A recent TV ad for Cheerios depits a heartwarming family vignette: An adorable tyke asks her mother if the cereal is good for the heart, her mother says yes, and the dad wakes up from his nap to find a pile of Cheerios on his chest.
But the fact that the mother is white, the dad is black and the child mixed-race has
touched off a firestorm of criticism that one media critic described as "a progressive-looking commercial collides with the ugliness of the Internet."
Parent company General Mills says it is has no plans to stop airing the spot or to take it down from its YouTube channel.
[more inside]
posted by Gelatin
on Jun 7, 2013 -
219 comments
A Transparent Attempt to Explain the Economics Behind Running a Pop-Culture Website and the Need to Run Intrusive Advertising The thing about display ads is that you are paid for about what they are worth, which is to say: $.30 per 1,000 impressions. Most people barely even notice them, so advertisers are not willing to pay you very much to run them...Instead, we have to use intrusive ads which are paid on a much larger scale, approximately $7.00 per 1,000 impressions. So, if a site like ours generates 100,000 impressions, that should be $700 a day. Awesome. We should be rich, right? Not so much. Pajiba previously. [via
Slashfilm]
posted by mediareport
on Apr 22, 2012 -
181 comments
The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future -
After five years pursuing the social-local-mobile dream, we need a fresh paradigm for technology startups. "This isn't about startup incubators or policy positions. It's not about "innovation in America" or which tech blog loves startups the most. This is about how Internet technology used to feel like it was really going to change so many things about our lives. Now it has and we're all too stunned to figure out what's next. So we watch Lana Del Ray turn circles in a thousand animated gifs."
posted by flex
on Apr 19, 2012 -
9 comments
This morning, Google launched a new feature called "
Google Dashboard" that lets users view (and in some cases control,) what data is being stored on a range of more than 20 Google services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts and Latitude.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 5, 2009 -
59 comments
How To Save Media Jason Ponti from Technology Review offers some suggestions as to how traditional print publishers might save themselves from becoming irrelevant.
posted by reenum
on Oct 12, 2009 -
30 comments
With Rupert Murdoch
planning to start charging for access to some of the content of his newspaper's websites is this the
end of the age of
free? But will it
rescue the newspaper industry? Or is the Kindle or other
ebook reader the answer? And if free news on the web is unsustainable from advertising
what about YouTube, Twitter and Facebook?
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on May 10, 2009 -
31 comments
The End of the Internet? "The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online."
posted by allkindsoftime
on Feb 4, 2006 -
32 comments
Google To Start Selling Banner Adverts From the that-didn't-take-too-long-department, Google's ad sales VP Tim Armstrong says Google will now start selling graphical banner adverts. One concession to their old mores is that, for now, the banner adverts will only appear on affiliated websites running their
AdSense referral program (as does MeFi), and there is an opt-out. However...
"We have no plans to show images on Google.com", said Mr. Armstrong
"but we are not opposed to it".
posted by meehawl
on May 12, 2004 -
27 comments
The worst Internet ad ever. Hopefully I won't be the only one to see it; it's not clear how long it will be there. They actually obliterate your ability to see the content for a few seconds. Makes me want to strangle Next Day Blinds. Anyone else have examples of horrible (or good) new Internet ads?
posted by IPLawyer
on Mar 1, 2002 -
21 comments
Is it just me or does
AdCritic.com suck now? I remember a year or two ago it was a great place to check out the latest, funniest commercials. It's been months now since I've even been able to successfully view a commercial there, and their Top 10 Lists never change -- and usually only feature ads that contain allusions to women's underwear.
Did "new management" take over?
posted by robbie01
on Dec 15, 2001 -
16 comments
A pyramid scheme for web traffic? ExitBlaze apparently sends traffic from one member's site to another's (or, no doubt, to other sites they must sell hits to):
Bob doesn't know it but a pop-underwindow displaying an ExitBlaze member's site has just shown up underneath the main browser window. And Bob owes it all to you!
posted by mattpfeff
on Dec 11, 2001 -
5 comments
Interesting sellout.
About.com has changed the "o" in their name to a Life Saver throughout the site. That's some desperate advertising.
posted by endquote
on Aug 3, 2001 -
37 comments
Woohoo! Follow the link to a post at the beloved-by-all-metafilterians
Jason Levine.
read the fourth paragraph: it seems that i'm not the only one highly ticked off by the recent slew of x10 pop-under ads.
Jason has kindly provided links that will set cookies to prevent them from appearing for 30 days, 1 year or 10 years.
I modified the url yet again to keep it from popping up ever again
within my lifetime.
posted by o2b
on Jun 2, 2001 -
40 comments
Is this the future of web? Is it me or are many Internet sites starting to mimmick newspapers?
Large banner ads, aken to the full page spreads of newspapers and magazines. Oversized headlines. What next? Have major sites abandoned the internet as a separate medium?
posted by igloo
on Mar 22, 2001 -
9 comments
bla-bla.com and grrl.com (a new chickclick style portal from
womensforum.com) are on the hunt for independent female sites to lump together and sell off to their advertisers. what have your experiences been with .commers? how do you feel about advertising on yr own site? what kind of money is actually earnt from being part of a portal (which seems to be their major selling point)?
what resources are available to independent site owners? perhaps another branch of the metafilter community could be dedicated to informing people about what does happen when a site signs on to a portal business, and what the alternatives are.
posted by gusset
on May 13, 2000 -
8 comments
Worth has
a great story on how easy it would be for Goto.com to exploit its paying customers. (There may be some registration issues with this link; if it fails, go to the
Worth home page and click on "The Easy Way to Get Rich Click.")
posted by luke
on Mar 14, 2000 -
1 comment
