Yahoo Ad Serving Technology: Fail!

Posted by John Carney, Jun 23, 2008, 11:38am

carlin.JPGThose mourning the loss of racy comedian George Carlin this morning will be glad to know that it's not too late to get tickets to Carlin's "Live comedy," according to Yahoo.

Okay, you can't really catch Carlin live anymore. But this morning Yahoo pages carried the awkward juxtaposition of the news of Carlin's death with advertisements to "Save on tickets for Carlin's live comedy." Well, yes. We're sure those tickets are very cheap now.

(Click image for larger version.)

2Recommend this! 12Comments
Posted in: Yahoo!
Tags: George Carlin, RIP

Comments

Posted by guest, Jun 23, 2008 11:44AM

MSFT kills YHOO without spending much money. The Art of War that Larry Allison if famous for.

Posted by guest, Jun 23, 2008 11:45AM

Ellison

Posted by guest, Jun 23, 2008 12:14PM

actually, those tickets should definitely sell at a premium if they can really deliver

Posted by guest, Jun 23, 2008 12:46PM

"Great Seats Available"

Huh, imagine that.

Posted by Anal_yst, Jun 23, 2008 12:59PM

I've wondered, for the better part of a decade, wtf all the yahoo (same could be said for facebook) employees do all day, ya know, the genius programmers responsible for developing these cutting-edge ad-serving (etc) technologies. Hell, anyone who took AP CompSci in highschool could put together a basic algo to do it!

Posted by guest, Jun 23, 2008 1:01PM

Carlin was a wonderful comic. He did a short-lived TV sitcom in which he played a New York City cabbie that was an underappreciated footnote to his career.

Posted by girl, Jun 23, 2008 1:11PM

@ Anal

There was an AP Comp Sci class? That must have been a fun group of kids...

Posted by guest, Jun 23, 2008 1:19PM

@ girl

Lots o' D&D conversation in that room. Carney would have fit right in.

-Nominate me

Posted by hedgehog, Jun 23, 2008 1:20PM

@Anal

As someone who used to work in tech, I can safely say that you need to stick with finance. Sans tech coverage.

Posted by Anal_yst, Jun 23, 2008 3:00PM

@ hedgehog

Appreciate your opinion, care to elaborate?

Also, are you suggesting that facebook's ad platform is effective, because I would issue a massive CHALLENGE to prove your point, as I am reminded of its shortcomings multiple times daily.

Posted by hedgehog, Jun 23, 2008 4:02PM

@Anal

I wasn't defending Facebook's ad platform, though as a point of reference, its click-through rate happens to be over 100x that of Yahoo's.

I'm just saying that ad-serving platforms aren't simple algorithms that match keywords together. It's obviously possible to have a computer figure out that a 22 yro kid with an IP address in Manhattan who visits LSO every 2 hours might have an interest in penis enlargement drugs.. but I bet Yahoo will be extinct by the time any AP CompSci kid can code it into an automated system.

Posted by guest, Jun 23, 2008 4:13PM

hahahahahaha. zing!

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