Google Adwords: the most expensive word is free
Submitted by troutcrisis on Wed, 04/17/2002 - 14:38.
Most artists are resigned to the fact they won't make money through their art. Christophe Bruno, however, decided to try use his art to lose it instead. And in the process he came up with a fantastic way to subvert search engine advertising.
His site tells an interesting story about how he bought Adword space on google and used it for his poems, and how google ended up censoring him.
It raises an interesting question about how the nature and value of words has changed - with 'free' being the most expensive keyword on sale.
Something to think about next time those focus group results come in...
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First Troutcrises, I want to thank you for an interesting post. I got lost on art sites for hours after that one. :-)
I said nothing here though, kinda hoping someone else would take the first bat at this. Now that the link has been posted to MeFi I'll show off what was said there:
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/16450
some quotes:
"Christophe expresses disappointment that an interesting opportunity for play is being subjugated to the rigid order of commerce. Don't get me wrong: I want order from links returned by my search engines, too. But it seems like such a dull structure to insist on this coherence in advertising. (Particularly if every time I search google for, in yesterday's instance, a place to purchase polyvinyl soundproof curtains in New York City, I get an adword for Broadway theatre tickets? Tiresome.)
It's nice to have anarchy intrude. I depend on the internet for some disruption, some surprise. If I didn't get that surprise sometimes, I'd probably stop browsing. Particularly with the advent of text ads like MeFi's, internet advertising has already become abstracted poetry, with a nearly unguessable click-through destination.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 11:29 PM PST on April 17 "
"RJ Reynolds:
It's nice to have anarchy intrude.
It may be nice to have anarchy intrude, but google wouldn't be so great if anarchy ruled. this isn't a case of the rigid rules of commerce, it's a case of the rigid rules of order required to keep an effective index of the entire world wide web.
compare this to graffiti artists or "culture jammers" cleverly defacing billboards. both are widely regarded as valid artforms. but neither the graffiti artists nor the billboard defacers expect their art to be permanent. they also don't cry "censorship" when the owner of the property paints over whatever they've done.
part of the beauty of ***** with the system is knowing that whatever you've done can't possibly last, and waiting and watching to see how long it is before somebody notices and takes it down.
crying censorship does absolutely no good, and in this case it may have stopped a potentially very interesting artform dead in its tracks.
posted by chrisege at 11:50 PM PST on April 17 "
"anyway, it's sad to see someone take a clever idea, run with it, and then throw a tantrum when google doesn't play along. google doesn't have any obligation, legal or ethical, to allow someone to damage the functionality of their service.
posted by chrisege at 11:38 PM PST on April 17 "
fantastic bunch of comments. I liked the idea of buying poetry text ads and thought it was interesting, though I'm not so sure we should be crying "words are no longer free" just yet. words on google's system are not free, and Google tries to keep their text-ad buisness going properly.
And now I return the michrophone to the silent masses who come here each day. :-)
what did you think of the page/idea that troutcrises found and dragged over here to show you? Was it interesting?
you're not permanently toungue tied are you all? ;-)
*note - in all cases of commenting and watching films, one has to be logged in! Thats how this and many many many other member net site systems work. If you don't see a "post comment" button, you are not logged in.*
What beautiful poems. Although I hardly think getting booted off by an automated system too anarchic. It actually makes you have some respect for the atomation of google in a lot of ways
But it's wonderful when art in any form can hithike on a system that was never meant to be the medium.
I suppose that's why graffiti is so popular. (apart from being pretty) But this artist is being so kind as to pay for the price for the 'defacing' himself.
i only hope his audience of 12000 appreciated his 4 line masterpieces.
Another artist (or group of artists) that went out to lose money was the K-foundation in England. They burned a million pounds in the name of art. They occasionally awarded a
Yeah, I saw it on Mefi after I'd posted it here (think someone originally posted the link on b3ta). They'll debate anything. Which is a good thing in my book.
The only I reason I put it up here was really that ads are there to be messed around with - the whole point is to get people thinking about them in the first place, right? - and the internet's a great place to do it.
Sometimes it takes just as much (or even more) creativity to subvert ads as it does to come up with them.
Troutcrisis
>^>
Great ad-rag post. :) I'll bend Mathowies ear on how on earth one gathers such a talkative crowd as his. :))
I think it's interesting that Google weeds out what they consider ineffective ads. Just imagine if all media did the same thing! Granted they get paid per click and not just on number of words or pages or whatever.
Some of the adword stuff I've had to do, the client was very particular in making sure their "keywords" related to their services but I don't remember the different web sites doing so. They did recommend that we do that but, it wasn't required.
I guess according to Google, teaser types ads don't belong on the web, or at least not as textads.
Hello you sad sad people who spend your days trying to add stupid SEO links to this post from 2002. The comments that you bother to type up with links and all, which sound a little like a real comment to troutcrisis' post never see the light of day. The only thing you achieve is getting your adland username (and the IP you are coming from) blocked so pretty please QUIT WASTING YOUR OWN TIME!
Go spam someplace else.