‘Bad price, bad product’ and we still click… Online ads keep booming… Facebook fires up… Vitaminwater boost to Coke… Boomers catching on to web banking

Bad products… click here

Most computer users avoid unfamiliar emails or websites, spooked by the threat of infection by the latest virus. But, according to WebProNews, a recent web behaviour experiment shows some people will click on anything, whatever the apparent risk.

The experiment tested whether people would click on an online AdWords ad with the text “Get infected here!” Crazy as it seems, 409 people couldn’t resist clicking on the ad, which clicks through to a website that simply says “thank you for your visit.”

Over a six-month period, the ad was displayed more than 259,000 times, clicked 409 times (click-through rate of 0.16%), and cost about $US23 (6c per click). Almost all of the clicks came via Internet Explorer.

The experiment echoes findings of other studies conducted by industry experts. At the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo in New York, a panel on searcher behaviour noted: “You could run an ad that said ‘bad prices, bad products’ and people would keep clicking.”

Online ad boom boom!

The recent boom in the online classified advertising market will more than double in the next three years according to a report from research company Frost & Sullivan.

The report says the market will grow from $308 million in 2006 to $850 million in 2010 due to higher ad rates. The growth will also be driven by the steady drift of consumers from newspapers to websites.

Facebook on the grow

The latest social networking fad to hit the internet is Facebook.com. According to The Australian Financial Review, Facebook now has 24 million users around the world, second only to MySpace.com, and is growing by 3% a week. Even better, half of its users (that’s 12 million people) return to the site at least every second day.

Originally designed as a university networking site, Facebook users can set up a profile, join networks based on geography, interest or occupation and post pictures. Like MySpace for grownups, really.

Apparently Facebook’s 23-year-old founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has already knocked back a $US1 billion offer from Yahoo! to buy the site. He says he is now looking at expanding Facebook to include the latest photo sharing, instant messaging and VoIP facilities.

New vitamin billionaire

A new innovation on an old product can make you a fortune. An entrepreneur who liked spiking his beverages with vitamins and turned this into vitaminwater maker Glaceau, has just sold his company to Coca-Cola for $5 billion.

The company was less than a decade old. The sale will help Coca-Cola towards its goal of being the fastest growing company for non-carbonated beverages in the US. Vitaminwater competes against bottled water and sports drinks like Gatorade.

Baby Boomers get with the program

The least tech-savvy generation, the baby-boomers, are slowly catching on, according to a new Commonwealth Bank survey. The survey found that the number of people aged over 50 who do their banking online rose by 26% in 2006. Most surveyed said they preferred online banking because it was easier to pay bills.