As some of you may have noticed, several weeks ago I started an experiment and added Google AdSense to this blog. You can see the ads at the bottom of the sidebar. I am not allowed to ask you to click on the ads or draw attention to them or I will be violating the Terms of Service. So please don’t look at them or click on them unless you’re really, really interested in the product. So far, no one has clicked on any ad here, so I’m safe for now.
Briefly, the way this works is, Google scans your website, does an analysis of its content, then automatically feeds context-sensitive ads to your web page. The premise is that people visiting the site will be vulnerable — I mean, will be likely to click on ads that are closely related to the content of the site. After all, you are here to shop, right?
I have found it mildly amusing to see what type of ads Google decides to serve up to the readers of The 100 Billionth Person. It reveals Google’s idea of what my blog is about and what kind of audience Google thinks it attracts. I guess I will keep displaying the ads until I tire of their limited entertainment value, or until Google tires of the lack of response.
Remember back in fifth grade when you had to memorize the names of the U.S. Presidents in the order they held office? Presidents #10 to #15 could be recalled using the mnemonic, “Tyler Polked Taylor, Fillmore Pierced Buchanan.” Here’s a similar way to remember the people who won’t be President. It begins, “Bachmann Cained Perry…”