#904 Monet Tree

I learned a new word the other day, or at least paid attention to it for the first time. It’s been gradually seeping in to my consciousness and finally I went, “What? I never heard that word when I was a kid.”
The word is “monetize.” At first, because of how it was spelled, I though it meant painting something with little dabs of paint to make an impression like a picture. But it had nothing to do with Monet.
It means figuring out a way to produce money from something you already have, which is sitting there passively and unproductively not earning anything. They speak of it in the context of monetizing your website or monetizing your blog.
Because, you know, that’s the American way. You can’t just throw ideas out there for people to think about, you have to attach an income-earning component to it.
If you read newspapers online, you may have noticed some subtle changes in the last few years. Articles tend to be short and require you to go to the next page to continue or finish them. Really good articles seem to have a lot of pages. Likewise, you will see serialized articles or just multiple fun facts.
Recently The Olympian printed Cougar and Husky jokes. Each joke had one page for the setup and one page for the punchline. Each joke was printed separately. I nearly got carpal tunnel clicking them all. Each time you clicked on a new page, all the ads on that page counted your click. The electronic newspaper could then legitimately report that customers were exposed to your ad a given number of times.
The point was, they were monetizing their website better by multiplying tiny discreet page impressions to portray a picture of success. The Monet of money.
Tricky. But incredibly annoying to someone who just wanted to read some husky/cougar jokes, which, non-sports guy that I am, I thought were about slightly plump older women on the make.
I just hope we stop there. I hope they don’t find a way to monetize ordinary conversation.
Then again, I heard about someone offering ad-subsidized free texting....
America, ya gotta love it.