So,
These DoGooder guys hijack a site’s ads and take 50% of the profit from their new ads for themselves and leaving the site owner — who’s already making meagre pennies from the ads in the first place — with even less. Unless, by some grace of god, the visitor manually decides to view a site’s ads themselves.

There are already methods to remove ads from the internet. Several in fact. Methods that don’t involve having a company syphon off profits for themselves. If these guys were truly altruistic, they’d have open sourced the project and given away all the profits.

I’m sorry, but it’s a scummy practice. It may be voluntary on the part of the end user. It may me wrapped in a nice little “helping out charities” bow, but it’s still scummy. They’re lining their own pockets on the backs of other site owners, and getting you to feel good about helping them do it. And I guarantee, they’ll get sued. Beacause Claria software (ne Gator) did

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claria_Corporation
The Gator software has in the past undercut the fundamental ad-supported nature of many Internet publishers by replacing banner ads on web sites with its own, thereby depriving the content provider of the revenue necessary to continue providing that content. In June 2002 a number of large publishers, including the New York Post, The New York Times, and Dow Jones & Company, sued Gator Software for its practice of replacing ads.[8] Most of the lawsuits were settled out of court in February 2003.

Peter and Patrick,

Thanks for your comments, criticism and concerns. Thankfully, we have done our due diligence and have addressed these very issues. DoGood Headquarters isn’t in the business of shafting people, we are in the business of doing good. Any story can be spun in a negative or positive, I suppose only we and we alone can know our true intentions. Such is the nature of the media, I suppose.

To quickly address the above concerns:

1) The DoGooder does NOT block ads from sites. Publishers still get served and paid for the underlying advertisements that are served to web sites. If you have a site that is related to a green initiatives or a charitable foundation, we have built in a white list into our algorithms that allows said web sites to be exempt from the DoGooder entirely as a standard function (no need for end user to choose).

2) The DoGooder in no way effects or alters, in a literal sense, the underlying code or assets of a web site or its contents.

3) The argument above states that a lot of content on web pages is developed to support the ads that are served on said sites. This is a fundamental paradox in advertising. The current model suggests that end user “X” will be interested in product “Y” simply because they are reading/interacting with a web site (or watching a TV show, or listening to a radio program, or reading a section in the newspaper). Brands/advertisers “blanket” a large portion of the population with campaigns with hopes of reaching those very few that are actually interested.This, an I am generalizing, is usually not the case. I go to Sports Illustrated everyday, and I assure you, I have no interest in buying a Brett Favre bobble-head. The other paradox– most of my time online is spent on sites that I read for information, entertainment, or social interaction. When is the last time I have seen a campaign supporting a green initiative, or charitable cause, or product that will improve my life? I can’t even recall, but I am undoubtedly, interested in said things. The problem, and it very well might be my own, is that I generally don’t go to these sites on a regular basis. I think there are a lot of people out there just like me.

4) Gator’s entire practice was malicious from the beginning. Essentially, and do correct me if I am wrong, Gator was “packaged” with another software, and upon downloading it, and end user would now be presented with pop up banners over top of other advertising on web sites with ads served from Gator. They did not CHOOSE to use Gator, at least in it’s early iterations, and in most cases never even new it was installed. As well, Gator ACTIVELY sold ad placement to advertisers suggesting they would be on “The New York TImes”, or “MSN” or whatever, this was false. In, addition, I believe there was some behavioural targeting involved that would track an end users surfing habits and then serve ads accordingly. In turn, Gator would often serve and ad that was in complete conflict with the site in and of itself. For example, and end user would go to the HomeDepot site, and then would be served a pop up ad for Rona covering up the the site! That, my dear friends, is “scummy”, no?

5) What about all the brands and advertisers getting shafted by good ads? Well, perhaps you would like to share your environmental policies with the legion of DoGooders, or maybe your brand is doing something really great for hunger– share that with us, and develop a positive association with your brand and do some good along the way (kindly do not take this as an arrogant attempt to say “join us or lose out”). In addition, and perhaps more importantly from a brand/advertisrs perspective, the DoGooder effectively helps you maximize your valuable impression counts and ad space buys on sites by eliminating eyeballs that could really care less about your product. You will still get your impressions, just not from people who have no real interest in you, your product, or your services.

