The Four-eyed Journal » Advertising

Thanks to The Four-eyed Journal Sponsors

jhay — Sun, 31 May 2009 02:48:57 +0000

It’s the last day of May and looking back on the past months, a lot of things both good and tragic has happened to me, my life and this blog, but I’m thankful I’m still here and looking forward to better times ahead.

I wouldn’t have made it this far if it weren’t for the sponsors of this blog and so I’d give this space to thank them all.

Enthropia Philippines – They’ve been supporting us .com.ph bloggers for three years now and still continuing to do so. These guys are just awesome! Do check you their projects, which in itself are noteworthy as well; Boracay, Boracay Map, Boracay Weather, Top Blogs, use .com.ph & Open Street Map.

McDonald’s Online Delivery. Check out their new big-sized fries.*

Samsung Philippines. Samsung is giving away a free UltraTouch if you join their contest and vote for the best style icon.*

SEAir. With over Php100 Million in discounts, get as much as Php1,400 off per flight to any destinations of SEAir.*

LaptopLogic - a great resource to check out when you’re on the search for the right laptop that suits your needs and fits your budget.

*Sponsors via Yuga’s Red Sight Media Ad network

Another one on “Ako Mismo”

jhay — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:00:22 +0000

Fellow Bloggers’ Kapihan crew Bikoy beat me to posting what I’ve been meaning to say about this new campaign that has been making the rounds among blogs and making quite an impression during the Pacquiao vs Hatton match; “Ako Mismo.”

The TV ad was catchy and well done, it was packed with celebrities the youth of today would not think twice to listen to, or watch on TV at least. Heck, even the legendary Ely Beundia is in it.

Allow me to reiterate, borrow and short of plagiarize what Bikoy has said, which I couldn’t have said any better:

I don’t wish to offend anyone. I have friends from many advocacy campaigns of this type. But let me explain my reservations whenever I’m invited into these campaigns. My problem with “Ako Mismo” and the dozens of other “I” campaigns that have been initiated (and have flopped) these past years, is that it fosters an illusion that mundane individual efforts to do good, and nothing more, is enough to change society. These are well meaning campaigns, but I don’t think they actually call for positive action or call for change. These are calls for neutral action–to do things we’re supposed to be doing anyway.

What I think is dangerous about campaigning for this is that it neutralizes a person’s capacity to do more than what one is supposed to do in the first place. It’s like, fine, just pay your taxes, smile at people, sweep your backyard, do things within your comfort zone and that’s enough to change society. It’s not. Let us not justify the laziness or the inability of the middle class to get out of their comfort zone to change society.

These are the types of campaigns, believe it or not, that people in power or in government and big businesses employ to maintain the status quo, simply because doing ’simple everyday good things’ do just that and nothing more. It effectively cloaks their part in the equation as to why we are where we sadly are. It makes you forget their role in sustaining the rotten order of society. It makes you think of questioning their policies or their authority as simple pagrereklamo. And worse, it demonizes those who do that. “Forget about the corruption and the repression we commit, just do your own little nice things!” And even worse, it blames the individual Filipino for all the problems he is experiencing!

Exactly! This is the classic “divide-and-conquer” tactics of the ruling class. Since our individual selves are to blame for the so-called problems of the country, we, in our individual capacity can and should fix this.

Again, why not “we” or “tayo”? Bikoy once more answers this eloquently;

Its always about the individual. It’s never about the collective. It’s never the “We”. Collective action is too dangerous for the status quo. It’s all about pacifying the individual to be content with the things he already does and to buy a dog tag, a t-shirt, or a bracelet to show it off.

What’s really dangerous about the “ako mismo” ideology is that the individual is left to blame himself for the troubles this country has. And since he blames himself, he takes on efforts to change himself and only himself. But I’m telling you, your entire life could be spent on trying to change yourself, but the troubles are still there because everyone else around you has not changed. My college mentor once said it beautifully,

“Mamamatay ka na siguro, hindi mo pa nababago ang sarili mo. Kaya paano mo mababago ang lipunan kung hihintayin mo munang mabago ang sarili mo?”

Since when did social change became a one-man thing? Was Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio alone when they worked to free the Philippines from tyranny and suffering? Did the brave Filipinos made individually-unique pledges when they sign-up for the Katipunan? Heck, even Jesus took on twelve disciples to carry out his mission and ministry. Kung gusto natin ng pagbabago, magsama-sama tayo, hindi lang ako o ikaw, TAYO.

It’s election season

With the election season shifting to full gear, I cannot help but be suspicious of this campaign, particularly its website. When I visited the site to explore it last Sunday, it required me to register first, before I was allowed to check out all the pages and sections.

The registration asked for my real name, home address, e-mail address and telephone numbers. A confirmation e-mail is even required to activate your account and verify your email address at the same time.

From a PR perspective, every sign-up is another individual in my database of potential contacts/targets for a campaign to help a candidate, party or group.

The many stars and high-profile individuals who were featured in the TV ad hint that the folks behind this campaign have deep pockets. Even if the celebrities volunteered, the fact that the TV ads were shown during Pacquiao vs Hatton match in which airtime cost millions, it simply validates my earlier hunch.

