The Crusade Against ODE Advertising
It turns out that this is becoming a personal folly that the rest of you get to witness.
Previously, I noted the odd advertising choices on the Ol’ Dirty’s website.
Well, there’s more, and it hasn’t gotten any less weird. An image for your consumption:
My apologies for the size, I had to do it in paint and photobucket…a frustrating task.
Look, I realize that the Emerald is out to make money, they are a business of sorts. My only issue with the ongoing persecution of their advertisements is the lack of sensible marketing behind it.
Three different ads for lawyers based in Portland? Really? Because that’s going to help anyone who gets in trouble in Eugene, especially students.
They got rid of the sex toys advertisement which is somewhat disappointing. The mortgage refininancing is still there which is a nice touch, you know for all those homes that I’m buying.
The only two that make any sense are the Debt consolidation and Tote bags links. Although the tote bags one is pushing it. I looked at the site, they sell Safeway bags with your name on it. Because when I’m shopping for food at the local Safeway what I really need isn’t a generic Safeway brand bag but a bag with my name on it. It really sends the message that I care about…something.
My favorite ad though was the one for the Adult Shop in yesterday’s print ODE. Apparently, Sasha Grey and Jesse Jane will be in Salem this weekend, in case you happen to like those particular porn stars.
Not quite as good as the Ron Jeremy visit my freshmen year.
[Ed. Note: The writer was misinformed. Sasha Grey and Jesse Jane will be appearing in Salem on April 4th, not this weekend. Apparently, it will be from 7pm to 10 pm at 2410 Mission St. SE. Salem, Or. We are sorry for the misinformation.}
My favorite was always “Mortgage Refinancing,” because we all know how many college kids need that. I mean, the adjustable rate on my apartment is just killing me! Perhaps that and the personalized tote bags cater to our faculty readership? God knows.
(Do we have a faculty readership?)*
I think those are actually Text Link Ads which are more profitable than AdSense, but ethically questionable.
I read about Sasha Gray in Rolling Stones. She is going to be in some main stream (non-porn) movie, can’t recall the title though.
Upon reading about her I used the internet to examine her filmography. She isn’t much of an actress but she makes up for it with vigor, energy and a filthy mouth.
In other news the Emerald and other bigmedia dum dums have been AWOL this week. The Duckstore has just made a quiet real estate deal that the usual suspects refuse to report on. Perhaps you know someone that can look into this. For years the Duckstore has owned a parcel just South from the new federal courthouse/”green” deathstar facility. A “vibrant” cannery district has been the goal of Eugene city planners in the area around the courthouse for years. This faerie tale planning concept has failed to emerge and instead we have a area similiar to the disputed terrain near Pakistan. The Duckstore has trade their parcel by the courthouse to the entity known as the “G group”. The G group seems to own about 20% of the properties in Eugene. The G stands for Guistina-a family who give many political donations and in the past have been involved with the infamous and mysterious UO Foundation. I have no problem with the G group but this trade is interesting. Now the Duckstore owns several of the stores next to their building. Properties like Cafe Siena, China Blue, Blue Heron Bikes, McKenzie Outfitters are now located there. From what I hear the China Blue space may be part of the Duckstore “footprint” before long. What will the Duckstore do with that space ? Not books I am sure. Overpriced O branded junk is likely or something related to sports that Paris Hilton would surely enjoy. The time is now to put pressure on the Duckstore to establish a high end cigarette smoking indoor/ outdoor plaza there. This new high end smokers concentration camp will be needed because the head of the faculty senate (with his Nike endowment) is on the march with his plan to eradicate smokers from campus. The smoking lounge bit is a joke but the real estate trade is not. When bigmedia is asleep at the wheel what is a trouble causing person to do besides pitch the story to the Commentator ?
Scott:
You do realize that the ads are automatically generated by whomever College Publisher contracts with, and probably just chooses ads based by geographic proximity to the Emerald’s IP address, right?
