All Blog Posts from Public Eye

So we’ve got ads on the top of the computer screen. We’ve got ads on the side. (Just look over --->) We’ve got ads that float around and you have to chase to close. (“Where’s that X?”) And ads that just take over the screen for a few seconds, which always seems to be a few seconds too long.

That pretty much covers online advertising, right?

Nope, as Arizona State’s Tim McGuire noted recently, now certain words are for sale in some stories in the Arizona Republic:

Ford Motor Company owns football. American Express owns Texas. Pitney-Bowes owns business. If you didn’t know that you haven’t been reading the Arizona Republic’s AZ Central.com this week.

Without fanfare AzCentral has started to put two green lines under words in stories on the Money section and the Sports section. It appears stories in news and local sections are immune, but the web site has ways around that. It also appears that the underlines can change from minute to minute.

These ads are an interesting alternative to the more intrusive ads that impede you from your destination, but I have to think that the ‘rotating’ associations for each word will end up cancelling out the ad’s power.

Read full post…

I just received, via email, a list of Monday's top ten interactive web features. (If you're not sure what an interactive is, you'll find a lot of them on the left side of the CBSNews.com main page.)



The top three interactives from Monday, in alphabetical order, were as follows:



"Celebrity Circuit," a photo essay of celebrities;



"Howard Stern – King Of All Media," a photo essay of Stern; and



"Victoria's Secret," a photo essay of…well, you know.



Now, those are the top three in alphabetical order. But I thought it would be fun to get your guesses on which of the three was, ultimately, the most popular. That is: Which interactive do you think got the most hits? Did celebrities beat out scantily clad women? Is the King Of All Media the king of all interactives? Who's really getting the clicks?



Post your guesses in comments for who came in first, who was the runner up, and who, ahem, is the loser with the bronze. Feel free to add whatever commentary you want. (The funnier, the better, of course.) I've already been told that first place had to have gone to Stern, and also that you should never bet against the Victoria's Secret ladies. Somebody's gotta be wrong. Let us know what you think below.



I'll reveal the true order at the end of the day.



UPDATE: OK, the polls have closed, and let me congratulate my1716 and melissamcn1, who correctly guessed that the most popular interactive was Victoria's Secret, followed by Howard Stern, followed by Celebrities. Thanks for playing!

Read full post…