This week our new buy lanyards website www.lanyardpass.co.uk went live. We always think of them as lanyards, but does the layman know what a lanyard is? I asked my girlfriend and she hadn't got the foggiest. "Oh, a 'strap' or a 'neck strap'" she said when I explained that a lanyard is a cord that goes around your neck to hold a pass.
Anyhow, the site provides online lanyard prices and the ability to buy lanyards almost instantly with just two clicks. There's a lanyard configurator and we allow further options if the end-user calls us up.
There's a new lanyards news release about the new site which can be read here - or should that be a "neck strap news" release?
On Friday last week, Google opened up AdWords, its pay per click advertising platform which displays sponsored listings alongside search results, to gambling organisations in the UK registered with the Gambling Commission as well as any company in Europe provided they are registered with their national gambling regulator.
This follows a UK government ban on gambling websites from outside of the European Economic Area advertising in the UK, which hit the operations of famous bookmaking brands William Hill, Bet Fred, and Littlewoods.
The question is, if we disagree with gambling morally, do we have a duty not to accept advertising customers in the gambling sector? I definitely have mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, I don't want to promote gambling but on the other, if I make a moral stand then I'm just making it easier for less moral people to take the business and prosper.
The only answer I can come up with is to compete in the marketplace as per the law of the law of the land, while trying to get the right laws in place in the first place by the mechanisms of democracy.
Those involved with search engine marketing will be aware of the launch of Cuil earlier this year, the search engine claiming to have a bigger index than Google. However something is amiss. If you search for "Advertising Agency", which on most search engines will show a listing for the AdStorm Advertising Agency, except on Cuil you will see the AdStorm logo, alongside a listing for a completely different advertising agency. Apparently this is a problem across the board, and not just on "advertising agency" searches. Some people think they are displaying the wrong images. I beg to differ. Surely they are displaying the correct images but the wrong listings!
