text:
Don Marti
Bonus links and a point of order
Interested in the Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful material, and looking for next steps for making web ads work better for sites and brands? Sure you are.
New blog in progress: blog.aloodo.org. This is about small changes that site and brands can do to get better web ads. A few simple rules...
No calls for collective action. That's what the adtech people are trying to do on fraud, and it's not working.
No long-term projects. The "backlog" never gets done. Web sites have to work at the speed of
git push, not the speed of cheese tweets. Every to-do item on blog.aloodo.com will be as simple as adding a social button widget to a page template, or simpler.
No appeals to
privacy. Privacy is an important philosophical concept, which reasonable people disagree on, and which we do not have time for. We can fix obvious bugs without discovering the meaning of a complicated word.
No assumptions that users are changing. We ignore surveillance marketing people when they say that
Consumers want to connect and share with their beloved brands,and we need to ignore
Users are becoming concerned about PII and autonomyjust as much.
Work with norms and laws, don't change them. The niche for brogrammers doing creepy and/or illegal stuff in order to start a business is filled. More than filled.
Bonus links
Timothy B Lee: How to be better at PR
Mark Duffy: Copyranter: Digital is destroying all creativity
BOB HOFFMAN: Agencies Cheating Clients, Says Former Mediacom CEO. No Shit, Says Me.
Tales of a Developer Advocate: Detecting injected content from third-parties on your site
Francis: The advert wars
Darren Herman: Mozilla's mission in the context of digital advertising
jm: Epsilon Interactive breach the Fukushima of the Email Industry (CAUCE)
Warc: Brands still look to print
Kurt Wagner: Snapchat's Discover Publishers Are Asking for Big Ad Rates — And They're Getting Them
Sell! Sell!: Building Real Brands: The Difference Between Building A House, And Painting A Picture Of A House.
Monica Chew: How do I turn on Tracking Protection? Let me count the ways.
Evan Soltas: The Rent Hypothesis
Sell! Sell!: Advertising Is Losing Maverick Thinking - What's The Solution?
Alexandra Bruell: Media-Agency Kickbacks. Yes, They're Real. (via The Ad Contrarian)
Jeff Kagan: Google Glass Should Stay Gone
Samuel Gibbs: Facebook 'tracks all visitors, breaching EU law'
djbriane: Meerkat Vs Periscope: Tech journalist is a sickly mess | BGR
Bruce Schneier: Survey of Americans' Privacy Habits Post-Snowden
Monica Chew: Two Short Stories about Tracking Protection
Joseph Lichterman: The Economist's Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of a model based on advertising
Mike Proulx: There Is No More Social Media -- Just Advertising
Maciej Zawadziński, ClearCode: How the U.N.'s new privacy move will shake up the adtech industry
BOB HOFFMAN: How Do You Untrain A Generation?
Todd Garland: Context is Everything: How to Counter AdBlock
Jason Kint: Debunked: Five Excuses for Dismissing Do Not Track
Adotas: Proximity Networking: Can You Buy Me Now?
Adotas: Celtra offers "Programmatic Creative" for brands and agencies to better target customers
Alex Kantrowitz: Brands Are Swiftly Taking Automated Digital Ad Buying Operations In-House
Digg Top Stories: How Click Farms Have Inflated Social Media Currency
Mona Patel: When Big Data Becomes More Valuable Than Your Products/Services
Ed: Whys and Hows of Suggested Tiles
JWZ: Wherein I ridicule Facebook some more, then collaborate with the Panopticon
Media Briefing TheMediaBriefing Analysis: Who are the fraudsters costing the ad industry billions? (via blog.aloodo.org)
Jordan Weissmann: One of Today's Pulitzer Prize Winners Left Journalism Because It Couldn't Pay His Rent. Now He's in PR. (via Digiday)
Freddie: the supervillain's guide to saving the internet
Garett Sloane: Here's How Europe Is Stifling the Ad Business for Google, Facebook and Others (via Technology & Marketing Law Blog) (via Technology & Marketing Law Blog)
Gregory Raifman: How the Advertising Industry Can Get Rid of 'Bad Ads'
MediaPost | MediaDailyNews: Google Names Ad Networks Responsible For Ad Injectors
Google Security PR: New Research: The Ad Injection Economy
Don Marti: Why adtech fraud would make the worst heist movie ever (had to put one from the new blog in here, right?)Posted Sun 10 May 2015 08:07:31 AM PDT
Why ad blockers don't have to do content marketing
auf Deutsch: Warum Werbeblocker nicht haben, um Content-Vermarktung zu tun (translated by Valeria Aleksandrova)
From the Condé Nast "User Agreement & Privacy Policy" page:
The use of Tracking Technologies by third parties is subject to their own privacy policies, not this Privacy Policy, and we have no responsibility or liability in connection therewith. If you do not want the services that Tracking Technologies provide, you may be able to opt-out by visiting http://www.aboutads.info.
Sounds like checking into a hotel and getting this...
Feeding on guests by third-party insects in guest rooms is subject to their own policies, and we have no responsibility or liability in connection therewith. If you wish to opt out of feeding by third party insects, here is the card of a really lousy exterminator we know, who only gets some of them but that's your problem.
Ad blockers don't have to do content marketing, because publishers are doing it for them.
But there's a way for publishers to opt out of the whole tracking vs. blocking race to the bottom, and neither surveillance marketers nor conventional ad blockers have it. More: Ad blocking, bullshit and a point of orderPosted Sun 19 Apr 2015 06:49:00 AM PDT
The end of Please Turn Off Your Ad Blocker
More news from the ongoing malvertising outbreak.
Laurie Sullivan: Google DoubleClick Network Hit With More Malvertising.
maartenvdantzig: Liveblog: Malvertising from Google advertisements via possibly compromised reseller
Malwarebytes: Booby-trapped Hugo Boss Advert Spreads Cryptowall Ransomware
These aren't skeevy ads on low-reputation pirate sites. These attacks are coming in on big-budget sites such as AOL's Huffington Post, and included in fake ads for real brands such as Hugo Boss. They're using A-list adtech companies. Read the articles. Nasty stuff. The ongoing web ad fraud problem is hitting users now, not just advertisers.
So far the response from the ad networks has been a few whacks at the problem accounts. So I can make the safest kind of prediction: someone made money doing something not very risky, not much has changed, so they'll do it again and others will copy them. Want to bet against me?
Users already trust web ads less than any other ad medium. Malvertising takes a form of advertising that's a bad deal for the user and makes it worse. (If sewer rats are coming out of the commode, users are going to put a brick on the lid. If the rats have rabies, make that two bricks.)
The more malvertising that comes along, the more that the "please turn off your ad blocker" message on web sites is going to look not just silly, but irresponsible or just plain scary. "Turn off your ad blocker" sounds like the web version of "If you can't open lottery-winner-wire-transfer.zip, turn off your antivirus."
