AOL’s behavioral-targeting penguin ads are pretty cute – I think someone over there’s a Pingu fan. The penguin in the ad is a dead ringer for Pingu’s father. But the comments follow the usual pattern for a post about ad technology – as soon as it’s up you get a smattering of people saying that they never see these ads, because they use Firefox and AdBlock Plus. (The hardcore people also use noscript.)
I always wonder a bit when I see that behavior – don’t the people who are posting realize that the only reason why AdBlock Plus and the like work is because relatively few people use AdBlock Plus? It’s not really worth the time and effort now to design systems that bypass it entirely, but if enough people do, the industry will. Advertisers want to reach people, and publishers want to be paid.
