Are You Part of the Problem?

Last week, I put up a post about how the online advertising industry needs another herd-thinning. It begged the question - "How do I know if I'm part of the problem?" Fear not, faithful Hespos.com reader. If you answer "yes" to any of the following questions, the issue should be more than clarified.

  • Does your company have two home pages, positioning it as an advertising agency on one and a media seller on the other?
  • Was your company's "Most Valuable Employee" last month a guy in Costa Rica named Benny who rotates his IP address every six minutes?
  • Does your business model depend entirely on a hacked Linux server in Beijing?
  • Does your employee manual contain something to the effect of "DO NOT DISCUSS WHAT IS INSIDE THE BLACK BOX UNDER PENALTY OF TERMINATION."?
  • Is your company named after a common misspelling of a much more popular website?
  • Does your workday consist of e-mailing webmasters of obscure websites with a "Got Traffic?" spam?
  • Are you fewer degrees of separation away from Kevin Bacon than from the advertiser running ads with your company?
  • When click rates on your campaigns are low, do you IM a clickfarm in Bangladesh?
  • When it's time to get paid, do the folks upstream stall you by saying things like "We're waiting for the client's client to get paid by the client"?
  • On your first day of work, were you issued a Thumbdrive with HiMailer installed on it and instructed to eat it if and when you hear loud klaxons?