Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with ads

Name/Location of the "Mac vs PC" jingle?

potch — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:16:54 -0800

From the "hard to google" category: What's the name of/ where can I obtain a copy of the jingle that plays in the background of the Apple "Mac vs PC" ads? (oddly enough, it's for my halloween costume...)

Willie or Won't He?

quelindo — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:51:26 -0800

What are some examples of racism [subtle, or not-so-subtle] in advertising? I am aware of some of the web results, but I would like more examples. Recent adverts appreciated.

Under the Milky Way song on TV

ecollie — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:35:13 -0800

Who is the artist performing the song "Under the Milky Way" by The Chuch on the new Lincoln-Mercury ads? Saw the ad on "Fringe" and "House". Good viewings selections, heh?

Why yes, I am especially anxious today, how did you know?

desjardins — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:58:38 -0800

When I clicked on this article from this FPP, I got 3 Google text ads, 2 of which are directed at personal information about me. So I signed out of Google, cleared my cache, history, cookies, etc., and clicked on the link again. Same ads. How? These are the text ads I got.

Naperville Behavioral
Health counseling for anxiety, fear dpression, and other struggles
www.BehavioralHealthwhatever.com
Prepare to be Shocked
Millions have already taken this amazing test. What's your RealAge?
blah.com
No More Panic Attacks
Quick & Effective Cure To Anxiety & Panic Attack. Easy Steps To Follow!
example.com

I work near Naperville, no big shock there since I assume they pull my location from my IP. The other two must be targeted at me; I have panic disorder, which I've written about at length. However, it's rare that I search for information about it, especially on my work computer, and my searches for that would be dwarfed by work-related stuff. (My work isn't at all related to the mental health field.) My gmails rarely contain the actual words panic, stress, anxiety, or depression, although if you read some of them it'd be easy to come to that conclusion. Googling my real name brings up absolutely nothing about panic or anxiety. I don't really care if Google knows, but sometimes I have to view web sites with coworkers present, and I'd rather not have MENTAL HEALTH ads all over the place. So what gives? Why am I getting such targeted ads for something that's a minor part of my Google life?

Vespa!

Misciel — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:02:52 -0800

I'm looking for a video of an Italian vespa commercial from the early 60s (probably aired on the show Carosello), which featured the scooters driven by the boys and all the girls sitting side-saddle behind them. It had snappy music that was punctuated every few seconds by the single lyric "Ves-PA!" (The commercial I'm looking for isn't this one... It was instead made earlier and the kids should be dressed more formally.) Can you help me find it?? Thanks!!

Web graphics and ads filter?

jpg15 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:53:11 -0800

Web filter filter: I seem to remember a link to an NYT article that just contained the full text of the article in nice big letters, with no graphics, banners, or ads. It was fully attributed, with links to the original, but it was much more pleasant to read, especially for a long article. Is there a website that will filter out the clutter and provide links that can be forwarded?

ads for watches and clocks

Postroad — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:01:20 -0800

Why do watch ads always show one hand on ten and the other on two? Once I had been told or read this, I became nearly crazy looking at watch ads and sure enough, that is how they invariably depict watches in ads. Why or why do they do it this way?

Computer taken over?

etaoin — Tue, 19 May 2009 09:46:11 -0800

Two tech questions: I've just started running into a weird message when I try to go to a page on the ABC News page: This Account Has Been Suspended Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible. and this is the URL I was reading a NYT story earlier today that mentioned Lamda at the very end of the story. Cleared the cookies, shut down and restarted both browsers (IE and Firefox) but keep getting the same message. Separately, lately when I read certain blogs, I am suddenly taken to a Google images search page; the original pages' URL shows up in the search field and the message is that the URL can't be found. I cannot seem to get rid of this problem. All ideas welcome, and thanks.

Looking for a web app to run an ad network

crickets — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:03:32 -0800

I'd like to build a vertical ad network. What software can I use? I've been looking for, but not finding, a web application that would let me sell ads across a network of web sites. I had been hoping that someone had built an e-commerce front end to OpenX, to allow advertisers to buy their own ads without my needing a sales force to support every purchase, but no such luck it seems.

Does anyone know of a web app that:

1. allows advertisers to manage their own campaigns by purchasing impressions and uploading creative, and,

2. has an OpenX-like (read as: fairly industry standard) ad server in it?

Wanted, bass player dead or alive

timsteil — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:33:14 -0800

Hi mefites: Possibly the whitest man in the world here currently building a bonfire out of all his Fender basses and tossing his standup on top. Anyone know who played bass on Honey Cone's "Want Ads?". I'm guessing James Jamerson, who probably walked in and did it in one take and yawned and said anything else? Sort of a throwaway tune I guess, but Jebus....guys just walk into a a studio and do that? Sorry for the earworm, but I just want to shake the guy's hand so I can count his damned fingers.

Store Window Advertising 2.0

Foci for Analysis — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 13:27:21 -0800

Which hardware and software to use to display ads on screens in store windows? My boss wants to put tv/computer screens in the - two large - windows of the store that I work at to show ads on them.

