Good news, everyone! David Pinto of Baseball Musings will no longer run Google Ads as he opposes the search-engine monolith’s capitulation to Chinese authorities.
Pinto, however, continues to run a number of ads for ticket brokers. While none of these companies have been found guility of human rights violations, their carpet-bomb web pollution tactics and price gouging are hardly the sort of thing that makes the world a better place.
Still, I’m impressed with Pinto’s principled stance, and in solidarity, shall stop entering the phrase “amputee pics” into Google for the next 48 hours.
Full credit to David, however, for actually having advertisers. Will Leitch took the opportunity yesterday to ridicule the Senior Bowl’s claims that their website had been shut down due to “high traffic volumes”. Yeah, it was pretty hard to believe. Much like Deadspin’s repeated claims throughout the past month that they’d attracted advertisers….who weren’t actually advertising on the site.
b-b-but the pheremone-ringtone hawkers have to count for something — philanthropy, maybe? after all, gawker media is giving ad time to companies that probably can’t afford to advertise during the 3:30 a.m. showing of “elimidate.”
I’m sure the pheremone people are paying real money. I just don’t see how Leitch can fire off self-congratulatory posts about alleged advertisers whose ads have never appeared.
New Media Consultant Wearing Black Turtleneck: I’m glad you asked that, Will. The answer is no, you don’t necessarily *need* an advertiser in order to *provide* a selling message. It’s enough to embed the notion of having an advertiser in your content.
Will Leitch: Okay. But how do you get paid?
New Media Consultant Wearing Black Turtleneck: Very well, thank you.