I was sipping at my coffee last evening, when I happened to notice the latest copy of The Brand Reporter.

What caught my eye more, was a tiny CD-case sized Square item inside, reading "The Marketer’s Wishlist" with a small Google logo printed below. "Yummy" chirped my mind, as I assumed it must be some freebie interesting CD…..that was not the case to be. The mysterious package happened to be a glossy and vibrantly colored brochure talking about Google contextual advertising.

I took a minute to reflect back at my days of dialup and crawling (begging actually) Internet speeds and realised something interesting.

There never was as much spam and  pop-up to battle with in those days. Surfing was like a leasurely cruise - spend an hour checking 2 mails and also replying to them, if you`re lucky.

A sudden wake-up call to reality was triggered with a pop-up suddenly bursting on the screen trying to get me married promising the best matrimonial profiles.

At times I am tested with random "3D fish" and "Realistic Fire" screensavers, while at times, I get lucky being the 10,000th visitor at some random site and am informed of a jackpot I have won.

The funnier ones are the ones that have a button and read "Do not Click". Dude! I hope you dont think I have a fetish for clicking buttons I am not, or something?

I`m sure all of us have experienced the fine training Internet imparts today, on how to drag the mouse and click on the X button. Yes geeks like us do use the cooler Alt+F4, and the occasional pop-up blockers….but then what do you do with this -

Reading a random blog on the Internet, I happened to find my eyes lock in to a contextual advertisement put up by M/s. Google & Co.

Please note that on hover, the status bar informs that you can read Ads about "Hostile Boss".

What Ads?

Who wants to sell off hostile bosses? Or is it that companies now look out for mean heads to iron-rule their puny junior executive cadre?

I guess Scott Adams would agree that those links should lead to PHB and no one else. Guess what? I clicked

Work Platform System

Interesting. Now isn’t that what I always wanted to read about? Meaningful contextual google ads?

Posted in Consumer Behaviour, Humor |