Dear Blog Readers,
We have become the kind of blogger we never wanted to be — the kind who has a "read our blog" button on our website but the newest post is months old. We blame Facebook for this — it's so much easier to write something there and we seem to have more followers there than we did here on the blog. Still, we can't quite bring ourselves to give it up altogether yet — so instead, we're posting this little note to explain our lack of current entries. Please do check out our facebook page, we think it's fun, if not quite as long form.
sincerely, the Joie de Blogger.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Should I Be Surprised?

I was contacted by the sales folks at YELP the other day - of course, they want us to advertise. After establishing the range of monthly rates ($350 to $2000 or so) (!) - she briefly described the different "levels" - what you get for what you pay for. I asked her to email the information for review and when I looked at the tiers, I noticed a rather striking difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2. Tier 1 is your basic "Targeted ads that show up when someone is searching for a business like yours in the area." That's pretty straightforward, normal advertising, nothing surprising about that. Tier 2: "Enhanced Business Profile with competitor's ad removal and photo slide show." That one stopped me dead in my tracks. Competitor's ad removal? Call me old-fashioned . . but that sounds kind of sleazy and unethical. If a store in my neighborhood was paying less to YELP, my ad would appear and theirs wouldn't? And of course the opposite - if we don't go for the more expensive advertising, whose ad would be removed? Cheap little us! Of course I know that people pay for better placement in newspapers and magazines - but they don't remove the ads of others altogether. And I know lots and lots of people use YELP to find things, but this makes me loathe to give them my money. The nature of advertising in general, the technological differences available by internet advertising, all very interesting to think about . . .
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousMarch 9, 2011 at 8:17 PM

    It is heartening to know that Joie de Vivre maintains not only it's vivre, but its high ethical standards, even when offered a great $2000 deal by Yelp to crush competition.

    I say, continue crushing competitors (if there are any), with your unfailing eye and your wit. I'm off to write an authentic Yelp review, free of charge.

    ReplyDelete

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