Time to rewrite the "turn off your ad blocker" messages and talk about a sensible alternative. Instead of running a general ad blocker (and encouraging the "acceptable ads" racket) or running entirely unprotected, the hard part is just starting: how to educate users about third-party content protection that works for everyone: users, sites, and responsible advertisers.
Bonus links
Sherwin Siy: IP Rights Aren't a License to Kill Devices (And No, Fine Print Doesn't Make It OK)
Planet Debian: Joey Hess: a programmable alarm clock using systemd
Calvin Spealman: The Curl Pipe
@feedly: Why we retired the feedly URL shortener
James Gingell: Where Did Soul-Sucking Office-Speak Come From?
Glyn Moody: China Turns From 'Pirate' Nation To Giant Patent Troll
Joe Wein: Disclaimers by spammers
SMBlog -- Steve Bellovin's Blog: If it Doesn't Exist, it Can't be Abused
phobos: Partnering with Mozilla
Eryn Paul: Why Germans Work Fewer Hours But Produce More: A Study In Culture
The Tech Block: The tech worker shortage doesn't really exist
Heidi Moore: The readers we can't friend
Lary Wallace: Why Stoicism is one of the best mind-hacks ever devised
Steven Sinofsky: Why Remote Engineering Is So Difficult!?#@%
SysAdmin1138: Application firewalls for your phonePosted Sat 18 Apr 2015 07:57:06 AM PDT
It's not about freedom
Doc Searls writes:
We hold as self-evident that personal agency and independence matter utterly, that free customers are more valuable than captive ones, that personal data belongs more to persons themselves than to those gathering it, that conscious signaling of intent by individuals is more valuable than the inferential kind that can only be guessed at, that spying on people when they don't know about it or like it is wrong, and so on.
I'm going to agree with Doc that these are all good and important principles.
But then I'm going to totally ignore them.
Yes, it is "self-evident" that it's important to behave as a decent human being in online interactions, and in marketing projects. (Complexity dilutes understanding of a system but not moral responsibility for participating in a system. Just because you don't understand how your marketing budget gets diverted to fraud does not mean that you aren't ultimately responsible when you end up funding malware and scams.) Thinking about user rights is important. 30 years ago, Richard Stallman released the GNU Manifesto, which got people thinking about the ethical aspects of software licensing, and we need that kind of work about information in markets, too.
But that's not what I'm on about here. Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful is just background reading for a marketing meeting. And I've been to enough marketing meetings to know that, no matter how rat-holed and digressed the discussion gets, Freedom is never on the agenda.
So I'm going to totally ignore the Freedom side of discussing the targeted ad problem. You don't have to worry about some marketing person clicking through to this site and saying, WTF is this freedom woo-woo? This site is all pure, unadulterated, 100% marketing-meeting-compatible business material, with some impressive-looking citations to Economics papers to give it some class.
Big Data proponents like to talk about "co-creating value," so let's apply that expression to advertising. The advertiser offers signal, and the reader offers attention. The value is in the exchange. Here's the point that we need to pick up on, and the point that ad blocker stats are shoving in our face until we get it. When one side's ability to offer value goes away—when a targeted ad ceases to carry signal and becomes just a windshield flyer—there's no incentive for the other side to participate in the exchange. Freedom or no freedom. Homo economicus himself would run a spam filter, or hang up on a cold call, or block targeted ads.
The big problem for web sites now is to get users onto a publisher-friendly tracking protection tool that facilitates advertising's exchange of value for value, before web advertising turns into a mess of crappy targeted ads vs. general filters, the way email spam has.Posted Mon 30 Mar 2015 07:33:29 AM PDT
QoTD: Julie Fleischer
Kraft is reinventing marketing around data,
infrastructure and content to be more informed,
addressable, personal and meaningful. We have invested
significant resources in building a proprietary data
platform that allows us to know, serve and engage our
consumers uniquely and at scale. We have trained our
marketers on data literacy and reshaped our agency
relationships to capitalize on our infrastructure and
the opportunities that exist in today's media landscape
to act with agility and purpose. We're creating new
capabilities in content creation so that we can tell
personal stories and launch experiences that attract
and delight our next generation of consumers.
My macaroni and cheese has an awesome
surveillance bunker, which fills me with
—nobody, everPosted Sun 08 Mar 2015 11:37:20 AM PDT
Digital dimes in St. Louis
From Jason Kint at Digital Content Next, here's all the third-party web tracking that comes with browsing the St. Louis Post-Dispatch web site.
Read the whole thing. (via Darren Herman, on Twitter)
So, not much of a surprise, people don't trust web ads, because creepy tracking. Kint writes,
This problem is only getting worse and the consumer tools that counter it are getting less effective and more and more damaging to those who respect the consumer's right to understand when and why their activities are being tracked. Transparency and providing the consumer with adequate control over their online privacy are vital—not harmful—to businesses that are built on a solid foundation of trust.
But he's only got part of the solution. Transparency is unworkable. How can regular people read every privacy policy for the third-party trackers they run into, when nobody at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch seems to be able to read the privacy policies for the trackers the paper uses on its own site? Here's what the Post-Dispatch site has to say about their third-party ads:
These companies may employ cookies and clear GIFs to measure advertising effectiveness. Any information that these third parties collect via cookies and clear GIFs is generally not personally identifiable.... We encourage you to read these businesses' privacy policies if you should have any concerns about how they will care for your personal information.
In other words, "third party tracking? That's
a thing on the Internet now. We have no idea what's
going on with it, so you're on your own." No wonder,
as Kint points out,
Online advertising is trusted
less than any other form of advertising.
The result of all this tracking isn't just wigged-out users and ever-increasing ad blocker installs. The real problem for newspaper sites is data leakage. All those trackers that Kint points out are busily digesting the paper's audience like flies on potato salad, breaking the readership down into database records, and feeding the "print dollars to digital dimes" problem by breaking signaling.
When it comes to data leakage, publishers
aren't bringing a knife to a gun fight, they're
bringing a white paper about a knife to a gun
fight. Terry Heaton, in "Local" is Losing to
In 2015, [non-local] independent companies will
account for nearly three-fourths of all digital
advertising, elbowing out local-media competitors who
have tried for two decades to use their existing sales
forces to also sell digital advertising. Why is
it that when a St. Louis business wants to advertise
to a St. Louis newspaper reader, three-quarters of
the money goes to intermediaries in New York and Palo
The problem, though, isn't so much that the adtech firms are taking 3/4 of the advertising pie, it's that they're making the pie smaller than it could be, by building the least trustworthy form of advertising since email spam.
So how do we keep the local papers, the people who are doing the hard nation-protecting work of Journalism, going? Kint says the "consumer tools" are getting worse, and if you're just looking at the best-known ad blocker, I'd have to agree. The "acceptable ads" racket doesn't address the tracking problems that matter. Meanwhile, it's not practical to browse the web with no protection at all, because who's going to read all those "transparent" explanations of exactly how some company you've never heard of sells some information you didn't know you were revealing?
