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Third Party Links & the Future of Online Ads

Move away from the idea of getting people to click on ads and learn from sites which have generated a huge amount of loyalty online—like Drudge, Reddit, Techmeme and Fark.
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What’s the Latest Development?

In the ad industry, everyone wants to know the future of online advertising. Felix Salmon’s advice is to move away from the idea of getting people to click on ads. Instead, he says, learn from sites which have generated huge loyalty online—such as Drudge, Reddit, Techmeme, or Fark, “or any number of other aggregators and curators with enormous followings.”

What’s the Big Idea?

Why do millions of people love these sites and visit them with astonishing regularity? Because they send them to fantastic third-party content, says Salmon. Creating an ad unit which is primarily links to great third-party sites gives people a reason to look at the ad and even click on it. “That click won’t take them to your site—but it’s still a great measure of engagement. And they will love you for sending them to great content.”

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Happy New Year
It’s plain to see that I’m an optimist, sometimes more than is socially comfortable. The ease with which I dismiss the disastrous economic decline above serves as one example of that. I wrote that the recession will benefit our political system, and, before I cut this line, as having “rewarded our company for methodical execution and ruthless efficiency by removing competitors from the landscape.” I make no mention of the disastrous effects on millions of people, and the great uncertainty that grips any well-briefed mind, because it truly doesn’t stand in the foreground of my mind (despite suffering personal loss of wealth). Our species is running towards a precipice with looming dangers like economic decline, political unrest, climate crisis, and more threatening to grip us as we jump off the edge, but my optimism is stronger now than ever before. On the other side of that looming gap are extraordinary breakthroughs in healthcare, communications technology, access to space, human productivity, artistic creation and literally hundreds of fields. With the right execution and a little bit of luck we’ll all live to see these breakthroughs — and members of my generation will live to see dramatically lengthened life-spans, exploration and colonization of space, and more opportunity than ever to work for passion instead of simply working for pay. Instead of taking this space to regale you with the many personal and focused changes I intend to make in 2009, let me rather encourage you to spend time this year thinking, as I’m going to, more about what we can do in 2009 to positively affect the future our culture will face in 2020, 2050, 3000 and beyond.
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