Pun Salad

A couple things about the Google ads over there on the right sidebar:

1. Sometimes they will insult your intelligence. For example, when we were talking about Obama's stimulus package, they all seemed to be promising you free government "stimulus" grants, if you would just throw them a couple three bucks.

   This is an old problem. To some extent, it's common to all advertising. As you know, if you are a customer of any other commercial media at all.

   I haven't had any complaints, so it may be that I'm more embarrassed than my readers are insulted.

2. Google is soon introducing "interest-based advertising" which may have some impact on your privacy. Here's what they suggest I should tell you about that:
   • Google uses cookies to serve ads here.

   • Specifically, they may include a DoubleClick DART cookie, which enables Google to serve ads based on your visit to this site and other Internet sites.

   • You may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

The good news is that the second item may ameliorate the first: if you surf to smarter sites, you may see smarter ads.

No promises, of course. And you might find it off-putting that the site "knows" stuff about you. Berin Szoka at the Technology Liberation Front has a long article about Google's entry into "behavioral" advertising; it's suggested reading if you're interested in or concerned about Internet privacy policy.