Fortunately, though, we have publisher-friendly alternatives to ad blocking such as Tracking Protection on Firefox, the Disconnect extension, and Microsoft's Tracking Protection Lists. Instead of focusing on the two bad alternatives: unaccountable tracking or misdirected ad blocking, why not focus on the tracking protection that works?
Don't worry, interesting stuff remains to be done. To start with, hey, where are all the ads on stltoday.com? Just because I want to get protected from creepy tracking doesn't mean I'm against advertising in general. I like to look at the ads in local papers when I'm going there, because it gives me a sense of business in the town. (The New York Times is showing me Saks Fifth Avenue ads, and I have tracking protection on.) St. Louis, please, make your newspaper site work with tracking protection, and show me some ads.Posted Mon 02 Mar 2015 07:39:32 PM PST
Personal data, politics, and an opportunity
Charles Stross, in A different cluetrain:
"Our mechanisms for democratic power transfer date to the 18th century. They are inherently slower to respond to change than the internet and our contemporary news media."
Bruce Schneier, on Ars Technica:
"Facebook could easily tilt a close election by selectively manipulating what posts its users see. Google might do something similar with its search results."
The bias doesn't have to be deliberate, though. Eric Raymond posted an example on Google Plus.
G+ may be engaging in non-viewpoint-neutral censorship of news articles relating to firearms.
Turned out that there was a bug in how Google Plus interacted with the CMS on a pro-Second-Amendment site. Not a deliberate political conspiracy, but software is full of bugs, especially when independently developed projects interact. When bugs affecting some political content are quietly fixed faster than bugs affecting others, it's not a sneaky conspiracy. It's just the natural result of programmers and early adopters choosing to test with less of the content that isn't a "cultural fit". Software developers have political views, and those views tend to escape into their software, and affect the software's users.
Google and Facebook don't have to decide to manipulate elections. Manipulation is an emergent property of networked software development. On the Planet of Classical Economics, Facebook and Google would sell their user-manipulating power to the highest bidder. But here isn't there. In the USA, the Data Party (mostly for mental extraction, mostly "blue") has the mainstream Internet businesses, and the Carbon Party (mostly for resource extraction, mostly "red") doesn't.
Which is the same problem that Roger Ailes had for TV in 1970, and we know how he ended up solving that one.
Today, is somebody on the Carbon Party side doing for their "SJW in our people's pockets" problem what Ailes did for their "liberal in our people's living rooms" problem? Yes, a Data Party has a head start over a Carbon Party in a race to build a mobile platform, but plenty of "red state" people can code, write checks, and place orders from the countries that still know how to make things.
Are we going to get two parallel user-tracking industries in the USA, the same way we have two factions in broadcast and cable media? And will each one offer tools to protect users from the other? I might buy a Koch-o-Phone just to watch the OS and the inevitable PLA spyware fight over my Facebook timeline.Posted Sat 28 Feb 2015 07:45:52 AM PST
Ad blocking, bullshit and a point of order
(Bob Hoffman says that the B word in a post title is good for more traffic so let's try it.)
Alex Kantrowitz for Advertising Age: Publishers Watch Closely as Adoption of Ad Blocking Tech Grows.
Adblock Plus, for instance, recently surpassed 300 million installs, according to spokesman Mark Addison, who said it stood at 200 million roughly a year ago. Mozilla has seen more than 200,000 downloads of Adblock Plus nearly every day since Sept. 1. Mr. Addison attributed the extension's popularity primarily to the fact that it is now available on every browser.
Lots of stuff is "available on every browser" but sank without a splash. There must be something more going on.
No One Should Be Outed By an Ad: Marc Groman of the Network Advertising Initiative points out that
A young man or (woman) searches on his computer in the privacy of his home for information about sexual orientation or coming out as gay. Hours or days later, he receives ads for gay-related products or services while surfing on totally unrelated websites. Maybe this happens while at school, in the office or when sharing his computer with family members. Recent developments in cross-device tracking mean that ads for gay events or venues could surface not only on his home computer where he originally searched for the information, but on his work laptop or tablet. In addition, the ads could even be displayed on his parents' computers, which could unknowingly be linked to his PC because they appear to be part of the same household.
According to Groman, "nearly 100 of the most responsible companies in online advertising today" won't do this.
But as for the remaining, less scrupulous adtech firms, the take-away is: better get your ad blocker on.
Brian Merchant on Motherboard:
72 percent of US internet users look up health-related information online. But an astonishing number of the pages we visit to learn about private health concerns—confidentially, we assume—are tracking our queries, sending the sensitive data to third party corporations, even shipping the information directly to the same brokers who monitor our credit scores.
What could possibly go wrong?
That's just a couple of targeted advertising stories from the past week. And the IAB is worried that ad blockers are a thing? That's like crapping on the sidewalk and complaining about people wearing rubber boots.
"Online advertising" is turning into a subset of "creepy scary stuff on the Internet." Advertising done right can be a way to pay for things that people want to read, but what we have on the web now is not working.
So why do publishers put up with this? Why not just run only first-party ads? It's a long story, but basically because other publishers do.
If websites could coordinate on targeting, proposition 1 suggests that they might want to agree to keep targeting to a minimum. However, we next show that individually, websites win by increasing the accuracy of targeting over that of their competitors, so that in the non- cooperative equilibrium, maximal targeting results.
So the gamesmanship of it all means that publishers end up in a spiral of crap.
Ad blocking isn't helping. The AdBlock Plus "acceptable ads" racket will pass ads that are superficially less annoying, but still have fundamental tracking problems. It's "acceptable" to split a long article into multiple annoying pages to put ads at top and bottom, but not to put ads within the flow of a modern long-scrolling article. "Acceptable ads" requires 1990s-vintage design and avoids fixing the real problems.
Fortunately, there's a solution that works for users and for publishers. Tracking protection is a safe, publisher-friendly alternative to ad blocking. Blocks the creepy stuff, to help publishers, without dictating design or interfering with advertising in general.
Tracking Protection on Firefox filters out tracking, while letting quality ads through. There's no "acceptable" program to join, and no limits on design.
Disconnect is a browser extension to protect users from the "web of invisible trackers."
Tracking protection helps publishers solve the big problem, the problem that the IAB doesn't want to talk about. Data leakage.
The prime "bovine-fertilizer-based information solution" here is all the verbiage about trying to break out the ad blocking problem from the ad fraud problem from the "print dollars to digital dimes" problem. It's all connected. Shovel through it all and you get something like:
Adtech as we know it is based on data leakage.
Ad blocking, along with adtech fraud, is a side-effect of the data leakage problem.
In the short term, data leakage is bad for publishers and good for adtech.
Having meetings to express grave concern about ad blocking isn't the answer, any more than having meetings to express grave concern about ad fraud is the answer.
