Gaming Gmail Ads

from the fun-and-profit dept

Oh, those crazy unintended consequences. TheRegister is pointing out that the contextual advertising aspect of Gmail may lead to some interesting business opportunities. For example, you could try to buy up the keywords around your competitor (or, better yet, if you can figure it out, their standard "signature" file in emails) and guarantee that any emails they send out come complete with advertisements for your company. Even more sneaky, they pick up on Karl Auerbach's suggestion that a company would process outgoing email to add to it certain keywords to guarantee certain advertisements would show up within Gmail. This seems a bit far-fetched, and I doubt it would be all that effective - either in getting the right ads to show in Gmail or in being a worthwhile endeavor for advertisers. I do think, however, that the issue of competitors' ads showing up in email may upset people much more.

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