Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media.
  • noun The business of designing and writing advertisements.
  • noun Advertisements considered as a group.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Notification; information.
  • noun The act or practice of bringing anything, as one's wants or one's business, into public notice, as by paid announcements in periodicals, or by handbills, placards, etc.: as, to secure customers by advertising. Often used attributively: as, an advertising agent; an advertising scheme; an advertising medium.
  • Attentive; adverting; giving attention.
  • Giving public notice; publishing advertisements: as, the advertising public.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun a communication publicly promoting some product or service.
  • noun the business of advertising; the activity engaged in by professional publicists for pay.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of advertise.
  • noun communication whose purpose is to influence potential customers about products and services

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a public promotion of some product or service
  • noun the business of drawing public attention to goods and services

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Starting tomorrow Wordie is going to have ads on it every Tuesday, to help defray hosting costs. Just wanted to give you guys a heads-up. Details are on Errata.

    October 15, 2007

  • Hm, just looked at wordie for the first time today (I was on the road until now), and it looks like Tuesday came early. I set up the templates to check the day of the week before displaying ads... maybe the calendar on the server is off? I'll check.

    Wordie looks weird with ads. All of which are for dictionaries. Shocking.

    October 16, 2007

  • The ads look fine to me. If they help Wordie to survive, all the better!

    October 16, 2007

  • Is it a time zone issue, perhaps? Do you have to set the default time zone?

    Anyway, it looks all right to me. It's not terribly intrusive and I suspect that with a bit of exposure the eye will just wander right by them. :)

    October 16, 2007

  • Yeah, I guess the server is in Micronesia or something. I dunno, I just rent space on it.

    If I can find some sucker... I mean, some willing customers, I'm going to see if I can sell ads directly. I got a bunch of inquiries about that when Wordie first launched. Then maybe I can pick more interesting/amusing advertisers, and also design the ads a bit, to fit in with the whole Wordie vibe. Dunno about this whole thing. Definitely a work in progress.

    October 16, 2007

  • Well, I might be opening a can of worms here, John, but I'd be willing to chuck in a few bucks to help out, if that does any good.

    October 16, 2007

  • Very kind of you cb, but that won't be necessary. As you can see from the image below, I will soon be richer than Scrooge McDuck:

    October 16, 2007

  • Doing the backstroke through your piles of gold!

    October 16, 2007

  • Actually a few people have written and asked for a Paypal 'donate' button or the like. I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't much like those--too beggy. If anyone really feels a strong need to throw money at Wordie, feel free to buy ads. You can advertise anything you want--yourself, a worthy charity, whatever. Make a political statement, stick a favorite poem up there.

    Or not. Don't feel obligated to do a damn thing, fer chrissakes. Wordie is for fun. I'm just screwing around with the dials, seeing what works, what doesn't.

    Oh, and kad has been coming up with ideas for merch. Pipe in over there if you've got any.

    October 16, 2007

  • So if I want to buy an ad... what do I do?

    October 16, 2007

  • With regard to the Google ads do you only get paid if we click on them? If that is the case, it may pay (more) to look at other options (like the merch and private ads). If you get paid even without clicks, that's great.

    October 16, 2007

  • The ads are pay-per-click. But only click them if they're of interest to you! I don't want to violate the terms of service :-)

    If you want to buy an ad, just email me (john_at_wordie.org), and we'll sort it out. I'm completely making this up as I go along, so if there's anything you want to do--buy a word for a day as gift for someone, buy every page on the site so you can make fun of the scientologists, whatever--Wordie is your oyster. And for you, chained_bear, cheap!

    The most appreciated thing you can do, though, is share the love: tell your friends, bring more people to the party. I don't want you guys to get the wrong idea, just because I'm playing around with ads and merch. Wordie is and will remain a labor of love.

    October 16, 2007

  • I think we all know that, John. It's fairly evident. :-)

    October 16, 2007

  • Just a heads-up: I'm going to screw around with various advertising formats some more this week, and start running them every day. Nothing is set in stone though (set in stone: does that count as a triad?) so if you object, or have any thoughts on the matter, please share.

    November 18, 2007

  • I'm cool with advertising on the site. For those with AdBlock, the ads were blocked by default, so if people want them or don't want them, they can control it themselves.

    November 20, 2007

  • I'd suggest that we do book reviews, and John have links to Amazon. He'd get a percentage of sales for referrals. Perhaps the review could be placed under the title of the book. A review tag could be linked on the home page so that people could easily see a list of books reviewed. The opinions of Wordies on various books would be a lot more useful to me than the standard book review.

    November 20, 2007

  • These ads are non-intrusive & are for a good cause! A labor of love is a wonderful & highly worthwhile motivation. However, it can quickly turn into a burden when life starts throwing a few heavy duty financial challenges your way. A little pocket change will help keep you and Wordie buoyant.

    November 20, 2007

  • I agree with palooka, et al. No es problema, amigo. I wish I had something or other to advertise so I could see it on the site and feel all warm and toasty with such prestigious exposure!

    November 20, 2007

  • Views on language-related books might be interesting/useful, but my first thought is that that looks more like the territory of LibraryThing and its ilk.

    November 20, 2007

  • I'm with palooka, et al. All for a good cause. :-)

    November 20, 2007

  • Amazing what you can buy on eBay these days. Plucked from the Wordie ad feed:

    *

    Dictionary words

    Browse a huge selection now. Find exactly what you want today.

    www.ebay.com

    *

    Market with Google

    Do You Sell Products Online? Use Google to Boost Your Business!

    www.google.com

    *

    *

    Ads by Google

    January 18, 2008

  • I'm not liking the image ads that appear sporadically. They're kind of distracting and a bit confusing.

    (See shinigami for an example.)

    September 5, 2008

  • I agree they're sometimes distracting. At the same time, I figure Wordie wouldn't be here without them, so I'll put up with them... and even click on them occasionally so John can keep his hard-won Scrooge McDuck status. :)

    September 5, 2008

  • The image ads. seem to be very seldom relevant compared to the textual ones, though. The most word-related one I've seen recently was the one about the name of my perfect lover: it's conceivable that e.g. Google spotted the -phile in logophile brussels sprouts appreciation group and associated it with lovers, but I'm inclined to suspect it's just been slapping the picture around the site out of desperation. At least the textual ads. often try to sell us dictionaries and language courses.

    September 6, 2008

  • The most amusing ad I've seen on Wordie is one for weight loss over on hummus.

    September 7, 2008

  • Google seems to be going back to first principles in its efforts to entice Wordies: just now I saw an advert on a couple of pages which turned out to be for Make International Ltd.'s designer homeware, but which apart from the company's domain name just has a link reading 'a' and the descriptive text 'a a'.

    January 15, 2009

  • Just idly wondering: does anyone remember exactly what the banner text was for advertising on Tuesdays, before every day became Tuesday? It was something like: It's Tuesday, and we all know what that means: advertisements! Huzzah! Google's giant mechanical brain has decided that you, the consumer, might be interested in these fine products:

    February 9, 2009

  • Moved discussion from barbecue: I've never seen a popup ad on Wordie. I use lots of tabs and windows for Wordie, esp. when I'm entering lots of new stuff, but nary a popup.

    I noticed today that Time magazine's website can bite me, with its stupid popups for friggin' screensavers and crap....

    June 11, 2009