jotsheet

I’ve been doing a lot of tinkering with Google AdSense lately. Yes, those annoying text ads on my site. It’s a fun game.

Here’s why: advertising on the Web is like a ready-made experiment. Whereas traditional experiments take lots of time and money and planning, if you’ve got (a) patience, (b) imagination, (c) an inkling about the “scientific method” left over from high school, and (d) traffic coming in, it can be a lot of fun.

The fun part, for me, is not making money. I mean, I’m a cheap S.O.B. The fun part is testing human behavior and technology and doing it so quickly! After all, I did study anthropology once upon a time, and these days technology is very central in my life. Online advertising—learning about it, doing it well, understanding the methods behind it—combines these two areas nicely.

Anyway, I’ll be writing a few things about AdSense and advertising in the days ahead. I’ve learned a lot in the past few months about this stuff, but compared to the big guys, I’m still quite the amateur. I do think I have some good and possibly unique ideas, though, and I’ll pass them along here.

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