Political Season
It's upon us again, a time filled with campaign ads designed to frighten and cajole us so as to not vote for the other guy. I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as positive campaigning anymore. When all the advertising is designed to get people to stay home on election day, I guess I can't be surprised when we have low turnout.
My topical conundrum for the day today, however, is different. Here we have an election for a major position with three major candidates. The one I'm voting for, the one I'd never vote for, and the one I'd vote for if the one I'm voting for wasn't running against the one I'd never vote for in a tight race. For simplicity: Vote For (VF), Vote Against (VA), and Vote Wish (VW). As I alluded to, VF and VA are in a tight race, with both advertising negatively and heavily. VA is advertising more negatively, but that hardly seems to matter. What does matter is that his ads are reaching me. VFs are not very much. This has been a trend I've noticed over the past few years. As more and more of my media consumption has gone online, and online advertising groups are better at targeting ads to specific subsets of people, including geographically, it's become cost-effective and beneficial for relatively local candidates to advertise online. So I'm seeing VA's ads online pretty much everywhere I go.
Now, I have some history with online advertising. I know how this works. They pay a minimal fee to post the ad and a much bigger fee, perhaps 100x as much if they get someone to click through. Most of the time, advertising on my sites is an annoyance I put up with for free content. Here it might be something better. See, my sites also get revenue based on ads shown and ads clicked. If I click on an ad from my site, it helps keep them in business more than just letting the ad load.
So... by clicking on VA's ads on my site--which I should clarify quickly here is not MY site, otherwise this is fraud and liable to get me in big trouble--I give more revenue to my content providers AND decrease the warchest of VA. PLUS it makes it look like VA's ad campaign is super effective. "Look at our clickthrough rate!"
So, here's the conundrum. Am I somehow screwing something up? I'm providing misinformation to the enemy, costing him money, and at the same time providing a real benefit to a neutral third party. Sounds great all around. But what if I'm missing something in the algorithm that somehow convinces the world, or the powers that be, that VA is actually the good guy, and they push his ads harder, or cheaper. For example, the higher the clickthrough rate for a Google ad, the less they charge you per click. An interesting effort on their part to help ensure that the ads they show are well designed to be relevant. By increasing the quality of the ad they maximize their own revenue and decrease the cost to the advertiser. Brilliant! Until somebody like me comes along and screws with the algorithm. There are potential other problems as well.
Ultimately, I think this is the right course of action. The benefits seem logically well defined, and I don't think I should hesitate because there might be unforeseen consequences. There always are in any venture. We don't seem to let that bind us into inaction paralysis.
My topical conundrum for the day today, however, is different. Here we have an election for a major position with three major candidates. The one I'm voting for, the one I'd never vote for, and the one I'd vote for if the one I'm voting for wasn't running against the one I'd never vote for in a tight race. For simplicity: Vote For (VF), Vote Against (VA), and Vote Wish (VW). As I alluded to, VF and VA are in a tight race, with both advertising negatively and heavily. VA is advertising more negatively, but that hardly seems to matter. What does matter is that his ads are reaching me. VFs are not very much. This has been a trend I've noticed over the past few years. As more and more of my media consumption has gone online, and online advertising groups are better at targeting ads to specific subsets of people, including geographically, it's become cost-effective and beneficial for relatively local candidates to advertise online. So I'm seeing VA's ads online pretty much everywhere I go.
Now, I have some history with online advertising. I know how this works. They pay a minimal fee to post the ad and a much bigger fee, perhaps 100x as much if they get someone to click through. Most of the time, advertising on my sites is an annoyance I put up with for free content. Here it might be something better. See, my sites also get revenue based on ads shown and ads clicked. If I click on an ad from my site, it helps keep them in business more than just letting the ad load.
So... by clicking on VA's ads on my site--which I should clarify quickly here is not MY site, otherwise this is fraud and liable to get me in big trouble--I give more revenue to my content providers AND decrease the warchest of VA. PLUS it makes it look like VA's ad campaign is super effective. "Look at our clickthrough rate!"
So, here's the conundrum. Am I somehow screwing something up? I'm providing misinformation to the enemy, costing him money, and at the same time providing a real benefit to a neutral third party. Sounds great all around. But what if I'm missing something in the algorithm that somehow convinces the world, or the powers that be, that VA is actually the good guy, and they push his ads harder, or cheaper. For example, the higher the clickthrough rate for a Google ad, the less they charge you per click. An interesting effort on their part to help ensure that the ads they show are well designed to be relevant. By increasing the quality of the ad they maximize their own revenue and decrease the cost to the advertiser. Brilliant! Until somebody like me comes along and screws with the algorithm. There are potential other problems as well.
Ultimately, I think this is the right course of action. The benefits seem logically well defined, and I don't think I should hesitate because there might be unforeseen consequences. There always are in any venture. We don't seem to let that bind us into inaction paralysis.