One Last “Steroids Rant” for Old Time’s Sake

Thank you for reading this...

The primary premise of this essay is that if you wish to actually fix a problem, say, cheating in MLB, you must fix all sides of it. In this case, the player's side plus the management's, owner's and the commissioner's side.

While I believe Barry knew what he was doing, and that Mark McGwire knew and that Sammy Sosa knew, Bud Selig also knew, Tony Larussa knew about McGwire, Dusty Baker knew about Bonds and Brian Sabean (Giants general manager) knew as well. This seems to be a witch hunt for Barry -- that's OK, if what you want to do is simply fry Barry. But if you want to fix the problem of cheating in baseball, all sides must be investigated.

What I am trying to do is encourage people to think about "the problem" in its real context. Barry is a problem for the MLB, for sure. But really, he isn't the problem but a symptom of the real problem (people cheat when the stakes are high). Management was OK with the cheating as long as it was lucrative and the President wasn't crying about Barry Bonds in his State of the Union address (2003 -- this set the stage for the congressional hearing).

I would like to see the problem fixed (and personally, I would be ok with legalizing performance enhancers for professional athletes, we LIKE superhuman feats, and we are willing to pay for it -- that's why it went on as long as it did as well...we liked it). Bud can say, and I'd applaud him, "Hey, we were just trying to give you what you want!" He isn't saying that. It is probably much closer to the truth than anything you'll hear. I am trying to encourage people to think about all sides of the problem. To that end...

Google will let you create an ad that basically says "Bud Selig is a Liar" and then link it to the search term bud selig.

So I did exactly that. A couple of hours later I checked the stats and nobody in the USA had done the bud selig search other than me. I had to do the search to see if the ad would run. Nobody was running ads on Bud Selig. Probably a smart thing as nobody was searching for Bud either. I had to do something. Nobody came to my site today via the search pacific catch iphone and now I was coming up empty with Bud. What to do?

I added the keyword barry bonds. I checked a while later and – nothing happened. That's because my default CPC was $.20 and barry bonds cost $.50. Tired of coming up empty, I said what the heck, and I took Barry for the $.50.

Predictably he performed way better than Bud. Checked back a few hours later and Barry had generated 500+ impressions and 5 clicks. It was soooo worth the $2.50. I'm going to leave the campaign running until I post this.

It made me happy to be able to do a search on Mr. Bonds and see a Google ad for "Bud Selig is a Liar". I was also the only person running an ad against the search barry bonds.

I can't believe nobody but me had a campaign up and running to capitalize on Barry. That's so shocking only because…Barry capitalizes on Barry, the media capitalize on Barry, the Giants capitalized on Barry, the guys who wrote the book about how Barry cheated capitalized on Barry, the guy who leaked the grand jury testimony was trying to capitalize on Barry, the federal prosecutor(s) try, try, try unsuccessfully to capitalize on Barry, etc. I can't believe there is not an ad. It does make a little sense though because surprisingly (to me) it's not generating that much traffic. But if he ever hits a few more home runs and gets closer to Aaron, that will change and it will be like searching on the "Sopranos" after the finale. You may remember I generated about 200 clicks via 65,000 impressions in about 10 minutes to an ad saying Time Warner chief Richard Parsons needs to go.

For me, seeing "Bud Selig is a LIAR" next to the search results for barry bonds – it cured what ailed me.

Steroids in baseball is almost the perfect hypocrisy. Everyone participated in it. Players, management, owners, media, fans, everyone participated. The hypocrisy was uniformly distributed with no side taking blame and all sides either lying to each other or themselves. I have no objection when the hypocrisy is "fair" like that, and really, here, it was. I'm over it.

But Bud Selig is a liar, and this is the one place where the hypocrisy is not quite fair. See, all the investigations, the Mitchell investigation, really all of this seems like a ruse to catch players, specifically Barry Bonds. I wouldn't have so much of a problem if I heard Mitchell on TV saying, "We are trying to find out which players cheated, but I am also personally committed to finding out what role management had, even the commissioner. What did they know and when did they know it?" But that's not the investigation. The investigation is all about the players, Mitchell isn't trying to find out about conversations Selig had with McGwire, and Sosa, and LaRussa in 1998. Bud's guilty, and he lied. Barry's guilty and he lied. Why does only one side get investigated?

Bud knew, Barry knew. But the investigation isn't about Bud. But, the problem is as much about Bud as it is Barry. Because when there is an incentive to cheat and the stakes are very high, cheating happens. Bud and the management are as much of a part of that problem as McGwire and Sosa (who hit a grand slam on Friday night for his 599^th home run, Bud must be loving that), and they all participated for the very same reason: it was lucrative. So lucrative that Mr. Selig and the rest of MLB looked the other way.

