

Is this a joke? New Service, AdKeeper, Lets Consumers "Click to Save" Online Ads - j_b_f
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/10/10/2296478/new-service-adkeeper-lets-consumers.html

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joshu
> AdKeeper is founded by Scott Kurnit

Founder of MiningCo -> About.com, which IPO'd. The allstar cast of investors
is not surprising.

I like the idea of an inventory (like in the old text adventure games) for the
internet, but I wonder if just having it be for a single object type is what
users (versus what advertisers) want. Ideally you'd be able to keep anything
in your inventory. This was part of the ultimate vision for Delicious a long
time ago.

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astrofinch
Diigo comes closer to this than anything else I've seen.

<http://www.diigo.com/>

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btilly
If they can connect with their audience, there are definitely people who will
love this.

How do I know this? One summer I had the job of delivering ad mail. Most
people are like me, didn't want it. But it was my job to deliver it, and I
did. _However_ there were _some_ people who wanted it. You see they didn't
know what they were doing with their weekend until they'd read the ads and
learned where the sales were.

If they can connect with that audience, they could very well succeed. And
sure, it may be a small portion of people. But it is a fraction that
advertisers _love_ to reach. You know, the people who like to cut out coupons.
The ones who use groupon. The ones who are likely to actually buy if you offer
them a deal.

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cypherpunks01
It actually appears to be a real product, as opposed to an elaborate joke.
Even after the initial feeling of nausea wore off, I'm still left wondering
about what the market for this thing really is.

From what I've read (very little), ad clickers make up some fairly negligible
portion of total internet users, and tend to be less educated or have impulse
problems like compulsive shoppers, gamblers, etc. Making a complicated system
to 'save' and re-visit your 'favorite' ads later on seems to not target this
ad clicker market at all, as they'll most likely never look at an old ad
again. And I really, really don't see this turning more people into ad
clickers.

This might induce job creation for paid ad clickers in india, though.

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languagehacker
Behold, an application with a business model based solely on the naive,
inflated sense of importance of people working in marketing.

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patio11
I think you greatly underestimate the degree to which a segment of the
population enjoys shopping, coupon clipping, etc etc.

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languagehacker
I actually once worked for a discount/coupon code website whose main feature
was the ability to save offers. It had a low adoption rate. People who are
aware that you can save money using coupon codes or partner links on the
Internet also generally know that they can type "X free shipping coupon code"
into Google and find what they're looking for (or better) again.

There's almost no user loyalty in the space, so creating an application people
can go back to just so they can review the coupons they like is set up for
failure on two accounts. This means the people behind the business ma not have
done much market research. Or it may mean that they don't feel the need to
cater to the customer, since they're not selling to them, but rather to the
advertisers. So assuming that they had a solid business model and did the
appropriate kind of research to make sure they would have clients and revenue,
they probably have letters of intent and partnerships with a few advertisers
who didn't crunch those kind of numbers, or trusted the perceived market
expertise of this business.

That's what I mean by naivete.

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teyc
One of my pet peeves is that Ads don't respect the back button. Sometimes, I
hit the back button on Stack Overflow because the ad was interesting, but it's
been rotated away.

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w1ntermute
Shouldn't this be solved by the browser? The back button behavior should be no
different from if I were to switch from a new tab back to its parent tab.

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uxp
No. He's talking about reading a page and having 'Ad Blindness' while he's
focused on the content. Once he gets to a link, he'll click on it, and at that
same moment, see an Ad that looks interesting (because he is no longer focused
on the content). After the new page loads, clicking on the back button doesn't
help because the original page will reload with all the ad spaces regenerated
with new random ads.

Anyone need an idea for a side-project startup? This happens to me all the
time and I absolutely hate it.

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IChrisI
> AdKeeper was launched today in beta and is currently available by
> invitation. The service will be widely available in the first quarter of
> 2011.

I had a good laugh at this. An ad service so good customers will be begging to
try it!

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elbrodeur
Longest. Press release. Ever. It would be nice to read a _review_ of the
service rather than a press release.

That being said, I think one of the main hurdles a service like this will be
user banner blindness. Many people have banner blindness and interactive
advertisements don't seem to perform better than passive advertisements.

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Locke1689
Do not editorialize in the title. The original title was fine.

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mmorris
It seems like an idea with some potential. They charge the ads' publishers
based only on clicks or impressions of saved ads. Saving and storing ads is
free on both the users end (obviously) and the publishers end, which means ad
publishers should be able to get started on the system without much risk.

I'd think the value to publishers would be in acquiring additional metrics
about user interest in a particular ad, but I'm sure the pricing will be a
critical piece of the puzzle.

They certainly have a number of well-known advisors and large investors (not
that that is enough to predict success!), it'll be interesting to see if it
takes off.

Direct link to the site: <http://www.adkeeper.com/>

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The_Sponge
Part of it is the advertiser tunnel-vision thing I've seen where you get ad
people saying things like "People will be eager to opt-in to our fantastic
savings and they like to be aware of the newest prices and products. Hey...
why is almost nobody opting in?"

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Andrenid
It seems to me like it would work for very specific ad-types. Eg coupons,
upcoming sales, promotional offers, etc. The thing is, 99% of internet ads are
NOT this type of ad, but are instead a generic click-through to a site or
service, in which case this idea is laughable at best.

There has been plenty of times i've seen an ad for a discount at Threadless
(etc), or a promotional offer i'm interested in, where I refuse to click due
to my geekish nature considering it taboo to do so, but at the same time
wanting to remember that deal for later when i'm free to go check it out. I'd
still rather just jot it down in notepad though.

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addmein
Most ads are for branding, for sure, but that's because people don't want to
waste time clicking on ads. If you take the time suck out of the equation,
people might actually click and save the ads and offers they're interested in.

It's going to work great with deals and offers.

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addmein
What I find most interesting is the potential for advertising to get better.
Yeah, people have trained themselves not to look at the ads, but that's
because the ads are usually pretty bad. If it really will be easy for people
to click and save ads, the people who make the ads will want to make those ads
ones you're gonna wanna keep.

Pretty ads : ) Useful ads, entertaining ads. Ads people might want to share
with their friends. It could be pretty cool.

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mkramlich
Got the impression the PR was written by someone in the advertising industry.
They were practically slobbering all over themselves with lust over the
magical deliciousness that is Internet advertisements.

Meanwhile, back on Main Street, and in Hacker's Haven, I bet most folks find
them usually annoying or irrelevant noise, at best.

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minalecs
I don't see this working without some sort of incentive for consumers. I
already know badges will be implemented, so that you can win virtual crap
depending on the ads you see and collect. Coupons possibly will work, but then
they need a way to redeem them.

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rgrieselhuber
This is one of my oldest, favorite ideas. Damnit. :-)

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ryanwaggoner
This seems like the same thing as a company co-founded by a friend of mine:
<http://www.dropcam.com>. Just wondering if you're aware of them and whether
I'm missing something?

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ryanwaggoner
Sorry...posted this in the wrong story.

