy contingent of the Internet — and of Digg — who are vociferously anti-ad, whatever form they take, and there will probably be some back-biting over this. And they’ve got a point: as clever as the ads may be, they represent (much like the product placement in the “Telephone” music video) the idea that every slice of an experience can be bought and sold.

Maybe it’s true, and maybe ‘content providers,’ as they’re known in soulless Internet lingo, who don’t do it are fools; but all of that slicing and selling is a hard reminder to people who read things on the Internet that the point of the sites they read and love is, foremost, to sell their eyeballs.

On the other: it is a clever idea, and relatively unobtrusive (though not as much so as the cleverer Dante’s Inferno ad hidden in Digg’s source code a while ago). And, as previously discovered, geeks do love them some 404 pages. More cynically, a lot of Digg users notoriously use AdBlock, and this could be a sneaky way to bypass that.

Your thoughts?

Video context:

(BrandFreak via WalletPop)

There may be a “99.9 per cent” chance that Google is going to shut down its Chinese engine Google.cn, as we learned this weekend, and that presents its advertising partners with a tricky choice: Stick with the company with whom they’ve enjoyed past success and risk bannination in the Chinese market, or defect to Chinese search engines at the cost of familiarity — and freedom from censorship.

Now, according to the New York Times, the Chinese authorities have put their thumbs on the scale: They’ve warned Google’s partners that to play ball in China, they’re going to need to censor their search results, with or without Google.

The New York Times reports:

The Chinese government information authorities warned some of Google’s biggest Web partners on Friday that they should prepare backup plans in case Google ceases censoring the results of searches on its local Chinese-language search engine…

…Should they remain loyal to Google, the companies could satisfy government censors by filtering their customers’ searches themselves, excluding objectionable topics before relaying them to Google. But that option could prove difficult, especially for smaller companies, which would have to buy or develop software to do that job. It would be easier for most simply to switch to another search engine.

According to BusinessWeek, Chinese online ad companies are already nudging clients in the direction of rival search engines like Baidu and Sohu.com.

(NYTimes)

Both Congress and the FTC have expressed concerns about the level of secrecy or obfuscation surrounding target online advertising tactics, where the user’s browser history and “demographic profile” are used to generate a more personally targeted add.  Advertisers are understandably worried that regulatory legislation would not move as fast as technological changes, and you know what that means: focus groups!  Among the other icons considered instead of the “Power I” was a man-shaped asterisk, known as “Asterisk Man,” the most useless superhero since Melt Man, but sometimes very informative. According to the New York Times, Advertisers plan to add the icon to their adds “along with phrases like ‘Why did I get this ad?’”

When consumers click on the icon, a white ‘i’ surrounded by a circle on a blue background, they will be taken to a page explaining how the advertiser uses their Web surfing history and demographic profile to send them certain ads.

Of course, companies are not legally required to use “Power I” in their adds, but those who belong to the Future of Privacy Forum make up a “large percentage of the marketplace,” according to Stuart P. Ingis, attorney for the trade group.

Self-regulation is not a new phenomenon, and so the question is how to think about the symbol in light of history. Is it, as the New York Times implies, most like the recycling symbol, a graphic so ubiquitous as to be nearly synonymous with environmentalism? Or will it be more like the Comics Code Seal, the icon of a self-regulatory organization that throttled the progress of American comics for two decades? Or will it be like the hallowed nutrition label, except this time you are giving the company information on what you’re consuming, not the other way around.  We’ll just have to wait and see if anybody notices it at all.  After all, it’s a little lowercase i, not an oddly mesmerizing bit of dancing CGI.

Original New York Times article here.