Posted on December 9, 2010 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
Bucharest just got it’s Google Street View, and it tool just a few hours for some guy to figure out how to spam the system.
One of the places people would go first is Piata Unirii. It’s in the middle of the city, it’s well known and easy to find. And right in front of the big Unirii store there is a truck. What does it say on the car? Hotel Padova Inn. Yeah right…
And the hotel itself is not even around the corner, is some 3 km away.
I couldn’t yet find a way to report this to the Google guys, but this is Spam to me, in all it’s glory!
Posted on June 30, 2009 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
I finally got myself to record and upload one of the presentation I’ve shown this spring at a conference. At the moment these were made I was quite proud of them.
Without further ado, I give you the presentation of my paper called “Online Advertising As A Promotion Mechanism, A Way To Monetize And A Source Of Information“.
The paper was presented at at the conference <Conferinta anuala a doctoranzilor in stiinte economice, “Schimbari de logica dominanta la nivel european în condi?iile crizei economice mondiale”> held by the Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania in May 2009.
This is the second conference I ever attended as a speaker, the presentation I gave at the first conference will follow in the next few days.
If you take the time and watch the presentation and you have an opinion about it (it sucks big time, it’s ok, you should be ashamed of littering the web with such crap, etc) please leave a comment.
The text of the paper is available in both Romanian and English. If, for some reason, you want to use these paper somehwere, drop me a line about it.
Posted on April 30, 2009 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
I was doing some research for an article a few days ago and I came across some papers that were explaining different aspects of pay-per-action models and contextual advertising and things like this. And at one point it struck me how much math was in there. Formulas here and there and model X and Y explaining problem Z. Models for explaining how advertisers bid in an auction how publishers make the auction and so on and so forth.
Although I respect very much people who have the gift to see mathematical relationships in every aspect of life, I must say – come on people, take a brake, go pet the dog or something, look out the window. It doesn’t even matter what they were trying to prove in that article, the idea is that too many are forgetting that modern economics was built by guys like Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. Smith was philosopher! If you need to turn to science for explaining at how people are bidding in an ad auction look at psychology first, not math. You are talking about people. Model their behaviour as much as you like that still won’t make you understand things completely.
My take is that among academia too many people are so busy of building “something new”, some “new model” that too easily people jump into making their own little mathematical model that no one understands because it’s new and it will get published. I don’t say these are not useful sometimes but economics and anything else that has to deal with humans is Powered by the People™. If you want to find out what effect a badly designed pop-up has on a sites users look at any talk show. Pop-ups are like that annoying guy that doesn’t let anybody else talk. Pop-ups are interruptions that don’t let you do what you came for. Wasn’t that easy? And I figured that out without building a mathematical model for it.
Posted on December 18, 2008 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
That’s an easy one – we don’t have any traffic, why bother?
This guy has a better reason for it – see here. I like @Jimconnolly‘s approach to business. Very clear and open about everything and that, to me, seems the best way to do it.
Posted on October 23, 2008 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
Din domeniul “Stiati ca” – stiati ca cei de la Google au o politica sa nu aiba mai mult de 28 de cuvinte pe pagina lor de home? Eu am aflat de curand, si mi s-a parut foarte interesant.
Dar stirea originala din NYT era ca datorita lansarii G1 pe pagina Google acum sunt 39!!! de cuvinte. Textul adaugat este “New! The G1 is on sale now. Learn about the phone”.
Din pacate nu este vizibil decat pe site-ul american si nu am gasit nici o poza. Cei de la NYT i-au intrebat pe cei de la Google daca isi incalca principiile si raspunsul lor a fost:
“We are currently running a homepage promotion. These promotions appear when we launch a major product or service that users might be interested in, or to support a cause that users care about, including the May Sichuan earthquake relief efforts. Because these promotions appear on our homepage for only a few days at a time, we don’t consider them in our official homepage word count.”
Oricum, mi se pare fascinant faptul ca reusesc sa tina cu dintii de niste principii de genul “regula celor 28 de cuvinte”. Chiar cred ca e unul din motivele succesului lor.
Posted on October 16, 2008 by Liviu Lică in Stories & Life
Se pare ca cei de la Google isi calca pe principii si o sa furnizeze prin sistemul de AdSense si bannere. Interesanta decizie, considerand ca au plecat la drum sustinand mare si tare ca ei sunt impotriva bannerelor (mai ales pe site-ul propriu) si al popupurilor etc etc. Au revolutionat prin AdWords si acum isi schimba perspectiva… Pareri mai documentate decat a mea au si altii.
Se pare ca pentru inceput Google o sa tina un pic de principiile lor si nu o sa puna reclame sub forma de banner pe propriul site, doar o sa le distribuie la reteaua de utilizatori de AdSense.
Oricum, sunt curios daca o sa vedem si Google Popup :).
Intre timp puteti citi mai multe pe RWW sau direct de la sursa.
Si un mic sfat de la Google despre cum sa construiesti un banner.
