Friday, December 16, 2005

Pot? Kettle. Kettle? Pot.

For those of you who read media gossip site Gawker.com, the above is a familiar sight. It’s a business-to-business banner ad on Gawker, a consumer site, advertising the Gawker advertising opportunity. Yes, Gawker is telling their own readers, the readership that makes their editors and businessfolk money, that they are “FOR SALE.” Now, there are two positives to this strategy. One, it’s free premium ad space. Two, many of the people who make ad space purchase decisions also read Gawker. The two negatives? One, despite calling its readers “brilliant”, “skinny”, etc. as the first panel of the above banner says, the END result is that Gawker is calling its readers, straight to their faces, Whores, with Gawker serving as pimp. Two, Gawker is letting us know that they are, in fact, BIGGER Media Whores than everybody and anybody their editors call Media Whores—which is pretty much everybody and anybody. But, is this second point really a negative? I don't think so.
Now excuse me, I’ve got to get back to gently flicking my tongue along the underside of a client’s Nutsack.

12 Comments:

Blogger T.A.N. said...

I keep lobbying for the last guy in the series of bodies to get some melanin added. Maybe 1 out of 6 is a stretch?


"on the 2nd evil day of christmas my CR gave to me ..."

10:41 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Were they salty or dry-roasted?

11:52 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If The Onion ran this banner, everyone would be calling them fucking brilliant.

1:20 PM  
Blogger Max said...

Seriously 'ranter. I can't stop laughing. *wiping tears*

You? Rule.

6:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

As those of me who do read Gawker, I'm shocked -- shocked! -- that the banner ad I've seen for months means exactly what I thought it did! It's almost as bad as the New Yorker swapping its regular ads for Target ads when I wasn't looking.

1:28 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

...keep callin' em like you see em...

(weird thing is, i wouldn't know about you w/out them)

burn them bridges

-west coast

1:47 AM  
Blogger copyranter said...

Mo & Mike; this may come as a surprise to you, but here's the facts (I have industry info):

•the average gawker reader visits once, one time only, per week.
•a vast majority of their readers don't blog, don't read blogs, and don't really know what a blog is.

thanks for reading.

9:07 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow. I must be a lame. I read Gawker like 5 times a day...Geekout!

10:31 PM  
Blogger Nick Douglas said...

Once a week? Imagine, then, how many people their 158k daily visits represent. That is POWER.

2:32 PM  
Blogger copyranter said...

no doubt, mr. douglas. and, their average reader is quite well off, and very well educated...and it's split perfectly 50/50 men/women. I very much applaud their business effort and wish more stuck-in-the-retard-mud marketers would understand their power.

I just thought this banner was not a smart move. of course media people understand why it's there. But imagine Matt Lauer pausing and turning to camera 2 and saying: "and by the way, remedy advertisers, before I tear Tom Cruise a new one, right here would be a good time to run your 30 sec spot because our viewers are kinda oldish and they're pretty susceptible to health come-ons."

4:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I cringe that someone called Copyranter doesn't know better than to use a qualifier with "unique."

7:25 PM  
Blogger copyranter said...

bacon, I've edited my post, just for you.

forgive me?

7:56 PM  

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