Vincent: I figure as much. I get some personal satisfaction from pointing out these strange ads. Mostly.
I am faculty readership.
Sadly, I don’t get paid enough to buy a (nice) house…although, I might be able to soon (outside of Detroit even!) : )
I got a free tote bag from World Market once…I think it’s the only one I’ll ever need.
I’m getting the impression that you aren’t from this area. This city relies pretty heavily on Portland for services not provided in Lane county. An entire two thirds of the state lives in the Portland area. Ikea puts full page ads in the emerald and those didn’t warrant a blog posting. Slow news day I guess.
Which services in that ad aren’t in Lane County?
Also, what is the “Portland area” to you? Because if you’re going to say that 2/3 of the state lives there, you must be including Salem and its suburbs as well, or basically the entire central-to-northern Willamette Valley AND the I-84 corridor.
Oregon’s population is a little over 3.5 million.
Portland’s population is a little over 1/7 of that.
Well, most people would include the Portland metro area, which has over 2,000,000 people.
Also, is it just me or is the flag of the city of Portland kind of swastika-esque?
Not that it matters, but only 1.5 million of the people in the PMA live in Oregon. That’s roughtly 42-43% of the state population.
2/3 of the OR population was just….well, it seemed off.
Again, it’s a nit-picky point. So, I’ll stop. : )
And yes to the swastika-flag.
(I wonder how long it will take for someone to pop in and remind us of how long the OR Constitution didn’t like non-whites)
Not so much Swastika-esque as Swastik-ish, but I see the connection.
Chris:
There’s a very interesting history behind Oregon’s exclusion laws, actually. I think I talked about it a little bit a few months ago on the thread about Diego Hernandez’s insinuation that Deady Hall should have its name changed.
Chris:
By the way, Jake Bartruff and I are going down to Rennie’s at 5. Why don’t you come?
I’ll try to drop in for a drink! Speaking finals at 4 though…hopefully people will do well.
What was Diego’s complaint about Deady? I wikipedia’d him, and couldn’t find anything that Diego wouldn’t like…except he was white, probably had some money, was influential, white…did I mention that?
Diego didn’t like that we had a building named after a man who was a known racist, or something like that. I’m not sure if Deady was racist or not.
Also, Diego had some strange ideas about how the University should honor MLK, mostly by wasting ridiculous amounts of money for overly large, unnecessary celebrations.
Diego’s argument went like this:
Money spent = Diversity rent
Well, it would be his money that he would be spending, since is probably on some diversity building scholarship. You know…going to school for free…hypocritically spending other people’s money
I thought Diego’s article was really cute. In a time of economic crisis, it’s definitely a good idea to spend money changing countless signs, brochures, and signs. He may have been dead for over a hundred years, but by god he was a RACIST.
*changing the text in countless signs, publications, and textbooks
Should the civil war be renamed the “war of southern reaction to north aggression” and not the “civil war” because the north was just as racist as the south? If it weren’t for people like Matthew Deady, Joseph Lane, John Johnson (Johnson Hall), we’d be living in dugouts being chased around by indians.
Diego Hernandez, plainly, is a shitstain on the fabric of society. Where’s our stain remover?
I think it would be fun to, for once, judge our current lifestyle(s) by past ideas and attitudes. What would Genghis Khan think of diversity? For example.
Sorry the ads aren’t up to your standards, but I don’t think newspapers are exactly in the business of picking and choosing which ads to host on their web sites right now.
Just like their BS advertising…check out this Bull Crap article from the ODE. “Shift” in leadership – call it like it is UO, Kevin Williams is being FIRED!!!
Reproducing Emerald articles in their entirety on our blog is annoying. -ed.
my apologies to the readers! I was just fumed at the buy into the BS reporting by the ODE about the firing of Kevin Williams I blended it into their crappy ass advertising practices. Won’t happen again- Keyser