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They won't advertise it unless they buy it
01 Aug 2004 by Jason Fried
How’s this for a cool policy: Coudal won’t accept advertisements on their site unless they’ve paid for and used the product first. Here’s what they say:
We are customers of all of our advertisers. We won’t take an ad unless we’ve paid for and used the product or service.
I wonder what they’re using to automate the process of running those ads? Jim?
3 comments so far (Post a Comment)
01 Aug 2004 | kartooner said...
That is truly the perfect advertisement, one in which you've actually tried the product instead of what would otherwise be a fluffy description.
Kudos to the Coudal people, they understand the true model of advertising.
02 Aug 2004 | Mark Thristan said...
I agree that from the perspective of trust, this is a great idea, but it sounds more like implicit endorsement rather than advertising per se. I'm not sure that advertising has any real call to trustworthiness in itself - it's just about publicising/notifying - it's the brand itself which carries the trust.
Anyway, this sounds like a great strategy for a site which carries a very few adverts (which do not change frequently), which targets a very specific niche market, and is a site where users come for "trustworthy" advice already.
02 Aug 2004 | Mark said...
I think endorsements (as suggested by Mark T. above) work much better than generic advertisements. I believe its one very good way of adding one more layer of credibility to the user experience.
