Comments on: Dept. Of Bad Ideas: Those Adobe Ads in PDF Documents Just Weren’t Working

By: News from the Magosphere 16th January ‘09 | MOVIES - blogged!

News from the Magosphere 16th January ‘09 | MOVIES - blogged! — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:06:41 +0000

[...] in PDFs scrapped by Adobe Between them, Techcrunch and Nxtbook have it about right. However, I’m not convinced by the phrase “A true [...]

By: News from the Magosphere 16th January ‘09 | MOVIES - blogged!

News from the Magosphere 16th January ‘09 | MOVIES - blogged! — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:06:41 +0000

[...] in PDFs scrapped by Adobe Between them, Techcrunch and Nxtbook have it about right. However, I’m not convinced by the phrase “A true [...]

By: sara

sara — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 13:02:53 +0000

There are many tools that can make easy pdf creation and reading.Take a look at : pdf tools sara : .net code generator

By: How to make money on PDFs « Experiments - Trial by Fire!

How to make money on PDFs « Experiments - Trial by Fire! — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:27:45 +0000

[...] by Harsha on January 20, 2009 I just read the TechCrunch post on how Adobe is pulling the plug on an idea that planted ads in PDFs. TechCrunch says: First, who [...]

By: Magtastic Blogsplosion | News from the Magosphere 16th January ‘09

Magtastic Blogsplosion | News from the Magosphere 16th January ‘09 — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:58:20 +0000

[...] in PDFs scrapped by Adobe Between them, Techcrunch and Nxtbook have it about right. However, I’m not convinced by the phrase “A true [...]

By: aaronpk

aaronpk — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:25:59 +0000

Of course, the #1 advertiser would be Apple.

By: Digital Magazine Vendor Throws in Towel - Cites Economy | NXTblog

Digital Magazine Vendor Throws in Towel - Cites Economy | NXTblog — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:05:34 +0000

[...] want to blame the economy without recognizing the inherent flaws in the program from the beginning, most of which are covered quite well by TechCrunch. However, TechCrunch missed a few [...]

By: Arul Prasad

Arul Prasad — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:49:09 +0000

@Erick – your reply isn’t exactly a response to my comment. You are digressing from the main discussion

>”What’s next, ads in Word Docs?”

For argument sake – Why not?

There has always been a section of webusers complaining about ads in webpages; when gmail started showing ads within email, there was a huge uproar. But aren’t we all used to these now?

And lastly, wasn’t there some news a while ago, about microsoft to come up with an ad supported free version of microsoft office or something?

I just googled it and found this post – http://arstechn...ware-pilot.html

By: Vengu

Vengu — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:40:24 +0000

Haa ha! “What’s next, ads in Word Docs?” that would be downright disturbing!

By: pwb

pwb — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:34:26 +0000

“There is no good way to track who receives them”

Actually there is: DocMetrics

By: Bruno Collet

Bruno Collet — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:55:48 +0000

Exactly. Scribd, for example, has the iPaper product than alows embedding documents in a web page. Documents can be PDF, Word, or other formats. Basically, it abstracts the format and add features such as the possibility to comment, in order to leverage both the document and the web media.
I wrote a post on Scribd a few months ago: http://www.brun...p;tb=1&pb=1

By: Anatoly

Anatoly — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:48:41 +0000

In related news, Microsoft announced that it would be putting ads in the “blue screen of death”, given that it is seen every day by millions across the world.

By: 失敗アイデア：PDF文書への広告掲載はやはりうまくいかなかった

失敗アイデア：PDF文書への広告掲載はやはりうまくいかなかった — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:41:35 +0000

[...] ［原文へ］ [...]

By: Erick Schonfeld

Erick Schonfeld — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:29:22 +0000

What’s next, ads in Word Docs?

By: Erick Schonfeld

Erick Schonfeld — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:28:10 +0000

Yes, it’s great for print. Agreed. But it needs to bridge from print to the Web to stay relevant.

By: ChrisK

ChrisK — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:22:22 +0000

This is just the other shoe dropping after the Adobe layoffs of last December. Adobe is trying to cut their internal costs to keep their numbers up where Wall Street wants them. Expect more products to find the end of their useful lives.

By: Increo on Ideas » Linking to a PDF is so yesterday: embed the document instead

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:15:09 +0000

[...] at TechCrunch, there is an interesting conversation going on around Adobe Lab’s failed project to place [...]

By: links for 2009-01-14 « 個人的な雑記

links for 2009-01-14 « 個人的な雑記 — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:01:40 +0000

[...] Dept. Of Bad Ideas: Those Adobe Ads in PDF Documents Just Weren’t Working (tags: pdf) [...]

By: Kimber Lockhart

Kimber Lockhart — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:38:21 +0000

PDFs aren’t going anywhere, in fact, as a private means of transmission of pre-formatted data, PDFs are still a great solution. For this use, ads are less effective, and many times inappropriate.

Ads on PDFs are more appropriate for public documents, linked from web pages, but the PDF is (rapidly) becoming outdated as a means of displaying these kinds of documents. Why are we still clicking to download content we want to read once and have no desire to own?

Web documents (such as those you can embed via Scribd, DocStoc or our product, Embedit.in) allow you to view a PDF in browser, no opening in Reader/Preview required. Essentially, your PDFs are the web page, much like LibertyNewsprint suggests.

The future of ads in PDFs are not ads displayed by Reader, but ads surrounding a web document player.

By: Yuri

Yuri — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:24:26 +0000

That was a good idea that was badly executed. I don’t think it is unnatural for people to click related links for PDF docs.

After all, it’s what AdSense does, and advertisers go with matches that Google decides are good rather than choose what domains are good to show their ads.

The article has an unreasonable bias and I think if it worked, the author would make opposite statements.

By: vastav

vastav — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:40:05 +0000

Agree with both points. The exeperiment was likely not executed very well. Plus it is natural for companies to pare down experiments during tough economy times to focus more on core offerings.

The targeting elements remain the same for PDFs, as with websites/ blogs.

By: Rafael

Rafael — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:33:12 +0000

I totally agree. Only the third reason makes some sense.

The first reason tells nothing when referring to unnatural acts.

About the second reason, what’s the essential difference to advertisers using Google Ad Words? They also have absolutely no sense of who the audience is when they use Ad Words to spread their ads.

By: Kapil Tundwal

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:27:02 +0000

Here is another way to look at it. Ads that are “part” of page are acceptable – magazines, newspapers do it all the time. What this suggests is if ads were placed artistically and are part of design process, this concept will have better chance of survival.

Page layouting technology is not there yet to automate such a process, in principal because its art. But it will get there.

By: Paul A Houle

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:18:06 +0000

Adobe: World’s #1 Malware Vendor

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:02:37 +0000

PDFs are here to stay. It’s one of the last place where you didn’t see ads… now it’s over

I recommend you all change from Adobe to Foxit PDF reader.

Alex

http://www.myriadsuite.com
http://www.xifactory.com