Arguing about how to clean the carpet while the sewer pipe is still broken is not the answer.
Getting more users onto tracking protection, as an alternative to ad blocking? A way to fix data leakage at the source? For publishers, that's a good step toward the answer.
Point of order: I'm now avoiding the word "privacy" except in a direct quotation or a "Privacy Policy" document.
If I say it again, it's $1 in the jar for the EFF.
Terms to try to use instead:
tracking protection
data leakage
brand safety
Privacy is a big hairy problem, like the "freedom" in "free software." Plenty of people are philosophizing about it. But working with the web every day, the fixes that need to happen are not in the philosophy department, but in plugging the leaks that enable dysfunctional ads and building the systems to enable better ones.Posted Thu 26 Feb 2015 06:44:08 AM PST
Reactions from developers
When I explain the whole Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful thing to software developers who work in adtech, I keep expecting a "well, actually" from somebody. After all, the Lumascape is large so there's no way the general points I'm bringing up can possibly apply to every single company on the chart.
#NotAllAdtech, right?
Instead, I've been getting two main reactions from developers.
You're right, adtech is a racket, I'm surprised that clients and publishers put up with it.
You're missing something—another really messed-up thing about adtech is...
(example: The problem with anti-fraud measures so far is that their impact falls hardest on small legit publishers. Not only does adtech move ad revenue away from sites with real users toward fraudulent ones, but when networks attempt to stop it, they hurt the legit sites worse.)
Anyway, ad agency clients (not just CEOs) go read What Every CEO Needs To Know About Online Advertising by Bob Hoffman.
Web publishers, watch this space.Posted Sun 22 Feb 2015 08:03:49 AM PST
Picking the next end-user security tool
Malvertising is a thing on the Internet now. Ad fraud meets data leakage meets malware.
One way or another, some kind of tracking protection tool is going to join the basic recommended list of security software for regular users. Firewall, check. Virus checker, check. Tracking protection, check.
The question is whether the anti-malvertising slot on the shoppping list will be filled with a problematic and coarse-grained ad blocker, or with a publisher-friendly tracking protection tool such as Disconnect or the built-in tracking protection in Firefox.
What's the difference, and why does it matter?
Tracking protection tools and AdBlock Plus will each let some ads through. However, AdBlock Plus uses the concept of "acceptable ads", which is broken for modern web designs.
For pages featuring a reading text ads should not be placed in the middle, where they interrupt the reading flow. However, they can be placed above the text content, below it or on the sides.
So a nice-looking design like Quartz does not have "acceptable" ads because the ads there can appear when scrolling a long article, but a crap-ass legacy CMS that splits a shorter article into 9 pages is A-OK.
More importantly, targeted third-party ads can buy into the "acceptable" program too, which does nothing for improving the value of the medium.
This is where the IT media can influence, not just observe.
The more that you write about tracking protection tools other than ad blockers, the more users will get them, and the better that business becomes for content sites, including the ones that pay you.
The less attention you pay to the issue, the more users are likely to switch to a "dumb" ad blocker, and the more that web ads slide into a no-win struggle like email spam/anti-spam.
Live and in person, in Los Angeles
Attention all fans of me. Come hear me at Southern California Linux Expo, February 19-22 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
There's a speaker interview on the conference site, with some more info on what I'll be talking about.
(If you read this blog for the "targeted advertising considered harmful" stuff, I pitched a short talk on that, too, but I don't know if it'll get in.)Posted Thu 12 Feb 2015 07:45:36 PM PST
Hey, kids, slide!
The ad market, on which we all depend, started going
Haywire is about right. In one slide...
(from an upcoming conference talk, if I can get a conference to take it. Details.)Posted Tue 10 Feb 2015 09:42:28 PM PST
QoTD: Christina Xu
Posted Tue 10 Feb 2015 10:37:20 AM PST
I am furious at a world in which women and POC are
being told to be as self-confident as a group of mostly
white dudes who are basically delusional
We're great the way we are, level-headed
self-assessments and all. Stop rewarding them for being
Signaling fail, or, Ogilvy was right
How retargeting is supposed to work, from Rohit Yadav:
For example, prospect visits your website and you have a cookie tied into that site. That cookie is tied into an Advertisement network on the web. This allows you to follow that person around for the next five, ten or thirty days with display ads. You in a way are re-marketing yourself to that person who first hit your website and you retain brand presence. The customer is saying. "Wow, this is a big company. They must be credible with a real brand." This is a very cost effective way to spend money.
Unfortunately for retargeting, the customer probably isn't saying that at all.
As David Ogilvy once wrote,
The consumer is not
a moron, she is your wife. If retargeting is
something that you can explain in a blog post to the
average marketing person, or to your spouse (who as
Ogilvy points out is just as much of not a moron as
you are), how long does it take a person using the
web to figure it out?
Yadav is 100% right on the desired signaling effect of web advertising. Advertising, when it works, does have the purpose of establishing the credibility of the advertiser's brand. (Which is why ad creative is so important. If it's memorable, the advertiser gets a multiplier effect on the cost of the same ad space.)
The problem, though, and why retargeting doesn't
work for signaling, is that people are now aware
of it. People commonly remark on
ads that follow
me around the web. When the audience is aware
of targeting, it breaks the signaling power of an
Not only does retargeting not give one advertiser a free lunch, it contaminates everyone else's lunch by devaluing the medium. What's the solution? I think we're close to figuring it out.
Bonus links: fiction, non-fictionPosted Fri 06 Feb 2015 06:00:50 AM PST
Data Leakage 2.0
(update 13 Mar 2015: Add link to Tom Foremski piece)
Mitchell Reichgut writes,
Forrester recently found that mobile represents only five percent of brands' total advertising budget — and the majority are not making significant increases in their mobile investment year-over-year.
And Tom Foremski wrote,
Traditional media companies that were struggling with online ads that produced one-tenth the revenue of print, now have to cross an incredible chasm: $1,000 dollars in print advertising becomes $10 on mobile.
Mobile advertising works fine for search [coffee near me], or impulse app downloads ("I'm bored with this game, what else can I play?"). But mobile ads on average are consistently at the bottom of the standings in terms of revenue per user minute, because they're nearly perfectly targetable and carry no signal. Naturally, adtech players concur on the solution to low mobile ad revenue: throw more technology at the problem. The idea is to use "cross-device tracking" to match the people who saw mobile ads with web users.
Wait a minute—mobile ads are crappy, therefore connect them with less crappy (some web ads are remarkably good by now—see Quartz) web ads? That won't make mobile any better, because of signaling failure, but it's a pure loss for web publishers.
The data leakage problem has leveled up. With cross-device tracking, data doesn't just leak to less valuable sites in the same medium, but to a less valuable medium entirely.
