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May 4, 2008

Defending America’s Foreign Policy One Adsense Unit At A Time

Duncan Riley

24 comments »

ad.jpgNot content to leave Tom Cruise alone in a self promotional Adwords Campaign, the American Government is buying Adwords units in defense of American Foreign Policy.

The ad (pictured right) reads “Peace & Security, Creating security through improved relations and cooperation” and links through to a page on America.gov with a motto of “Telling America’s Story.” The page includes stories on Syria and Nuclear Reactors, Terrorists and other Bush Administration foreign policy news.

It’s not clear whether this ad is being displayed within the United States itself, or simply to the rest of the world. Tax payer money well spent, or waste of money propaganda via Adsense units? You can be the judge.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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  1. Sam Levenback » Public Diplomacy on the Internet

    May 4th, 2008 at 10:29 pm

  2. JAV adminitracija reklamuoja užsienio politiką per Google : nežinau.lt

    May 5th, 2008 at 6:30 am

Comments

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  1. Sean Hackbarth

    May 4th, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    It’s going to where people are gathering. Nowadays that’s online. This effort is right up there with Radio Free Europe and Voice of America.

  2. Boris

    May 4th, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    Ok Duncan…?

  3. Doug Williams

    May 4th, 2008 at 9:58 pm

    So this is what it takes to get on TechCrunch these days…

  4. Prokofy Neva

    May 4th, 2008 at 10:07 pm

    And this is bad because…why? You wanted to leave the ad biz all to Mr. Lee’s Hong Kong?

  5. Rushabh Choksi

    May 4th, 2008 at 10:09 pm

    I think it is a good move.

  6. J Lane

    May 4th, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    I can’t seem to make them show up in Canada. Just searching for “American foreign policy”.

  7. Campbell

    May 4th, 2008 at 10:17 pm

    Its not April 1st again is it… “Peace and Security” and http://www.america.gov in the same ad? Me thinks its a joke, possibly paid for by Alkieda

  8. Trace

    May 4th, 2008 at 10:19 pm

    http://fpolicy.america.gov/fpo.....rship.html

  9. Colin Percival

    May 4th, 2008 at 10:32 pm

    J Lane, I’m in Canada and that advert shows up if I search for “terrorism”.

  10. BJ Upton

    May 4th, 2008 at 10:58 pm

    War is Peace?

  11. COP

    May 4th, 2008 at 11:10 pm

    How do you know its sponsored by American Govt. ? any tom-dick-harry can buy Adwords.. GOOG doesnt give a shit.. where the link points to.. or who owns it.. or its spam. or whatever.. they are minting money.. cent by cent..

  12. HairBallTamer

    May 4th, 2008 at 11:27 pm

    I can’t imagine if the Bush admin is behind it that it’s money well spent. They are utterly incapable of spending taxpayer money wisely.

  13. Andrew

    May 5th, 2008 at 12:05 am

    note to self. more write offs. money not well spent

  14. Press Release Point

    May 5th, 2008 at 2:08 am

    Hi Duncan,

    This looks like a rectangle block type ad from adsense. Where did you find this ad? Which site?

  15. Jari

    May 5th, 2008 at 5:19 am

    Haven’t run across one of these myself. Quite interesting.

  16. 9ice

    May 5th, 2008 at 6:02 am

    Are you an adwords police or something? How do you find these? first Tom Cruise and now this one.

    Not a bad propaganda for justifying an expansion program into the middle east. :) Everything happens on the net these days.

  17. Logical Extremes

    May 5th, 2008 at 11:40 am

    Someone should spell-check the site. In the bio section, see “revitilized” toward the end. Yikes!

  18. J Lane

    May 5th, 2008 at 3:56 pm

    @9 That’s kind of funny that they’d pick terrorism as a keyword…

    Shit, the socialist in me just leaked out…

  19. Quis

    May 5th, 2008 at 10:22 pm

    “Tax payer money well spent, or waste of money propaganda via Adsense units?”

    Propaganda? How dare, you! Our rulers love us and our just protecting us from terrists. You are either with us or with the terrists and George Bush even said so himself. Don’t you know freedom is on the march?

  20. Andy Wong

    May 5th, 2008 at 11:08 pm

    Good move indeed. A tiny penny spent on adsense, millions more elsewhere.

    Those who click the ad are either patriots of US, who love to hear the government’s message, or terrorists who want to waste American taxpayer’s money.

  21. George

    May 6th, 2008 at 5:04 am

    Now all you have to do is prove that the US government paid for the ad. Anyone can pay for an ad and point it to the government’s web site. You know, like one of the ~30% of Americans who approve of the Bush administration.

    In any case, I’d think it would be beneficial for people to actually know the government’s position instead of having to rely on the media to present it to them correctly…

  22. Jonathan Margolis

    May 8th, 2008 at 5:32 am

    America.gov is a new State Department website to inform foreign audiences about U.S. policies, culture, and values. We buy Google Adwords in particular foreign countries to build awareness of the site.

    Jonathan Margolis - U.S Department of State

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