This isn't my area of expertise but I reckon you need two huge screens that are connected and controlled via a PC. The ads could be anything from PowerPoint presentations to rich Flash ads to xhtml on web browser.

Have you any experience of a similar solution? Any ideas and suggestions are welcomed!

How to win HS election swing vote with school news advertisement?

seandq — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:57:50 -0800

Help me come up with a funny campaign ad targeted to high schoolers to clinch the Student Body President election. I have a large chunk of support from friends, teachers, and administrators around the school, but the swing vote in the election is won or lost with an advertisement aired over the school news on CCTV.

Some ideas:

I was known for a YouTube video I recorded and have since deleted in freshman year with a lipdub to the Final Countdown. People have told me to incorporate said song into the campaign ad. It went microviral around the school, but it doesn't have as broad of an appeal I like.

Next idea that's really ringing a bell for me would be for me or others to voiceover softball questions regarding my candidacy and clip in celebrities answering these questions with a "Yes, that's right." or "Of course", etc. It'd be funny, but the availability of "celebrities saying yes to something" on Google or YouTube was little to none.

I found out from experience that appearing on the news and giving a serious address is a no-no. People judge your character and ability to do the job from your overall persona and not just one speech on the news, so this is the time to be silly. However, I can't do a Benny Hill-esque video with pratfalls and then just pop up in the end and be like "VOTE FOR ME!"; there needs to be an underlying message relating to the campaign although it could be humorous. An example of this was "Current President loves sports" which linked to a cut-in of an image of Michael Vick during his dogfighting scandal.

I wanted to ask the hive mind because you are all-mighty, all-knowing, and you have been here in one way or another before. I appreciate all MF has given me from an entertainment and a knowledge standpoint and I'd appreciate if you all would be able to help me out.

(Before anyone says anything, yes, I have one or two comments. I've been a member for ~ a week, didn't plan on asking AskMF until about 10 minutes ago, and plan on being an active member in the future.)

infrastructure brand advertising? why?

capnsue — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:54:46 -0800

Why do infrastructure / commodity brands need to advertise to the general public? I'm finally getting around to watching the first season of Mad Men, and in one episode Bethlehem Steel is spending money on a large-scale advertising campaign (magazine ads, billboards, etc.) The ad agency is pitching a campaign where they have posters of cities, like a poster saying "CHIGAGO! Brought to you by Bethlehem Steel."

Of course, we still see stuff like this, TV ads for ALCOA, or ADM, not advertising a specific product, but rather letting us know that their company supplies stuff that we use in our day to day lives. These ads are targeted at the general public, even though most members of the public (for instance, me) will never call up ADM and place an order for 30 tons of textured soy protein.

My question is...why spend money on stuff like billboards or magazine ads? I can see spending money to go to industry conferences, trade magazines, etc, but can someone tell me why it's important to these companies that *I* know that most of the crap I eat comes from ADM?

Yes, fine, I'll even take Baywatch.

Netzapper — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 19:05:44 -0800

I need a reasonable quality video stream captured from recent US network television, with the commercials still in it. Oh, and no subtitles. And, actually, maybe more than one, if that's possible. The usual pirates, you see, conveniently strip the commercials. I need some US television as a data sample to train an algorithm. Specifically, I'm interested in segments of video that include transition to commercial (with a good chunk on either side). The higher the encoded quality of standard definition video, the better; I can't use high-def captures.

Flash video streams with web commercials are no good for my purposes--and, really, Flash videos are generally too badly encoded to work even if they're raw TV. The ideal video would be a raw MythTV DVR capture of live sports or a primetime 1-hour drama. The motherload would be about half a dozen of these. Cherry-like toppings might include having been edited to remove all but about 1 minute on either side of each commercial break, being encoded in h.264/MPEG-4part10(or whatever) and being contained in an .mp4, and instant delivery so I can soon achieve Maximal Productivity Status--my skin turns blue and my eyes laser-emitting at this power level.

Or, if you're familiar with MythTV: what's the format of the file? Is there a chance I could convince google to bring me hits from people's unlocked webserver/DVR uberputers?

I appreciate any suggestions.

Intranet advertising?

scottreynen — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 09:07:17 -0800

Is there a good way to sell advertising on a password-protected intranet? If so, what is it? I develop an intranet at an advertising agency, and we've tossed around the idea of running ads on our intranet, both as an ongoing experiment in online advertising, and as a small revenue stream for an IT department that is otherwise just overhead for the agency. Ignoring the social issues for a moment (e.g. distracting employees from their work), is there any good technical solution for intranet advertising?

Anything that works like Google AdSense, spidering the site to get context for ads, is out because the site can't be accessed without a password. So that leaves either systems that determine context in real time with JavaScript, or systems that allow the publisher to choose the ads (or something else I'm not thinking of). Are there any such systems that work well enough, with enough advertisers, to be worth using?

How to edit feeds in Wordpress 2.7?

kmel — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:57:07 -0800

I use Wordpress 2.7. How do I edit the RSS feed(s)? Please help me troubleshoot my situation ... Please help a gal out! I want to insert ads into my feed -- direct ads, not Adsense ads -- ideally every nth post but I'm having trouble getting them to show up at all, so that's my question for now.

