The biggest challenge any advertiser faces is determining
how to get a specific group to interact with them. The catch is that said group often has a mental list of
about seventeen things they would rather do than look at an ad. Their reluctance
is not lost on the advertisers, who then strategize sneaky ways to make ignoring
them impossible. For example, I just tried looking up the word “urethra” on
dictionary.com (I’m in a Human Sexuality class, don’t judge me), and instead of
a definition, I got a pop-up for Bing. Excuse me while I retract my list of
seventeen things that are more preferable to an ad that so rudely interrupted
my studying (actually learning what a urethra is tops off my list, followed by sixteen other priorities that are equally pressing). I exited the ad and
re-clicked the ‘define’ button, but there it was again, shamelessly splayed
across my screen, waiting for me to make my move. This is how I learned Bing
is the most persistent search engine I’ve ever had the displeasure of
accidentally encountering. I realize now that they were hoping to force me into
shifting my search to them by making it impossible to access what I was using
before. Clever move, Bing, but even if I wasn’t mad at you for making
dictionary.com utterly useless, I still wouldn’t use you. I don’t know what
kinds of things pop up when you look up 'urethra' in a search engine, but I do
know I had to stop reading my textbook because of the images I uncomfortably
stumbled across, and I can infer the Internet is much less modest than the
textbook I'm currently afraid to reopen. However, something tells me the
typical dictionary.com user is a little more mature than I am and is most
likely looking up terms that have little or nothing to do with male and female
sex organs. From the perspective of this wiser but less exciting version of me,
I can easily see how Bing’s ad placement has the potential to increase
awareness about the search engine. On an unrelated note, I still don’t know
what a urethra is.
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