However, if they don’t advertise in the media HERE (I’m in the UK), you shouldn’t be surprised that I’ve never seen them. And if they DO advertise here, they’ve obviously wasted their dollars as I’ve never ever seen one of their ads. These are all new to me. (And, trust me - I do have a television!) So I agree with the comment that you made on my blog we are just wasting our time.

(Oh, and incidentally - I still don’t see any Debian Linux, only Red Hat, which is a commercial distribution!)

Even in the “STERN” you feel the “Google touch” every once in a while. I told you, everyone pays for advertising. It’s just a matter of what and what you can afford. These giant corporations you talk about do use traditional advertising. AMD video commercials and one with the “google touch” plus an Linux
Yes, they ALL run traditional ads, in the MEDIA. And yes, a simple press release counts too.

Enjoy.

Mig

Mihaela, I run AdSense too. But my point was, to my knowledge Google, Debian Linux and AMD have never “advertised” in the accepted sense of the word, i.e. in newspapers, on television, in cinemas; in other words, in the mass media. I’ve never seen an advert for them there. I may have been lucky, but I’ve never seen any advertising for them on any web pages, other than the little “ads by Google” thing. Though I take your point that that’s “buzz”.

But as far as I know they haven’t splashed onto the really pervasive places where the vast majority of the public would see them. (If they have, let someone show me a scan from a magazine with a high circulation figure!). And I know they don’t need to pay for sponsored reviews. If they did, I’d not read them and go read something else.

Trust me.

I don’t disagree that you should be able to be paid to review a product or service, but if it’s so obvious, it becomes a turn off for me. When I see “this is a paid post”, I don’t read the article. And if I see too many on the same site or RSS feed, I simply unplug from it and don’t go back there. And, assuming I’m not the only one who does this, the reviewer gets their money, and loses their readership. I guess it’s about the blogger’s motivation. Is it about money or blogging?

Word of mouth means much more to me. Think of Linux, for example. And word of mouth is how all the successful so-called web 2.0 sites have managed. Heck, has Google even paid for advertising anywhere?

The problem I have is that even those reviews which have been paid for, yet are reviewed in a negative light, just make me feel a bit uncomfortable. Would the blogger have drawn the product to our attention at all if there was no payment changing hands? Most likely not.

I’m happy to write a good review of any software I use and feel can recommend to others, with no payment attached to those reviews. Likewise for any internet service I feel is useful.