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ADKbrown	Post subject: web site ads Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 7:21 pm
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2002 12:01 am Posts: 1286 Location: Saranac Lake, N.Y.	It doesn't have much to do with copy editing, but I have a question about web site ads. I just pulled up a story about Ashcroft's hospitalization, and the first thing I saw was a picture of a smiling couple in an ad. It got me wondering how web site ads are paired with stories. Is it done automatically? To use an old example, could an ad for an airline be dropped into a story about a jumbo jet crash, without anybody realizing it?
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Phillip Blanchard	Post subject: Re: web site ads Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 7:32 pm
Joined: Sun Apr 07, 2002 1:01 am Posts: 8342 Location: Bethesda, Md.	<blockquote><font size="1" face="TImes, TimesNR, serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by ADKbrown: To use an old example, could an ad for an airline be dropped into a story about a jumbo jet crash, without anybody realizing it?<hr></blockquote><p>Boy, I hope so.<p>(This seems to be a question for Dean Betz to answer)
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Matthew Grieco	Post subject: Re: web site ads Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 9:53 pm
Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2003 1:01 am Posts: 2266 Location: New Jersey	Some sites definitely use a scan of the text of the page to place ads. My blog, for instance, always has political ads placed at the top by the little Blogspot robots because most of my entries lately are political rants. I'm definitely not happy when the RNC ad shows up, but if I ever really get tired of it, I'll just pay Blogspot to make them all go away.<p>So yeah, robots aren't much better at placing ads than they are at writing headlines.
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Bakelite	Post subject: Re: web site ads Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 11:20 am
Joined: Mon Apr 08, 2002 12:01 am Posts: 231 Location: Bellevue, WA	I'm not an ad guy, thank God, but I'm occasionally involved in these issues.<p>Sometimes news Web sites deliver ads to the people that the advertiser is trying to reach by placing them in a broad section of the site, like politics or high school wrestling; sometimes, as Matthew observes, that's done by looking for specific words or phrases in the text of a page.<p>If used correctly, the tools that put the ad on the right page can also be used to prevent it from showing up on the wrong page. In the case of the airlines, their ads might be put in the travel section but not in the breaking news section; they might be matched to "frequent flyer" and excluded from "wind shear".
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bodayguy	Post subject: Re: web site ads Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 2:17 am
Joined: Tue Nov 25, 2003 1:01 am Posts: 14 Location: Tucson AZ	Well, I'll give you one example. For a short time, a day or so last year if I recall correctly, the Seattle Times' web site featured a beer ad on a high school sports report page. Start 'em young.
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Bakelite	Post subject: Re: web site ads Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 4:59 pm
Joined: Mon Apr 08, 2002 12:01 am Posts: 231 Location: Bellevue, WA	No question that people can misuse these tools, hence http://www.testywebeditors.com.
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