Some background on data leakage from Sophia Cope at the Newspaper Association of America: Data leakage is a serious problem for newspaper websites:
Data leakage harms newspapers by affecting revenue from direct advertising sales. Third parties drop cookies when consumers are on newspaper websites, and then sell ads on other websites targeted to known newspaper readers.
Adtech advocates are trying to get everyone to flip out over ad blocking while ignoring data leakage, and so far it's working.
Ad blocking is survivable, but data leakage isn't. The web kept ad blocking to a tiny niche from 1996, when the first easy ad blockers came out, until 2010, when the Wall Street Journal's "What they Know" series came out. As browsers get better able to act on user intentions, ad blocking can go back to being a niche again.
Data leakage, on the other hand, is a long-term threat to journalism and other original creative work on the web. It forces reputable publishers to compete with infringing, fraudulent and other low-quality sites. Ad blocking is a 9-10% loss for non-technical sites. It's a problem, but not a severe one outside of the gaming niche, where more than 40% of impressions are blocked. Data leakage, though, by putting all sites into a race to the bottom, costs more like 90%, across all site categories.
The problem is that, from the point of view of adtech, data leakage is a win. Adtech is a constant game of how much data leakage various intermediaries can get away with. (Publishers and adtech firms are on opposite sides of the game, which is why publishers and brand advertisers need their own organization separate from the IAB, which works for data-leakage-powered tech companies.)
With various cross-device tracking concepts floating around, the pressure of the leak has grown. Valuable audience data isn't just leaking to bottom-feeder web sites, it can leak all the way down to mobile.
A new kind of third-party service: original content sites are going to need another technology thing, as if there wasn't enough to worry about. A tracking protection solution. This will mean using a user trackability detection platform (UTDP), a new tech category, in order to classify user sessions into tracking-protected and tracking-vulnerable. (Once a site has the UTDP results, a tracking-protected user could get many different rewards: access to bonus content, comments promoted, or an early reset on the article count for a paywall.)
Most of the work is already done: the main part of tracking protection is on the client side, something that the users install and run. Tracking protection is a publisher-friendly alternative to an ad blocker, and many easy implementations are available. The server-side work is is to promote, nudge, and reward users for running them.
Finally, the best part: the web site side of a tracking protection program is a sponsorship opportunity, especially for advertisers with a brand personality connected to security or fraud prevention. For example, an area of a site behind a reverse tracking wall can be branded "Exclusive content only for tracking-protected users, brought to you by example.com Insurance." High-profile malvertising is likely to make this a hot sponsorship to sell.
Bonus links, part one: data leakage in action
Sean Flynn: Sports Illustrated Laid Off Entire Photo Department
MediaPost | Garfield at Large: 'Your a Traytor, You But Ugly Kosheralist Pusstard' Click Here to Learn More!
Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams (via Hacker News Daily)
Bonus leaks, part two: Have we reached "peak creepy"?
Jake Swearingen: How the Camera Doomed Google Glass (via Future Tense)
stopthecyborgs: Strategic pause
Ars Staff: Verizon will now let users kill previously indestructible tracking code
Gleb Budman: How to Save Marketing Money by Being NicePosted Wed 04 Feb 2015 06:36:39 AM PST
Older stuff: archive


text:
Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Plans IPO
Goldman, Sachs & Co. and J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. are serving as joint book-running managers of the offering. The initial public offering is expected to take place in the second quarter of 2004.
A registration statement relating to the shares of Jackson Hewitt common stock has been filed with the SEC but has not yet become effective. The shares of Jackson Hewitt common stock may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective.
Cendant is primarily a provider of travel and residential real estate services. With approximately 90,000 employees, New York City-based Cendant provides these services to businesses and consumers in over 100 countries.
Jackson Hewitt is the second largest tax preparation business in the United States, with 4,937 franchised and company-owned offices nationwide as of January 31, 2004. Jackson Hewitt is based in Parsippany, New Jersey.
A copy of the prospectus relating to the shares of Jackson Hewitt common stock may be obtained, when available, from Goldman, Sachs & Co., Prospectus Department, 85 Broad Street, New York, NY 10004 (Telephone: 212-902-1171), or J.P. Morgan Securities Inc., Prospectus Department, One Chase Manhattan Plaza, New York, NY 10081 (Telephone: 212-552-5164).
We can give no assurances that the aforementioned initial public offering will be consummated. Prior to consummating the initial public offering, Cendant and Jackson Hewitt will need to complete the negotiation of the financial and other terms, including the initial public offering price. In addition, consummation of the initial public offering is subject to market conditions and other factors outside of the control of Cendant and Jackson Hewitt.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Cheap OSI to Dusseldorf flights
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682.38 miles
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text:
Tablet. Hotels for Global Nomads
Travel Better.
Tablet Plus
Knightsbridge Hotel
10 Beaufort Gardens, London, England, UK
Neighborhood: Knightsbridge
Check availability as rates may vary for dates. Best rate guaranteed.
The Knightsbridge Hotel is the perfect modestly priced entrée into one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the world. In fact the Knightsbridge is the ideal shopper's hotel, a sort of junior version of its sisters, Covent Garden and Charlotte Street, with a correspondingly lower nightly rate, leaving plenty of room on the credit cards for expeditions to Harrods and Harvey Nichols, as well as the shops of Sloane Street and Brompton Cross.
Though the building, on a quiet wooded cul-de-sac, is classic Georgian townhouse, the interiors are inventive, as we've come to expect from Tim and Kit Kemp. Tired country house clichés be damned—here you'll find a lobby full of modern artworks, an African-themed drawing room, where cozy armchairs huddle round the fireplace, and a soft pastel-toned library, complete with honor bar.
Guest rooms are impressive as well, decorated in a similar eclectic style, lighter and airier than you might expect, with rich fabrics, luxe furnishings and thick canopy beds. The bathrooms are a vision in granite and oak, with deep cast iron tubs and the obligatory Miller Harris bath products. These rooms are fit for business as well, with writing desks, private safes and high-speed internet access.
There's no restaurant, in keeping with the relative minimalism of the Knightsbridge, just room service, and breakfast served in the sitting rooms. You won't mind, though, as you're here to enjoy the neighborhood, not the lobby. Any number of dining options are to be had in the immediate area, and did we mention the shopping? If there's a drawback at all, it's that once you get used to staying here, you may begin to fantasize that you could actually live here. For those of us who are not yet in the market for a home in Chelsea, though, there's always the Knightsbridge.
- Complimentary upgrade upon hotel check-in, based upon availability
- Guaranteed 4pm check-out
- One complimentary glass of champagne or one cocktail, per guest, upon arrival
- Complimentary welcome gift upon arrival
- 44 Rooms
- Style: Modern Design
- Atmosphere: Quiet
- 127 Guest Reviews
- Knightsbridge Hotel
- 10 Beaufort Gardens
- London, England, UK
- Neighborhood: Knightsbridge
Hotel amenities and services
- 100% non-smoking hotel
- 24 hour concierge
- 24 hour front desk
- 24 hour room service
- Babysitting (on request)
- Central air conditioning
- Free wi-fi
- Honesty Bar
- Library
- Lounge
- Luggage storage
- Multi-lingual staff
- Offsite gym facilities
- Shopping area nearby
- Spa treatments (on request)
- Wake-up service
Other London hotels
127 Guest Reviews
All reviews are from Tablet guests with verified stays.
