[wordup] How to lose money with art

[Adam Shand]

This really cool.  Google has become such a powerful force on the Net
that people are finding all sorts of things to do with it.  From
GoogleWhacking to, now, poetry.

I think Google has done an amazing job of dealing with what many would
consider abuse in a sensible and responsible way.

This page didn't translate to text all that well so you should probably
check out the site directly.

Adam.

From: http://www.iterature.com/adwords/

The Google AdWords Happening
Christophe Bruno, April 2002

 http://www.unbehagen.com
 http://www.iterature.com

How to lose money with your art ?

At the beginning of April, a debate took place on rhizome.org mailing
list, about how to earn money with net art. It suggested to me an answer
to an easier problem : how to spend money with my art (if you understand
everything on how to spend money, you should in principle understand
also how to earn money, because of conservation laws...)

I decided to launch a happening on the web, consisting in a poetry
advertisement campaign on Google AdWords . I opened an account for $5
and began to buy some keywords. For each keyword you can write a little
ad and, instead of the usual ad, I decided to write little "poems",
non-sensical or funny or a bit provocative.

I began with the keyword "symptom". The first ad I wrote was :

  Words aren't free anymore
  bicornuate-bicervical uterus
  one-eyed hemi-vagina
  www.unbehagen.com

As soon as the campaign was launched, I was able to see the results.
Every time somebody was looking for the word "symptom" in Google, they
could see my ad in the top right corner of the page.

My first satisfaction occured when somebody who had typed "hemorroid
symptom" on Google arrived on my website, after having clicked on my ad.

I decided to explore this new world and to launch several campaigns.
Each of them was to be a targeted poetic happening of a new kind.
How 12,000 people saw my "poems" in 24 hours and how I was censored by
Google

In 24 hours, I launched the following campaigns, with the keywords
"symptom", "dream", "mary", "money".

Words aren't free anymore
bicornuate-bicervical uterus
one-eyed hemi-vagina
www.unbehagen.com

Keyword Clicks Impr. CTR Avg. CPC Cost
symptom 16 5517 0.3% $0.05 $0.8
Follow your dreams
Did I just urinate ?
Directly into the wind
www.unbehagen.com

Keyword Clicks Impr. CTR Avg. CPC Cost
dream 14 2837 0.4% $0.05 $0.70
mary !!!
I love you
come back
john

Keyword Clicks Impr. CTR Avg. CPC Cost
mary 31 2682 1.1% $0.06 $1.56
don't ever do that again
aaargh !
are you mad ?
ooops !!!

Keyword Clicks Impr. CTR Avg. CPC Cost
money 5 837 0.5% $0.05 $0.25

Impr. means the number of times the ad is shown on a page

CTR is the Click-Trough Rate. Here, ad number three got the best rate of
click.

Avg CPC is the average Cost-Per-Click

Cost is the cost of the campaign : every time somebody clicks on your
ad, you pay $0.05

During the fourth campaign, I kept receiving these emails from Google :

"We believe that the content of your ad does not accurately reflect the
content of your website. We suggest that you edit your ad text to
precisely indicate the nature of the products you offer. This will help
to create a more effective campaign and to increase your conversion
rate. We also recommend that you insert your specific keywords into the
first line of your ad, as this tends to attract viewers to your website"

Then I got a last email :

"Hello.
I am the automated performance monitor for Google AdWords Select. My job
is to keep average clickthrough rates at a high level, so that users can
consistently count on AdWords ads to help them find products and
services.

The last 1,000 ad impressions I served to your campaign(s) received
fewer than five clicks. When I see results like this, I significantly
reduce the rate at which I show the ads so you can make changes to
improve performance.
( ... )
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Automated Performance Monitor"


My ads were then Disapproved and my campaigns were suspended.

I was quite disappointed : I had just started to warm up.

My longer term objectives in doing this were as follows :
1) launching a large scale series of poetry happenings on the web
2) targetting very precisely the happenings
3) observing the statistical results
4) improving the stats on my website

As you can see, very few people came on my site. But the main result was
here : 12,000 people had seen my happening. In addition, I like
imagining that somebody looking for something is suddenly projected into
a completely different area. You look for "virgin Mary" and you end up
on a site about symptoms and net art !

The price of words : towards a generalized semantic capitalism

One of the most interesting fact is that we have reached a situation in
which any word of any language has its price, fluctuating according to
the laws of the market.

