"The Google AdWords Happening"

Christophe Bruno, April 2002

How to lose money with your art ?

At the beginning of April, a debate took place on rhizome.org mailing list, about how to earn money with net art. It suggested to me an answer to an easier problem : how to spend money with my art (if you understand everything on how to spend money, you should in principle understand also how to earn money, because of conservation laws...)

I decided to launch a happening on the web, consisting in a poetry advertisement campaign on Google AdWords . I opened an account for $5 and began to buy some keywords. For each keyword you can write a little ad and, instead of the usual ad, I decided to write little "poems", non-sensical or funny or a bit provocative.

I began with the keyword "symptom". The first ad I wrote was :

Words aren't free anymore

bicornuate-bicervical uterus

one-eyed hemi-vagina

www.unbehagen.com

As soon as the campaign was launched, I was able to see the results. Every time somebody was looking for the word "symptom" in Google, they could see my ad in the top right corner of the page.

My first satisfaction occured when somebody who had typed "hemorroid symptom" on Google arrived on my website, after having clicked on my ad.

I decided to explore this new world and to launch several campaigns. Each of them was to be a targeted poetic happening of a new kind.

Continues at Adwords