- joanna
- Stayed September 2008
- Rating: Good
What I liked:
Loved the ambiance and the cosiness of the place but others could find it claustrophobic.
What the hotel could do better:
If you plans to have more that 1 piece of luggage, this isn't the hotel to stay. We had 4 and decided to put all our essentials and one and put the other 3 in storage.
Internet was very expensive at 20 pounds per day and the billing cycle was weird and I got triple billed but I managed to have them cancel it which was kind of them.
- Joe
- Stayed July 2008
- Rating: Good
What I liked:
For what you pay, the place is pretty fancy. In the vain of Charlotte St and Covent Garden hotels, just a few less bells and whistles. No restaurant or bar but who cares - its walking distance from lots of great places. Service was a highlight - concierge went out of their way to get good dinner reservations and check-in was a breeze. The library is a great spot to sit back and enjoy breakfast or a drink.
What the hotel could do better:
Rooms were very small
- Maurine
- Stayed August 2008
- Rating: Excellent
What I liked:
I thought the hotel was lovely. I had booked a deluxe single and the room was small. But, the quality of the furnishings and fittings as well as the bath were very good. The staff could not have been nicer and helpful. Room service was very efficient. I would definitely stay there again.
What the hotel could do better:


text:
- Shopping Bag ( 0 items )
Though Shwartz's sympathies and interests manifestly lie with Anna, much of the book is simply a fictionalized account of the First Crusade. The upshot is schizophrenic and only moderately engaging.
Byzantium panted for breath in the late summer heat. The deep green of the trees in the gardens wilted and sagged in the heat. The Golden Horn held a molten shimmer; sails bellied out, then collapsed. Even the statues, bull and lion, which gave the Bucoleon Palace its name, seemed to gasp: touching them burnt the careless hand.
A haze, more oppressive than the veil that clung to Anna's face, hung over New Rome. As much as the heat, apprehension and delight at her own bravery made her breath come faster.
She half expected the bull and lion guarding the palace to roar out that the Caesarissa Anna, eldest daughter of Emperor Alexius Comnenus and his wife, Irene, was stealing out of her home. When the creatures actually allowed her silent passage, she closed her eyes in relief and brief escape from the glare.
"You scuttle like a thief!" she hissed to make her maid hurry. She could threaten and swear the woman into obedience, even into silence, but not into composure. Obedience would do.
They turned away from the broad Mese that split and enriched the City into a side street. As the barrier of old houses blocked them from the Mese, the clamor of bargaining, theological quarrels, and political gossip that was Byzantium at work subsided.
Argument was as much a passion in Byzantium as racing; and, like racing or any other passion, dispute could turn deadly in the twinkling of an eye. Byzantium not only argued within itself, but about its enemies: Turks, heretics, or this latest wave of Western heretics, bandits, and tramps who had run riot in the suburbs. Anna's father, the Emperor Alexius, had taken his guard and his archers and putthem down, then sent them on their way. They claimed to be pilgrims to the Holy Land; most Byzantines hoped they were on their way to hell.
The priests had compared the Franks or Celts or whatever they were calling themselves this year to a plague of locusts that swept across the Empire. Anna's own doctrine was sound; still, she preferred to put her trust in her father, his archers, and the tall, ax-bearing Varangians rather than in portents like locusts, shimmers around the sun, and eclipses of the moon. Still, the appearance of so many portents was a fact in itself. No educated person ignored facts, and Anna had received an education fit for the Empress she still dreamed of becoming.
The houses on this narrow street loomed overhead like weathered fortresses, many with jutting balconies that almost turned street into shadowed tunnel. Beneath the clinging silk of Anna's veil, her face cooled and her breath came more easily. Even though she and her maid were practically alone on this street, she did not dare to free herself from the veil's confinement. Not quite.
She could not remember how long it had been--if ever--since she had left the luxurious confinement of the Imperial palace, except for processions, which were simply walking imprisonment, studded with jewels. She would not count her move as a little girl, a child betrothed to the Imperial heir Constantine, to Maria Alania's palace so that the former Basilissa could raise her as a fit wife for her son. That was just more of the same type of life in a different women's quarters. Besides, it had come to naught, and with it, Anna's own hopes for the Purple after her father Alexius went--may the day be far off--to his undoubted and glorious salvation.
When news of her birth in the porphyry chamber had been proclaimed, how the people of Byzantium had shouted her name in the streets, she had been told as a child. And how quickly they forgot, this dark, volatile people so like her in looks and mood, who had shoved past her in the Mese, arguing, worrying, or denouncing the rabble from the West.
How long would it be before her absence was discovered? Gesturing at her maid to hurry, Anna tried to walk as swiftly as any of the men who had jostled her. She found the turn in the street just where the servant she had bribed told her a turn would be.
She scowled, her eyes filling with ready tears. She had been acclaimed not just as Caesarissa, but as Basilissa-to-be: she and Constantine. She was almost fourteen now and had reluctantly consented to another betrothal. The old longing stabbed at her even so long after Constantine's death. She had loved him as an intense, brilliant girlchild may adore an amiable, handsome boy conscious that he is older than she, but willing to smile at her and accept her adoration. Oh, he had been so charming.
The birth of Anna's brother Ioannes, that homely, interloping baby, had wrecked Anna's hopes. Constantine was no longer to be Emperor; and Anna, although still hailed as Caesarissa, realized that she would never be hailed as Empress. Constantine being Constantine, he hardly cared when they stripped the honors from him, but Anna cared for his sake--and for her own. She had cried in his mother's arms, and his mother had cried too. Then, it was back to Anna's parents for her: back to standards so rigorous that she might as well have lived in Old Rome, if it had had the blessings of Christianity.
Anna's father was the Emperor Alexius Comnenus. He could not be wrong. But he was very wrong if he thought she had forgotten that his eldest child shared his dreams of Empire.
She had been bred to rule, educated for it with the help of Michael Psellus, advisor to her grandfather, tutor to an Emperor: why would her father give her an Emperor's education if she were not to rule?
Perhaps, if she showed him how brave and devoted she was--See, Father, I went to the Jews' market to find herbs for you!--he would finally appreciate her as more than a charming, accomplished eldest daughter and marriage pawn, and restore her birthright to her.
Heaven grant, though, that the time when she might grasp the diadem be far off. The City had weathered its plague of tramps. Now, it prepared to withstand another, this one composed of great lords, if you could call any of the Western barbarians truly noble. They would be hungry: when were the Westerners not starving for food, gold, land, anything they could snatch? How could they see the splendor of Anna's home and not covet it?
