Today I was bouncing around TechRepublic.com and noticed an ad for Viagra appearing on the site. I am sure these ads are driven by one thing or another to appear at different intervals during the visitor?s experience, but it struck me as funny.
Sure TechRepublic gets piles of page views on a monthly basis and yeah Pfizer wants to capitalize on advertising investment, getting the most bang for the proverbial buck (no pun intended).
It seems odd though that this would appear on a site devoted solely to technical community and computer geekdom. Was I offended, absolutely not, but wow? surprised somewhat by the ad.
While working on this quick post I got to thinking, maybe advertising on the web in some context sensitive fashion is the business model of the future. I am not quite sure where the heck the ad engine would come up with the idea that I would like to know more about Viagra, but I suppose the idea being that the amount of viewers passing through TechRepublic would be quite the money maker for a small ad like the one above.
Do you think ads like this, should be limited to the scope of the site and then driven by user preference or is anything goes ok?
Personally I got a good laugh out of the advertisement, but some may not. It isn?t like the ads for this stuff aren?t all over television anyway, but it does make me wonder just how the ad placement on sites like TR and other web properties are determined. If it is really figuring out what I would like to see, then I think it got me confused with someone else? unless this is a subtle hint that I need to pay attention to the amount of time I spend on TechRepublic? more than 4 hours and I should probably call the doctor, or was that the neighbors, I can?t remember.
What are your thoughts about the ads that just show up?