Tuesday, May 18, 2004

On a lighter note

Agence France Press have picked up on the banter about mosquitoes during the foreign ministers’ meeting (see story below), displaying on the EU Business web site a piece with the headline "EU partners trade salami slaps, mosquito barbs over constitution".

On that same site there are four advertisements, supplied by Google, who are very much into what is known as “contextual advertising”. This aims to present adverts which will be tuned to the specific interests of the web-site reader. Thus, with a piece with "mosquito" in the heading, all four adverts are selling… mosquito exterminators.

This is almost as bad as the Google ads on this site, which offer courses for people who wish to take the examinations to become EU officials. But the crowning glory is a news piece on EU Business which comments on Straw's part in today's negotiations. Alongside is an advert which helpfully offers "negotiation training" from a "Havard professor".

Contextual, these ads may be, but I suspect Google haven’t got it quite right yet.

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