Words already had some kind of exchange value, but we hardly realized it
: if I insult somebody, I will get something in return, such as a punch
in my face for instance. But now there is no doubt anymore. The word
"sex" is worth $3,837, the word "art" $410, "net art" is only $0.05
(prices on the 11 of April 2002). Prices are determined according to the
number of search requests and an average Cost-Per-Click.

At first sight, there may be something healthy in the fact that words
may have a price. If you know you have to pay, you are more careful when
you have something to say. And if you see that every person who clicks
on your link, makes you lose 0.05$ (as it is the case in the Google
system), you think twice before writing your sentence.

But of course there is another side to this story and I have the
intuition that this could be a big event in the history of mankind.
There aren't many events like that : the invention of writing is one of
them for instance. Right now, we may not realize the importance of this
fact because the web is not such a big part of our existence. But
imagine the day when a search engine will rule the whole textual content
of the web, in which the memory of mankind will be stored.Think of the
power in their hands.

Google's laws

Google has created an imensely powerful and fascinating tool. The main
rules of this new world are not ethic rules. As you can read in the
emails I received, my happening has been censored by Google not for
moral reasons but for economic ones. You are actually allowed to write
sexual content but this content has to be in accordance with the content
of the website. This is a guarantee for Google that their ad system is
not depreciated. They need these rules in order to remain competitive.

Click here if you want to know more about all these rules.

>From the economic point of view, they are probably necessary rules, at
least in the short term. From a more general point of view, it seems to
me that we are faced with the emergence of a new era in which censorship
totally unveils its economic side, as was first noticed by Karl Marx
about history and by Sigmund Freud about the unconscious.

I understand quite well why they didn't let me do what I wanted to do.
But I don't agree with the reasons why I was censored. I believe that
the censorship rules of Google are not in accordance with the power and
the importance of the tool they have created. Such a tool should be used
more freely and should be self-regulated. Actually I cannot say what
would be the real interest of Google in this story (a part from the
short term interest). Obviously they don't want to take risks. We'll see
what will happen in the near future.

Prices of some words
Traffic Estimator *
Keyword Clicks /
Day Average
Cost-Per-Click Cost /
Day
anal 390.0 $0.83 $319.90
art 800.0 $0.52 $409.67
bin laden 250.0 $0.10 $24.37
britney spears 490.0 $0.30 $144.20
capitalism 30.0 $0.10 $2.74
communism 2.1 $0.16 $0.33
death 92.0 $0.47 $42.66
dream 390.0 $0.17 $63.07
free 5700.0 $1.33 $7,569.23
freedom 5.1 $0.37 $1.88
gay 2200.0 $1.02 $2,239.56
hemorroid 0.5 $0.16 $0.08
language 650.0 $0.37 $237.30
lesbian 740.0 $0.80 $584.62
love 730.0 $1.74 $1,264.72
mankind 8.0 $0.59 $4.70
money 350.0 $0.81 $281.46
net art 0.9 $0.05 $0.05
self 80.0 $0.85 $67.72
sex 7500.0 $0.52 $3,836.79
suicide 18.0 $0.27 $4.72
symptom 23.0 $0.30 $6.83
Overall 20449.6 $0.84 $17,106.49

 
Prices of some famous people
Traffic Estimator *
Keyword Clicks /
Day Average
Cost-Per-Click Cost /
Day
bruno 96.0 $0.06 $5.50
einstein 27.0 $0.18 $4.62
etoy 0.6 $0.05 $0.03
freud 35.0 $0.09 $3.13
god 40.0 $0.27 $10.46
grancher 0.3 $0.05 $0.02
jesus 160.0 $0.16 $25.59
jimpunk 0.1 $0.05 $0.01
jodi 32.0 $0.07 $2.08
cosic 0.6 $0.05 $0.03
lacan 8.0 $0.07 $0.53
manetas 0.2 $0.05 $0.01
marx 24.0 $0.10 $2.36
mouchette 0.2 $0.05 $0.01
napier 17.0 $0.13 $2.15
pavu < 0.1 $0.05 $0.00
picasso 280.0 $0.12 $32.61
randolph 19.0 $0.05 $0.95
shulgin 0.8 $0.05 $0.04
warhol 150.0 $0.11 $15.95
witten 14.0 $0.12 $1.56

If you are not in this list, send me an email and if I have some time
left I will add your name and your price (my AdWord account is still
active and I can compute the price of any word)

Last minute
Manifesta for Sal Randolph
Plining for pavu.com

Keyword Clicks /
Day Average
Cost-Per-Click Cost /
Day
manifesta 0.2 $0.05 $0.01
plining < 0.1 $0.05 $0.00