If she asked one of the aristocratic young officers of the Scholae what he thought, he would lie or try to curry favor. She did not know Nicephorus Bryennius, to whom she was betrothed, well enough to trust him yet. Perhaps, she should ask one of the Varangians, the tall Northerners with their red tunics and gleaming axes. They seemed to enjoy talking to their "little Caesarissa," and she liked them. They preened, and then they bent over double lest they tower rudely over her, a tiny lady, overpowered by her Purple, as she looked up to them, her eyes deliberately round and admiring. They told her stories, with frequent pauses to supply words or replace ones they knew her father would hate to have her learn and, because she was Anna, probably use at the worst possible moment.
One or two told her indulgently that she would grow to be like her father and her mother. Her father was only moderately tall, though he had powerful shoulders and eyes that could take you prisoner across a room. Her mother, Irene, was the beauty. Anna knew she would never look like her, so she must be wise.
Her grandfather Andronicus had fought against the Turks. Sometimes, she had nightmares about the dreadful day when an Emperor, even one as worthless as Romanus, had been taken captive, and it was only by the grace of God that the Turks had not rushed from Manzikert across all Anatolia to the Golden Horn.
When she was younger, the dreams used to make her wake crying. Then, Maria Alania would come and hold her and sing to her those strange songs from her native land. After Maria's son Constantine died and Anna had returned to her mother's care, the Empress Irene had schooled her not to cry at those dreams, but to kneel and pray until God--and not her mother--comforted her.
To keep the crescent from polluting the dome of the Church of the Holy Wisdom, to preserve her father's life until she could take up his work, Anna would do anything. If that meant paying lip service to John as Caesar, so be it: her time would come. If that meant wedding Nicephorus Bryennius, she knew she must marry at some point. It was her parents' wish that Anna marry--besides which a convent was hardly the ideal place from which to reach for a throne. The husband her parents had chosen for her seemed handsome enough. Calm, her mother told her. Mature. He would--what was the word?--steady her, be a steadying influence.
Anna snorted. Her veil fluttered briefly.
Her maid gestured: turn here. She did.
Anna had studied medicine along with the seven liberal arts. Her father's physician, studying her father's mood, indulged her. She knew where to find the true remedies, the Alexandrian cures. She would buy herbs and compound her own potions to lift her father's pain and her mother's burden of caring for him, even though as Basilissa she might have delegated the task to her maids. Then, her father would see, he would finally see that Anna--unlike the unspeakable, licentious women who had tried during Byzantium's long history to rule--was worthy of a crown and proclaim it, and the people of the city would shout her name once more.
As long as they acclaimed her, she would allow them to acclaim her consort too: an Empress could afford to be generous.
At the end of the street, sunlight and market noise struck her ears like hammers upon brass. The stalls of the perfume sellers in the Imperial quarter were very different from the tumult that sprawled out before her, all of it demanding attention, wariness, purchase, and watch out, something's coming through here! She smelled water and sweat, ships being unloaded and repaired, frying fish, and the lairs of exceedingly aggressive cats. Her maid coughed.
"The sooner I get what I want, the sooner we go home," she told her maid. Pressing her veil against her mouth, Anna picked her way through the filth into the market itself.
Gradually, clean-swept stones replaced the squalor. The stinks of fish, drying wool, and a thousand unmentionable objects gave way to the cool pungency of the herbs she sought.
She followed her nose and an increasing sobriety of robes toward a building in better repair than most. Here, the language changed along with the garments. Anna shivered with excitement and more than a little fear. The Greek she heard here was more strongly accented, as if the merchants had not grown up speaking it. Some indeed spoke languages no doubt drawn from almost the length of the great silk roads. Persian? Aramaic? How strange it must be to speak as one's birth speech the very language that Christ used. She was not certain at all that it should be allowed to unbelievers.
In the manner of merchants everywhere, these men gossiped about the war to come. The lords of the West were coming--the son-in-law of the Northerner who had conquered that island ... she rather thought it was near Thule; a man with a name like an angel--Isangeles, was it?--married to a princess from near the Gates of Hercules. A prince of the Western church. And Bohemond.
The light seemed to dim as it lanced through the narrow windows whenever she heard his name. Marcus Boamundus. Bohemond, son of Robert the Wily. Fox and son of fox from a land of foxes, who had fought her father to a standstill and would not be satisfied with anything less than a throne to repay him for all the years he had been little more than a mercenary no decent strategos would hire. If, as the stories went, he had torn his best crimson cloak into tiny crosses to adorn his kinsmen's garments in token of this madness the Westerners termed a pilgrimage, being Bohemond, he expected to be repaid for the sacrifice--in Purple.
She wondered that the chain had not yet been stretched across the Horn to close it. Her father had sent out a fleet. No doubt they were waiting for its return and for the plague of human locusts that would follow. And for Bohemond, who had once come close to defeating her father in a day that would have been as dreadful as a second Manzikert.
The churches of Byzantium rang with prayer. How frightening it must be for the Jews, who refused the comfort and protection of Christ. They looked frightened, these bearded men, who clustered together, their heads bent over scraps of parchment and papyrus. Occasionally, one would beat his breast as if in repentance; another would lay hand upon his shoulder; they would nod, visibly gathering composure, then separate, to go about their work.
Anna kept her head down, her steps tiny, a veritable icon of ladyship. She entered the building into which the most sober of the merchants and bearded men who would have looked like priests if they were not probably Jews vanished. In its shelter, her head came up. It was scrupulously clean, and it smelled of herbs she could recognize, had put hand to, had seen her father's physicians use for his aching joints and shortness of breath.
The long, polished rooms held nothing the merchants did not need: a box could serve as well as a table and was scrubbed as clean. Anna followed her nose and her instinct. Her maid followed with the purse. Even through their veils, Anna could see how fearfully the woman's eyes bulged.
The merchants whispered and drew away from her. And they watched, always watched, from those dark eyes that, even more than the Byzantines', were scholars' eyes. She had heard servants' whispers that these people used the blood of Christian children in whatever unimaginable rites her father and his predecessors had not suppressed. She did not really believe that.
It was not as if her father had oppressed the Empire's Jews. He was a kindly master. When the Jews' old dwellings near the bronze workers, the old Chalkoprateia, had burned, he had even helped them find new homes.
Alexius's daughter put up her chin through her veils and swallowed. In an instant more, she would summon the courage to demand that these ... these clients of her father procure what herbs she required.
The men kept staring at her.
"A girl just that age," one of them whispered in husky Greek.
"Hundreds, all gone now. May millstones grind the bones of those evil men."
Perhaps Anna would need two instants longer.
Her maid put her hands on the purse she carried, a spectacularly stupid gesture that practically shouted "Come rob me!" and edged behind Anna.
"Caesarissa, what if they..." The maid's voice broke. Anna hissed pure fury at her. Thank God her mother had instilled in her the virtue of self-control.
