My Own Pirate Radio

During my time in the MSN Search team we worked hard on making advertising “relevant and accretive to the user experience”. In other words, if you’re thinking of displaying an ad to your customer, make sure the ad actually helps the customer accomplish something they want. This is one of the premises modern search engine businesses are built on: the ads on search result pages are useful more often than not, because they are based on the words you yourself typed in. It’s simple, it’s relevant, and it works.

Many online businesses are heading in the same direction—relevant ads, often text-based rather than graphical—and backing away from the untargeted ads typical of old-school Web portals and conventional media such as TV, radio, and print. Sadly, most brick-and-mortar world companies I’m familiar with simply haven’t grasped the “useful advertising” concept, or don’t care to. Case in point: Esso (Exxon Mobil) recently installed TV screens in their gas stations around Toronto.

Commercials begin when you insert your bank card and continue for your viewing pleasure the entire time you’re filling the car. Today I was subjected to ads for a local pizza restaurant (local to that gas station, far from my home), Esso Supreme gasoline (perhaps because I chose “Extra”), and Esso’s customer loyalty program. Arrgh. How useless; I care about none of these things. And since Ontario doesn’t allow locks on gas pump handles, I couldn’t step away while the gas was pumping. Not… even… for… one… second.

Useful would look like this: gas mileage auto-calculated for me; timely reminders to change oil and check tire pressure; discounts on products and services based on my repeat visits; saying “welcome back Oshoma” when I insert my credit card, and “thanks for visiting” when I leave.

Luckily, gas is a commodity, and there are lots of other providers to choose from. I’ll be driving past Esso from now on, looking for a provider that’s more useful.

[Reposting after deleting this by mistake. Lesson learned: WordPress doesn’t have “undo”, but Bloglines thankfully does cache old blog posts for a while.]