How Not to Advertise on the Internet

Not knowing more about Evony's business model, I think this is likely an example of optimizing for the wrong metric - in this case clicks versus conversions. The creator of the last ad is probably thrilled that it's "performing" better than the earlier ads, although I'll bet the actual return on investment is the same or worse.<p>On the other hand, if the site is ad-supported in addition to the freemium model mentioned in the article, this <i>is</i> a way to drive up the number of unique visitors in their traffic stats.

Their target audience is probably<p>a) Male<p>b) Bored<p>c) Not so jaded that they won't click on ads or try something new<p>d) Interested in rts gaming<p>So yeah, that’s how you reel in that audience. You control for their interest in gaming by placing the ads <i>on gaming sites</i>.<p>Additionally, your ad stands out because the gaming sites are clogged with ads for games that involve swords.<p>Once you’ve got them on your homepage you have the opportunity to show them fullscreen art, shots, animations, etc to actually sell the game.

No matter how much Jeff and many other people might take the moral high ground, they have to admit that this is nothing more than an appeal to the true nature of an average human (male). The "problem" is not with the advertisers; they are simply doing their job in the most effective manner possible.

As a game developer, I find myself clicking on a lot of game ads...both for fun and "research". Out of all of the game ads I've seen, Evony fr. Civony are the only ads out of all of the game ads i have ever seen that I <i>haven't</i> clicked on. And I see them a lot.<p>Because I see them a lot, it makes me wonder if this means they are actually profitable? They've been running these ads net-wide for at least a year.

I spent a lot of time looking for something akin to "we made the last ad up". And I was shocked to find out that it is real.

Sex sells. Every marketer knows this.

This is hardly a new development, but it is a particularly ironic example.

"To be clear, these are real ads that were served on the internet."<p>And they were served by Google, I saw them a lot of TechCrunch.

Sorry, but apparently these ads managed to gain some extra attention. I don't believe the sex sells mantra (most wankers don't buy unrelated products) but a well known blog like this spreading them is not a bad thing in today's tight attention economy. Displaying sexist ads as "bad" is like beating someone up to show how bad it hurts.