The bearded men--it was impossible that they be taller than the Varangians; no one was taller than a Varangian--loomed up between Anna and the boxes and bales that had been her quarry. Three more stood in the door, blocking sunlight, sound, air ... and escape. They still watched her, but now their eyes filled with what Anna realized was terror.
She had seen men stare and back away like that as if they saw a leper, the time they brought the son of the blinded Emperor Romanus before her father and his Varangians. People backed away until the traitor stood all alone. And then the guards closed in, bringing him to the prison where the brazier and the hot irons for blinding waited.
Now Anna and her maid stood isolated. The merchants stared at her and whispered in Greek and those older tongues, poplar leaves and branches rustling against each other. Sometimes, poplars fell on people, Anna recalled.
"I'll bring him."
Footsteps--rapid but a trifle uneven--pounded out of the hall. Anna forced herself not to crane her neck. It sounded as if the man who fled the hall might have a very slight limp. She would remember that when she was rescued. If she were rescued.
Anna waited. A moment more, and the footsteps returned, this time accompanied by others.
The princess touched her veils lest she be exposed in the presence of her enemies. She should cross herself, she knew. Instead, she reached for the tiny knife she had brought along. Her maid sank to her knees.


text:
Ex-official, nonprofit linked
Report cites possible conflict over Medicaid claims
Posted: June 6, 2014 at 5:46 a.m.
A former employee of the Southeast Arkansas Education Service Cooperative in Monticello was president of a nonprofit that has received about $200,000 a year for helping the cooperative process school districts' claims for Medicaid reimbursement, records show.
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620 Anderson Hill Rd ( )
Purchase, NY 10577
620 Anderson Hill Rd ( )
Purchase, NY 10577
February 20, 2011
We were never seated, so we can't comment on the cuisine. I would say that the staff could start by greeting and seating the customers in a timely manner. The waitresses acted as if their stuff was the only deal in town. We went on to…
November 23, 2009
Another choice for lunch or dinner for those in the nearby office complexes, including Pepsico and SUNY at Purchase. The prices are reasonable. It is a place where young people seem to gather for a decent meal and to meet friends.
Menuism intends to provide the most accurate information possible. The Cobble Stone menu items have been provided by Menuism users or third party data sources. If you see discrepancies or you represent Cobble Stone and wish to report changes, please contact us.


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These miniature cars and trucks were used by an architect to give scale and interest to an architectural model. They appear to be made of a zinc type metal which has been cast and then hand painted. There's a long, flat-bed semi truck, a short, flat-bed truck, two pick-up trucks, two sedans and a station wagon. A few are marked on the inside with what appears to be TOL and then maybe another O or maybe a D.
The shortest vehicles are the sedans which measures about 1" long and the longest is the two piece semi which measures about 2 3/8". They are crudely cast and crudely painted.
Priced and sold as the group.
The pictures are not shown at actual size. Please refer to the description for actual measurements.
Don't forget to check out the other vintage and collectible items in our shop including automotive advertising!
This will be shipped by USPS First Class Mail. Foreign shipping will be determined by the receiving country. Please read our home page regarding payment options and shipping policies. Thank you.
Another shopper has this item in their Cart or Wish List.
Ogee's Antiques - A FUN place to shop for antiques and vintage collectibles!
We welcome layaways. Our Home page describes the details. Email if you have any questions.
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text: The The Band of Super-Villains ; The Mystery Of The Missing Inventors! wiki last edited by CrazyScarecrow on 02/15/15 01:50PM View full history Not Wanted: High School Dropouts (public service message / written by Jack Schiff)The Band of Super-Villains (Superman, Batman and Robin / written by Bill Finger)The Weird Whistlers of La Gomera (full text story)The Mystery Of The Missing Inventors! (Green Arrow, Speedy, Miss Arrowette / written by Ed Herron : reprinted in: Showcase Presents Green Arrow #1)


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This paper describes research conducted by the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) on the use of dynamic variables as a tool to monitor software development. The intent of the project is to identify project independent measures which may be used in a management tool for monitoring software development. This study examines several Fortran projects with similar profiles. The staff was experienced in developing these types of projects. The projects developed serve similar functions. Because these projects are similar we believe some underlying relationships exist that are invariant between the projects. These relationships, once well defined, may be used to compare the development of different projects to determine whether they are evolving the same way previous projects in this environment evolved.
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Hi Kieran You are invited to celebrate my 18th Birthday Party Fauldhouse Cricket Club Friday the 29th of January 7:00pm - late Please reply and let me know if you can make it ASAP Hope to see you there Daniel xxx.
Connor M12/30/09
Hello....... you and a friend are invited to my 18th on the 5th of february whitburn welfare half 7 til late let me know if you can go
Kevin Black12/13/09 via Mobile
Orite homie hows u?
The Abominable CheeseMan12/9/09
awrite.. Your Invited Tae Ma 18th 22nd ae January Fauldhouse Cricket Club 7:30 till Late.. Let Me Know If You Can Make it.
Claire Black11/1/09
hay howz u? u have a gd nite last nite? u shld have seen alan cheryl n kellie i dropped them in armadale at a rangers pub steamin moonin foke in the back of ma car lol
It wasnt russell Brand, its pete Docherty that lauryn has on her bebo x
Hey You are invited to my 18th birthday party On the 24th October Whitburn Legion 7.30 - 12 Hope you can make it Xxx


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A movie directed by George Lucas
If The Phantom Menace was the setup, then Attack of the Clones is the plot-progressing payoff, and devoted Star Wars fans are sure to be enthralled. Ten years after Episode I, Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), now a senator, resists the creation of a Republic Army to combat an evil separatist movement. The brooding Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) is resentful of his stern Jedi mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), tormented by personal loss, and showing his emerging "dark side" while protecting his new love, Amidala, from would-be assassins. Youthful romance and solemn portent foreshadow the events of the original Star Wars as Count Dooku (a.k.a. Darth Tyranus, played by Christopher Lee) forges an alliance with the Dark Lord of the Sith, while lavish set pieces showcase George Lucas's supreme command of all-digital filmmaking. All of this makes Episode II a technological milestone, savaged by some critics as a bloated, storyless spectacle, but still qualifying as a fan-approved precursor to the pivotal events of Episode III. --Jeff Shannon
A movie directed by George Lucas
The third episode of the "Star Wars" movie sextilogy release …
A movie directed by Richard Marquand


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Suffering suc-a-tash
from Apathy – No Rapper Lyrics on Genius
"Sufferin' succotash" is the catchphrase of the Warner Bros cartoon cat Sylvester, also used less often by Daffy Duck. The Depression-era exclamation is said to be a minced oath of "suffering savior".
To help improve the quality of the lyrics, visit Apathy – No Rapper Lyrics and leave a suggestion at the bottom of the page


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Featured May 2013