Jason Giambi may be a cheater, but he's right, it's time to say MLB screwed up, we're sorry and move on. Bud Selig and management is part of that "we" and baseball won't heal until all sides accept their roles, and figure out the best way to move on from here.

Right now, that's not happening. That's because Bud Selig , the commissioner of MLB, is a hypocrite and a liar.

I miss the Bowie Kuhn days something awful.

Is it OK to Capitalize on God? Yes: But You’d Better be GOOD at It!

I ran a little ad campaign tied to keyword “God” linked back to just this lousy landing page from a few days ago.

Google’s system is fair, and early in the game, “God” could be had fairly cheaply. $.25 a click for God. That’s not freaking bad man –for GOD!

But this God is fair and just and so is Google. People think some of the ways Google adwords work is nefarious. Those people are DOPES, do not listen to them. Google just works very well and is set up to constantly be optimizing on its own. .Here’s how it works: it can calculate the performance of your ad. If my ad tied to God resulted in clicks where every click left the page pretty much immediately (which was the case in over 80% of the instances), Google views that as a “low quality” ad. Here’s what happens as a result: the cost of the keyword gets jacked up. What happens then? Well then what happened is the campaign stopped.

It’s a good system. People don’t want to be paying for lousy ads (even @ .25/click) and moreover, Google wants ITS users to get good results. If its users continually click on your ad and then bail immediately, your ad (in this case my ad) isn’t giving Google users what they want. Google wants to continually optimize to produce better results (period), this sort of optimization is good for everyone.

For purposes of experiment, I don’t mind blowing $20 to see how it works. But how it works is because the site they landed on was not what the people who clicked wanted –and I could’ve experimented around with landing pages to see if one without a picture of Paris Hilton would’ve done better – is Google deems the ad “low quality”. Google will let you run low quality ads, even for God, but, there’s a price premium. In my case a 25X price premium! That’s right, because my ad was lousy they jacked up the CPC on God to $5. That is a CPC that is outside the bounds of what I am doing here (which is trying to learn and satisfy my own curiosity). I’m $.25/click curious, but not $5/click curious

I could have started over and had God at $.25 again, and when I create some content that would likely please God (and Google) for $.25 I may try again. For now,I think this system works really, really well. For you, for me, for Google – and maybe even for God.

Calling a Slimeball a Slimeball

aye yay yay.....

These scumwads at http://hoodiagordonii.offshelf.com/wp/weight-loss/17201 stole my post on how to lose 80 pounds and keep it off and are using it as content to SELL the magic pill.

My post on losing weight the way that makes sense (eat less, exercise more -- the only way that ever, ever, ever is really going to work EVER) being used to sell Hoodia! Freaking Hoodia!

My little plan is to generate thousands and thousands of clicks to their ads without ever purchasing anything. They will "pay" for it -- it will just work out that they pay it to Google, instead of me. I don't care where the pain comes...as long as they feel the pain. I want to see these guys dead more than Paulie Walnuts.

Optimzation Addiction and the Google Democracy

It came along at a good time. The Sopranos is over, and let’s face it, the last 3 or 4 seasons kind of stunk it up anyway.

I have been playing around with Google ad words as part of something I’m part of that’s planned for the fall. I dedicated a $300 budget to it, and…by the time I’d spend $13, I’d probably learned enough, but man, it was so much fun I just couldn’t STOP PLAYING WITH IT.

I like optimizing. I am curious about improvements. Simple lazy mental masturbation stuff. Like, when I see The Hardest Working Man in the Marina, I want to tell him, “Dude, stand out in front of the Cingular store on June 29 when the iPhone is released and you’ll RAKE IT IN!" The combination of guilt and giddiness could be lucrative. If they needed an iPhone so badly they were in line for it on June 29, by the time they have it they are going to be giddy! *update 6/11/07 12:55pm PDT: just found out the iphone will not be available for purchase until ~6pm on 6/29.

Google allows continuous optimization in real time. You can see results, make changes, try different campaigns, get immediate results, optimize some more, etc. I did a variety of experiments ranging from the ad copy, to where the page landed to keyword vs. site specific. I could get lost in it – probably forever if I had enough money to just send continuous ads into the world.

But there’s something else. I don’t see how it can last really although a part of me hopes it always works exactly the same way. I wrote a blurb on how dumb Time Warner is for not having leveraged the Sopranos across its major brands very well and wrote ad copy that said: “Time Warner Needs a New CEO, if you love the Sopranos Richard Parsons must go!” and then I linked it to various Time Warner keywords including “Sopranos” and “Richard Parsons”. They ran my ad. Even on the Richard Parsons search! People clicked – though not a lot…but the night is young and I haven’t spent all my $300 yet.

The Sopranos finale didn’t make me feel any better about any of that…

Update 6/10/07 7:50PM PDT: The ad for parsons generated a lot of clicks (over 200) and then exceeded my $ allowance for that particular campaign -- I had not put all $300 against that campaign.