Lastly, since reports have said that Edu Manzano had launched this campaign last month, I cannot help but get even more suspicious of this one.

Addendum:

As I’ve commented on Sir Martin Perez‘ (a fellow BK Crew) blog, I thought for a while that he may have just started another big thing in PISAY, with a huge budget too! Because of all the stars and the TV ad spot during the Pacquiao match, but it was too good to be true. All because his blog’s name is “Ako Mismo” and has used this long before this campaign hit the television airwaves. Just like me, he too is bewildered by this.

McDonald’s “First Love” TV commercial feat “Ang Huling El Bimbo”

jhay — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 05:47:57 +0000

You got to hand it to McDonald’s, they certainly know how to market their products straight into popular Pinoy consciousness. Their latest TV ad which features that timeless Eraserheads song “Ang Huling El Bimbo” has been the talk of town for weeks now.

I may not be a complete McDonald’s fan, but they sure got me hooked with this cute and heart-warming ad. Just like their first one which featured another Pilipino song “Kanlungan” by Buklod of which Noel Cabangon was part of.

I wonder how local brand Jollibee will respond?

The end for Google AdSense Referrals

jhay — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:10:24 +0000

Just received an email from the Google AdSense team announcing that they’re “retiring the Google AdSense Referrals program” by the end of August 2008.

We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August.

They’ve also advised users to switch to either the Google Affiliate Network (part of DoubleClick which they acquired in April 2007) or the regular AdSense for content ads. They’ve also recommended to remove the referral codes and start saving referral reports for future references.

Perhaps this is a ‘natural death’ since it’s so easy to sign-up for Google AdWords and AdSense for years now. Or it’s part of Google’s grand plan to roll out its new services based off on DoubleClick’s own, which they acquired last year.

I’ve never had much success with AdSense referrals because I never really fancied using the service plus the design of their referral ads are not that much appealing or easy to integrate into the WP themes I’ve used over the years. Oh well, I know the services has done good to other bloggers.

Read the full announcement over at the Google AdSense blog.

Blog updates 2.08: WordPress security upgrade and Openads

jhay — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:50:07 +0000

It’s been a long while since I posted a blog update but it’s never too late to post one every once in a while.

This blog, along with all the blogs under this domain have just been upgraded to WordPress 2.3.3 (a marathon upgrade session last night!) in order to address the security issue raised by the WP guys. Thus here is the customary ~~repitition~~ quote from the WP blog about this security upgrade:

WordPress 2.3.3 is an urgent security release. If you have registration enabled a flaw was found in the XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow a user to edit posts of other users on that blog.

If memory serves me correct, this is one of the quickest succession of WP upgrades in years. It’s not that WP 2.3 is less stable or buggier than the previous versions, it’s just that these new bugs or issues come up along the way and are found thanks to the dedicated WP community who has made it their mission and passion to continually improve WordPress. Kudos to all of them!

A treat for future sponsors

Last Monday, I installed Openads, that free, open-source and popular ad server package from Openads organization. I’ve decided to install this ad server to run the existing and future ads on this blog except for the current text link ads scattered throughout this site. (And is what’s Google punishing me for T.T)

The benefits:

More reliable metrics about ad performance for my advertisers – advertisers love metrics, with Openads I’ll satisfy their needs to know almost every detail of their ads’ performance on this blog.
A centralized method of managing ads on this blog – Instead of uploading ad banners in my uploads folder then doing some barebones html/php code for it to be displayed on my blog, Openads will do most of the dirty jobs for me and offer a lot more control over the ads.
Ads not dependent on the kind of WP theme I’m using or going to use – Changing themes has become a sort of habit for me, it gives a fresh reboot to my blog, readers and a lot of other good things and so I don’t want to hindered in switching themes just because the current ads will loose their optimization in the next theme reboot.

Hopefully, with this new feature, advertisers would be encouraged more to buy ad space on this blog. Besides, I’ll always throw in some bonuses just to sweeten the deal and make advertising on this blog more worth the buck. If you’re curious as to what those bonuses are, you’ll have to advertise on this blog first. It’s negotiable and you can start the ball rolling here.

Behind the scenes cleanup

The other latest updates or changes to this blog are internal. I removed the plugins I do not use or will not use in the next 6 months or so. The WP database has also been checked for errors, cleaned up and optimized via phpMyAdmin.

SEO and optimization

This is the second or third post where you’d notice that the permalink is quite different from the post’s actual title. It’s because I’ve been using the Post Slug feature to shorten my permalinks and pack them with more relevant keywords for greater SEO benefits. A simple yet powerful SEO tool built right into WordPress.

To speed the load times of this blog and its pages, I’m interested in installing PHP Speedy, a script automatically speeds up download time of your pages by compressing all the files in one go instead of pulling the individual elements separately. The result is a reduction in the number of HTTP requests. (Thanks to Yuga for the heads up) Of course, I’ll have to check with my current host to see if they’re servers will be fine with this script. Any one else who’s interested or who has already tried this script?

That’s all for now. More on how things will pan out in my next blog update post.