I'm using Wordpress 2.7, and OpenX to serve ads. I also use Feedburner Feedsmith to redirect my feeds to Feedburner.

I tried to insert an html ad invocation code (built using these instructions from OpenX) using the Better Feed plugin (which you can use to add various things to your post footer), but all that ended up showing up in the feed was the code. Better Feed does successfully display tags and categories for each post.

I tried to go into the feed template according to these instructions, but they all seem to be redirected elsewhere. But if Better Feeds is inserting tags and categories, doesn't the feed template live somewhere on my server? If so, where? Do I need to get rid of Feedburner to make this all work?

Please let me know what other info/code/etc I can provide.

(Yes, I tried the wordpress forums, but didn't have any luck getting a response.)

I don't know why, but I really want to see this ad again

dreamphone — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:07:07 -0800

Can you help me find a specific Wendy's commercial? (Not the banned one, and certainly not the "where's the beef" one.) A couple of years ago, Wendy's ran a commercial of a bunch of office workers standing around while someone hands out the lunches they bought at Wendy's. The gist of the commercial is that one of the guys tries to float a new tagline or possibly nickname for himself by yelling out "Spi-cy!!" After gamely asking him to try it again, a fellow unimpressed employee tells him: "still terrible."

I've searched Google and YouTube with the search terms "Wendy's" + "spicy" + "still terrible" and other combos with no success. Anyone have any idea where I can find this one?

Help me find a print version of a famous ad

mathowie — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:54:17 -0800

Where can I find a high DPI print-quality version of this famous offensive coffee ad? The Chase and Sanborn ad is regarded as one of the most offensive 1950s ads out there, and a friend that teaches theater and directs plays for the school is wanting to adapt that famous ad for a poster. I was trying to help him track down a print-quality version but the biggest thing I can find online is only 500px or so wide and 72dpi.

Anyone have ideas of where to find something in 300dpi that will work at large 20"x30" sizes? Should I track down the original and scan it myself? Would a library have such things?

Would 200 daily site visitors make me any money?

TheManChild2000 — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:34:43 -0800

Is there any point in trying to monetize a fansite that gets 200 visitors a day? I don't know crap about ads but years of 150-200 daily uniques make me wonder if the long tail might have at least paid for a new video card or something by now.

What price should I sell text links from my website?

jrholt — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:47:02 -0800

What price should I sell text links from my website? I have a small 1-year-old website with growing traffic (currently around 4500 a month). Somebody has approached me to buy text links from the site. It would be 7 text links total and clustered in a small paragraph of no more than 25 words on the homepage. How do I figure out the market price for these links?

Here is an example:

Check out our Bon Jovi tour schedule, Metallica tickets, Beyonce tickets, Jay-Z tickets, Rolling Stones tickets, Radiohead tickets and Cher tickets.

Additional facts about my website: Alex ranking of 389,000; Pagerank 4.

Best online ad networks for blogs?

puffl — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:53:37 -0800

Can anyone recommend quality online ad networks for a website with about 300,000 page views per month? I'm keen to earn a little bit of cash off a website I run which receives about 300,000 pages views per month and growing. The site is about WordPress themes, if that's relevant.

I've checked out a few of the available blog advertising networks (BlogAds etc.) and was just wondering if anyone had positive (or negative) experiences with any of them?

What's the best option for earning money from a blog/website with this number of visitors?

FWIW, I'm already experimenting with Google Adsense but am only earning about $30 a month, which seems low for the number of visits I'm getting.

AdInterax, anyone?

mad_little_monkey — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:25:43 -0800

Anyone have experience with AdInterax? A very enthusiastic sales guy where I work wants us to start using these types of ads on our websites (media sites, I manage them).

I'm not crazy at all about expandable ads, but don't want to stand in their way of making money & can work with him to make sure they don't get in the way of content.

Anyone have any experience working with this company and their ads? Any spyware/malware/weirdness that I need to know about? Will my developers want to kill me? Do I need to put the kabash on this?

Prayer notices in the local paper - what are they for?

lysistrata — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:49:29 -0800

I sometimes see announcements in the newspaper praising saints and listing prayers or novenas with instructions to publish the same ad in a future edition of the paper if the prayers work for you. Who places these ads? What purpose do they serve? What's the deal?

Old ads

Astro Zombie — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:45:26 -0800

Ad repositories? I'm looking for a repository of ads and commercials (still and moving) that would have recent ads for Maybelline, Estee Lauder, L'oreal and the like. I'd also just like a list of ad repositories for future reference.

All politics is a multidimensional lexial space; and also local.

metaculpa — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:37:31 -0800

Where can I access transcripts of currently running political ads and/or political speeches? I'd like to set up a semi-automated system to look at similarities between candidate talking points and political ads run by "non-affiliated" groups. But I need to get access to a set of transcripts of these political ads and speeches. I assume I can get the speeches from Lexis-Nexis, to which I have access. But does anyone know of a reasonable source for transcripts of political ads?

Thanks!