Shoppers use blogs for bargains… says the BBC. Consumers are starting to use weblogs, or blogs, as guides to what they should and shouldn’t buy, finds a survey.
A survey (conducted by whom and for what purpose, this does not say) says that people trusted blogs since they were written by “real people” and based on actual experience. Real people… I wonder – think of all the “nice site. please visit my site” comments by the gambling and roulette “people” that blogs get everyday. I don’t know about shopping but for me, blogs are a credible source of information – I respect the opinions of bloggers I read regularly – and I believe there fewer personal and political agendas being played out in this space (I say fewer – fewer than on msm – but not none).
While on this, Flickr User Upset Over Yahoo Ads on Photo Pages (through Adrants). Tanais on flickr has a picture of a gorgeous puppy – and right next to it is an ad for ‘…puppies for sale – ready now’
I see Yahoo is making use of the pictures I upload. I do not like my pictures being used to advertise a specific breeder (they may be excellent they may be terrible — that’s not the point)… so I shall sit down and think about how best to AdBust this – says Tanais under the photograph of the offending ad(s).
Sure, the basic flickr account is free but does it automatically give yahoo (who owns flickr now) the right to advertise on all accounts? Freebies on the net too come for a price. I do not mind the google advertising on my blog – my funny notion about the fact that I have chosen to have the ads – but thinking about it, there is no control I have over the kind of ads that appear on my blog. My post against fairness creams for instance had ads for fairness products on my blog for the next few days – while the one on ‘veronika decides to die’ had ads around suicide prevention and counselling…
Like you, I prefer making my choices based on recommendations of people rather than corporates. One reason for this is that over a period of time, I can become somewhat familiar with that person’s tastes and the similarities between their tastes and mine, which helps me better predict if I’ll like something they write about.
About the ads, I get some pretty funny ads in my Google mailbox, but I guess this is more serious, and can be rather misdirecting.
The content of my blog prevents me from using Google ad-sense. I don’t even want to guess what kind of ads google will dump on my blog after going through my keywords. But maybe I should see, just for kicks.
I somehow felt that i wouldn’t want to use ads on my blog……but wonder what kind of ads will infest it, if i do open it up…..
but yes….a lot of recommendations by bloggers (whom i read regularly) I consider seriously, because i do value their opinions…
I believe bloggers have great pushing power. If you are a regular blogger you can influence the decisions of your readers. I started a blog which reviews food, restaurants etc. As an independent reviewer I believe people seem to take my word better than maybe a paid reviewer in a magazine, newspaper.
Just for the reference: http://khanapeena.blogspot.com/
Aditya, true, I too feel that I know and can trust the blogger and his/her reco – even if I have only been reading the blog and not met the blogger personally…
Gawker and Sunil, you guys must poen up your blogs to adsense – just for a few days. Gawker’s blog esp. will become a tourist attraction for me after that – will drop in a few times a day just to check the latest that google will offer 🙂
Kapil, yes, that makes sense – unless of course people discover your own agenda in pushing things :))