Google Ads and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody

When I set up this blog, I thought I would try out Google Ads, less as a way of getting rich (hahahahaha....) than of testing out how it selects ads based on the content of both a blog in general and for particular postings.

On the "front page" of this blog, or whatever you call the base URL that has the most recent post, there's generally some ad related to law or New Orleans, those being the two biggest things I've written about in here (and which should be reflected if I ever get around to putting up a tag cloud here - should be able to fit it in on the right along with all that other crap).

But that front page ad is rarely specific to whatever that most recent post is about, which makes sense. And sometimes they are just wildly generic ads - like the one for government grants. But the ads on individual posts in the archives are usually specific to that post's content. Like the Marine Corps Birthday post I wrote in November; the ad there is always something Marine Corps-related, though maybe only a degree program for active duty military or t-shirts for sale about Parris Island.

But I'm curious if in distributing these ads whether the text in the Title is given more weights than the content. That would be my theory: the two posts I wrote about the surviving members of The Who being honored by the Kennedy Center consistent generates an ad from some web page that offers "Instant Kennedy Center Honors Access", and I guess its for one of those services that claims to let you watch TV on your computer for free, and legally!!! They probably put this ad on any post that is about some TV show.

Which brings me to my experiment: I watched more tween-oriented television over Christmas than in my entire adult life, since our twin ten-year-old nieces let us change channels from Nickelodeon only to get an occasion weather forecast and check whether we were expecting a snowstorm or only flurries up in the Colorado Rockies.

So how much do I have to write about Zack and Cody before the google ads for this post are always related to them? Before this month, I was vaguely aware that there was some kids show called "Zack and Cody" but now I know more about "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" than anyone my age who doesn't have kids of their own should have to know. Zack and Cody live in a Boston hotel! Their mother is a singer in the hotel lounge and so they all get to live in a suite there, hence the show is called "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody"! Zack and Cody are identical twins! The uptight hotel manager is always exasperated at the antics of Zack and Cody, those mischievous guys. Zack and Cody have a couple of friends who also live and/or work at the hotel, the candy counter girl and the rich daughter of the hotel's owner! I don't know their names because Zack and Cody are the stars of "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody".

OK, I can't take that anymore. It's a pretty dumb show. <old man-styled rant>Why, I remember when the Disney Channel used to show actual Disney Cartoons!</old man-styled rant> In one of the episodes I watched, the writers had to try to keep from cutting their throats from boredom by going all meta and having Zack and Cody get "discovered" and have a chance at being, yes, stars of their own show about twins living in a hotel!

Let's see what the ads for this post are in a day or two.