Interestingly enough, in a pseudo-similar parallel, back in the late 70’s or early 80’s, advertisers took VHS to court because the technology allowed end users to “forward through commercials”. Guess who won? Publishers, brands, advertisers, here is a novel idea: trust your end users.

In the end, although interesting to dissect, the relatively small user base for the DoGooder will have little or no effect on most publishers, advertisers and brand’s bottom lines, but it will (hopefully) have a MASSIVE impact on charitable causes, and there is something very cool about that.

If there has to be winners and losers in this context, I cannot say for sure if DoGood Headquarters will win or lose, but I feel pretty good that I am playing on the right team.

Many thanks for your comments and criticisms. The only way we can do better, is to have open dialogues about any and all things. Sorry for any typos, or misconstrued thoughts, busy day today. 🙂

Good on you,

Faisal Sethi

Faisal – The relationship between content and advertisements is more direct than you let on. The purpose of content is to assemble an audience – and advertisers what that audience to similar to their market – but not identical – because otherwise they’d only be speaking to known customers. Consumers understand this and will break from content if the advertisements do not fit with their perceptions of what is acceptable with that content.

Users of media with advertisements have a choices already – they can view the material & ads in the case of mags, papers, or not. For TV & radio they can use the time the ads run to skip to other channels, or if it’s recorded fast forward through it. In neither case can they chose to substitute one set of ads for another (which is why the VCR example is moot).

The technology you have is interesting – but I expect that it will end up in the hands of content generators – letting them target ads – not as a browser function purported to be user controlled but requiring 3 seconds of consent and little control of what shows after that.

Due diligence in a case like this would require very deep pockets, and likely opinions from legal scholars and supreme court judges – in several jurisdictions, because the issue is exceeding complex – and the balancing of consumer and content provider rights not straight forward and because of the webs international distribution – action can come (repeatedly) from anywhere.
[rq=827335,0,blog][/rq]Corn&Brocolli Soup

I’m with Teresa – I like that this re-focuses advertising discussion.

I take Peter’s first point that legislative support for this may not be set-up – we’re still struggling with the social media explosion as well.

I like that I have choice over my ads though and that we’re talking about advertising again rather than being passive audiences.

Add that to the fact 50% of the profits are going to good causes and suddenly I have one of those ‘this is a good thing’ feelings. 🙂
[rq=827433,0,blog][/rq]Advertising YOU choose – for a good cause

And of course, my previous post was in retort to Peter, not Patrick, although I still thank you both. Getting tired 😉

Patrick,

I do agree that there will be people out there that have very similar reactions to you initially. To paraphrase the great Hugh Prather, I’d rather be hated than ignored. If am hated, then I know I am making a difference.

To reiterate, we do not alter web pages at all (unbelievable eh?). On a surface level, to an end user, the site “appears to be different”. Perhaps we are just debating semantics here.

Agreed, most advertisers and publishers make their money from click-throughs, not impressions, but generally speaking, DoGooders would never click on the ad to begin with. As I mentioned previously, this could be a GOOD thing for advertisers (pun intended)– eliminate the eyeballs that never cared to begin with, and focus on your primary target. In addition, there are 400… 500 million odd internet users on the planet? DoGooder will inevitably represent a very small portion of these users, ultimately resulting in little or no effect on most of brands/advertisers/publishers bottom lines. But, the impact on charity / green causes? Grand indeed. Seems like a pretty good trade off, no?

The Superbowl analogy, interesting. My guess is though, if 30,000,000 people went the The New York Times, and 100,000 had the DoGooder plug-in installed, not sure the NY Times would care, but whom am I to say for sure?

Thanks Patrick. Great insight. Dialogue, all about dialogue. It’s how we can improve, progress and work things out. Soooo good.

Good on you,

Faisal

Sure. But I believe the paradigm is about to shift. 🙂

I suppose I work outside the capitalist infrastructure/mentality on some level– if I lose “potential future revenue” which is completely obtuse, it is of little concern to me. If I am splitting a pie with someone– I don’t think ” I am losing HALF of my pie”, I think” Half that pie is mine, cool”. Naive, perhaps. So be it, I suppose.

Thanks for the great debate. Remember, at the end of the day, DoGood Headquarters is about allowing anyone to donate money to charity without spending a dime, nothing more, nothing less.

Simply,

Faisal