:: Go dot com! ::

All of us who saw the recent super-bowl (and the one before it) couldn’t help but be astounded by the amount of dot com ads during the broadcast. This is getting to be an epidemic in the states. You drive from the airport in San-Francisco to the city, and all you see are dot com billboards. You listen to the radio in the valley – again, only dot com ads.

As expected, us provincials down and the Wadi, are slow to adopt, but we get there in the end – The amount of dot com ads is increasing by the moment. At the TV front – Netking were the first portal to advertise on channel 2 prime time. Nana, Walla! And now IOL were quick to follow. Nana is sponsoring Maccabi Haifa, Netvision is sponsoring Maccabi Tel-Aviv, and Tapuz are sponsoring, god knows why, Petah-Tikva. The final frontier was broken when in Yad-Eliyahu, during the euro-league basketball games, we started seeing billboards for hashmira.com. Wow.

But – An important thing people should remember. If anything, it was proven that these dot com ads don’t really work. According to rumors, c|net invested 100 Million US$ in advertising last year. They got a 1.8% increase in hits. What a waste. So before you rush and put an dot com ad on the next Israeli sports event, think twice.

Wadi Writer # 3 (Maroon)

WadiList@mail.com