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mystery links By Benny Evangelista
July 30, 2001
After Douglas Hoppe downloaded the hot new online file-sharing
program called KaZaa two weeks ago, random yellow hyperlinks began appearing
on his fledgling music site.
Hoppe became hopping mad when he realized words such as "jazz"
and "hip hop" had become hyperlinks, sending potential customers to
the site of BMG Music, one of the world's biggest record labels.
Someone was hijacking his visitors, he thought.
But Hoppe soon learned that when he installed KaZaa, he also unknowingly
installed a bundled program called TOPtext, part of a new online advertising
technology called ContextPro developed by EZula Inc. of San Francisco.
"It was like graffiti," said Hoppe, managing director
of XenoMusic.com, a Hungarian firm devoted to Eastern European music.
"I thought it was a virus or some strange upgrade that Bill
Gates built into my computer," he said. "I wondered, 'Why are you
sending my hard-earned visitors to (BMG), which already gets a million visits
a day?' "
TOPtext is an example of "contextual advertising," the
latest attempt by online advertisers to reach the eyes and minds of Web surfers.
TOPtext turns existing words on a Web page into hyperlinks that redirect a computer
user to the advertiser's site.
Critics such as Hoppe say TOPtext is an insidious form of online
advertising that will prove even more annoying than the recent spate of "pop-
under ads" that made the X10.com Web camera site at once famous and reviled.
