Snozberry

I just read this article in the NYTimes about Quigo, an upstart challenger in the advertisement placement industry. After reading the article, I couldn't help but thinking that I actually side with Google and Yahoo on this one.

You're an advertiser. You list an ad and it appears on beefstew.net and ESPN.com. Person A visits beefstew.net and clicks your ad. Person B visits ESPN.com and clicks your ad. Why would you, as an advertiser, value Person B's click more than that of Person A? Two people clicked your ad, presumably because each was interested in it. Why is the person who clicked off of ESPN.com more valuable than beefstew.net? I think that these people are mixing up their decades - an ad on ESPN is only more valuable because it receives more views than an ad on beefstew.net. But if you're paying per click, why do you care where that click came from? The job of Google and Yahoo is to place your ad on pages that yield the highest number of clicks, and therefore the most revenue for them (since you're only paying per click, not "impression"). This whole article seems to be about nothing.