I spent a good part of last year studying things like marketing, pricing and so on, which are completely untechnical in nature, but very much essential for a success of any company. I’m far from being an expert in any of these fields, but every now and then I come across an example, that leaves me dumbfounded in its amazing stupidity. It seems like incompetence is limitless and some people receive quite a lot of money to show off theirs.

Practically every textbook I’ve read taught me that the basic approach to marketing is to have a clear message of what you’re offering and why this is beneficial to people you’re selling to. With enough repetition you might have a chance of making them remember you. I certainly don’t think this is the only way to do it, but it’s probably the most tried and tested method out there.

Well, there’s a new fashion in Slovenia. Create ads that don’t tell you anything. I’m not thinking of weird ads that don’t seem to have anything to do with a company or product they’re pushing. No, I mean ads with literally nothing on except a word like IZI (bastardized easy) or T-2 . I guess it might have been intriguing if it wasn’t so overused.

However, last example with izi really takes the cake. First there were ads showing either just izi or if you were lucky, also a link to naizi.si . As already mentioned, they were ads for izimobil . Now, go look at the site and find anything that could point a visitor to izimobil.si .

I’ll buy you a beer, if you can do it in next 24 hours. Or any other beverage of your choice.

Back? I couldn’t do it either. It’s hard to imagine there isn’t one, but it’s certainly well hidden. ’cause you know, people really want to dig around the site looking for what you’re about, right?

Their ad campaign has been expanded in last day or so as they came out with jumbo ads promoting izimobil more directly and they’re trying to do so with a slogan:

“Prvi slovenski virtualni operater mobilne telefonije.”

Or in English: “First slovenian virtual mobile operator.”

Say what?

Was that supposed to persuade me to do something? Does virtual mean they’re not real? Which part should register as something positive with me?

Apart from being almost meaningless, it’s also wrong, if being virtual alludes to using some other company’s mobile network. Debitel did it first, although not as a prepaid operator and I know of no one, who would find that fact alone appealing.

I’m not saying their ad campaign won’t have positive effects. Hell, you can get them by showing dancing bananas and pie fights, as long as you’re willing to spend enough money on it. But somehow I doubt it’s an economical way to market your product.

After a bit less than a month, but enough traffic to give me an idea what to expect, I decided to remove Google ads. I earned a dollar. Well, almost anyway.

My decision to end it was made easier when I discovered this, where ads were supposed to be:

Wtf?

I tried to follow Google’s advice. I picked the most successful formats (but also experimented with others), put them at premium places and choose colors that blend in. Result was a buck and a revelation that on my site even old-fashion banners would be more profitable.

I have no real explanation for disappointing results. Since I’m not fond of ads either, I stayed with number of ad boxes I felt most comfortable with (usually just one) and used only text ads. It’s possible that I’d have more luck with image ads, but it doesn’t really matter, since I dislike them enough that they wouldn’t be acceptable anyway.

It’s also possible and even probable, that the problem was with content of pages. I’ve certainly noticed what often seemed at best a poor match between displayed content and ads.

Sadly there weren’t enough clicks to merit a more involved analysis. Maybe some other time, when I have a new idea worth exploring and get better results.

What has been your experience with AdSense?

Ever since I created my first blog, comment spam was an ever present evil. I can imagine it must be really annoying on very popular blogs with lots of comments, but the variety I have is more puzzling than anything else.

What’s the purpose of producing spam comments that can’t pass even a simple filter included in default installation of WordPress?

I find it highly incredible that someone would be competent enough to write a spamming software and incompetent enough to avoid the only trap WordPress presents. Or is there a benefit to blog spam no one else but me sees?

There are other problems with it that make it easy to recognize and handle it. I’m grateful, because I don’t have to annoy anyone with captchas or other comment preventing mechanisms.