Ad anti-targeting; Giving back to your Superfans with Mint

Via Simon Willison I saw a blog post by Matt Haughey of MiFi fame. Matt is talking about How Ads Really Work particularly the traits of Superfans and Noobs.

The basic premise is that your site usage is split between regular users, and search engine fodder. The regular users look at your site more frequently but are more casual info-grazers. The search engine lot however, are hellbent on missions to find stuff. Context ads are the green grass on the other side. As such Matt suggests that turning ads off to Superfans keep them happy without lowering the bottom line, allowing you to be more aggressively marketing at the search engine traffic.

I love this idea and it coincides with something I was discussing with Marco this week. I love having Marco sitting next to me because he is really great for bouncing ideas off, and helping to inspire me with his enthusiasm for web technology. He was talking about using his Mint installation to power a WordPress statistic plugin along the lines of the Feedburner button I use on the main page of my blog.

I’d like to take the idea of mixing the cookie data from Mint crushes with Matt’s idea and create something which will keep Adsense away from your hardcore user base. It will allow more aggressive and profitable advertising while not upsetting the people who read your site the most.

The only thing that bothers me? I wonder if more aggressive ads will upset uptake of new users. Matt said lack of advertising kept people around. That assumes you can get them to visit more than twice.

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adsense, advertising, mint, wordpress, matthewhaughey