thoughtsignals

Advertising Age’s Bob Garfield is writing a book online titled “Listen.”

Because it turns out that all those guys with the PowerPoint presentations you’ve been sitting through for the past three years – you know, the ones insisting “The consumer is in control” – are absolutely right. The consumer (and voter and citizen) is in control: of what and when she watches, of what and when she reads, of whether to pay any attention to you whatsover or to make your life a living hell. This might be an excellent time, therefore, to listen to what she has to say. And it sure wouldn’t hurt to make her your friend.

Introduction to the project here, first installment, and second installment.

Mediapost writer Karl Greenberg has put a stake in the heart of a buzz campaign for a riding lawnmower. Maybe.

“I torpedoed a buzz campaign. I feel really awful about it. Especially since it’s a good campaign.

…

You see, my story — the one I wrote about the fictional grass and the fictional blogs about the grass — shows up on the very top of the list of results you get when you type in … the name of that fictional grass. “

Well, actually his story isn’t appearing at the top of the search results for Google any more. This morning it’s No. 4; No. 3 is another blog post about the incident, and the top two are links to sites that are actually part of the campaign.

You can see the search results here.

Just kidding. I’d love to have your ads (maybe, we can talk).

But for advertisers wary of placing ads in places where the content may be unpredictable and perhaps inappropriate, Feedburner has introduced AdClimate. The tool enables advertisers to identify key words that are problematic and keep their ads off posts that contain those key words.

By way of example, let’s say you have an aversion to the word, “wingnut” and the thought of your ad for pinenuts showing up in a publisher’s blog post about the history of wingnuts would be totally unacceptable (hey - who are we to judge?) AdClimate to the rescue. In addition to screening a multi-language default list of inappropriate language, advertisers can submit their own list of keywords next to which they don’t want their ad to appear - wingnuts and all.

Do other online ad providers, like Google, do this? I don’t know. I bet this will be popular, though.

Link.