Identity Theft or Fair Game?

Check out the sponsored link (Click on the image to see it full-size.):

I'm very flattered to know that AOL thinks they could make money off me, but to drive traffic to their music store? 

Naturally, I'm wondering how this happened.  My best guess:  when I uploaded the mp3 of my talk at the May 2005 .LRN Foro Hispanico in Madrid on the Internet Archive (a free resource for podcasters), AOL was watching and concluded I am a musician.

Now I appear in their music store as an artist.  There's nothing to sell and no bio yet.  Perhaps they are anticipating my big break on American Idol.  When this happens, it's nice to know my storefront on AOL will be ready.  Until then, I guess my job is to drive sales of Vonage and Eminem's albums.  But even though I have a Vonage line and like a couple of Eminem's songs, I have mixed feelings about AOL buying my name as a keyword. 

I'm wondering what's next.  If I don't come out with an album to justify their investment in me, or if I'm too successful as a traffic-driving keyword (unlikely) will they concoct a Cesar Brea avatar (check out http://www.oddcast.com) and put it to work?

This also made me think about how AOL might have chosen its keywords more carefully. One idea:  AOL might ask Google for an AdSense-like API.  With that, before buying my name as a keyword, AOL could Google "Cesar Brea" via a web service, and parse the resulting XML for occurrences of music-related words.  If the results are positive, AOL could increase its confidence that I'm a musician, and maybe  worth the pennies they'd spend on my name. 

What's in it for Google?  Doesn't look so good from here: fewer keywords bought, less brand exposure (the work gets done by a web service that doesn't develop brand affinity), and more work (yet another API to expose and stabilize).  Clearly AOL would have to chip in to make it worth Google's while, perhaps funding any fees from its savings on keyword spending.  Right now, that's probably small potatoes, which is why we haven't seen this yet.  So I'm guessing from time to time you'll still see me as a sponsored link.

As for the talk, I'm thinking of laying down a House beat track to spice it up, maybe market it as a Kwaito remix (you know, open-source = freedom, etc. etc.)

Does anyone have a better understanding of how AOL might have done this?  And, thoughts on the issue of names bought as keywords?

Comments

[Jeff Schur]

This is a graphic version of the naive keyword application used even by otherwise sophisticated web companies like Amazon and EBay.

I suppose in the infancy of webmarketing this kind of wide net is acceptable.

But finding "Books about Cesar Brea" from Amazon and auctions of "Cesar Brea items" from EBay is transparently silly.

[Cesar A. Brea]

They had in mind recording one of my Beethoven violin sonatas.