Business - Written by Denis Hancock on Wednesday, July 16, 2008 17:01 - 3 Comments
Why is the mashable advertising contest random?
For those that might not know about it, mashable is a great site for social networking news. Today they announced a nifty little “contest”: they are giving away one full month of free advertising, to three lucky start ups, in their new “Start Up Pricing 90×90 advertising zone”. The zone itself is a cool idea, designed to offer more affordable advertising for startups which might not be rolling in cash. The contest is also a cool idea – just leave a comment with your company name / URL, a 20 word description, and 20 words on why your startup is right for the Mashable audience. What I don’t quite understand is this next part:
Winners will be selected at random through a random integer Web app, please leave a valid e-mail address.
Why random? Wouldn’t it be better to select from the submissions based on merit – perhaps even using a community voting application? At minimum, wouldn’t this provide more incentive for companies to really crystalize their ideas in a compelling way, and make the post (and comment section) that much more interesting to readers?
3 Comments
Hey Dennis, thanks for the post. I completely agree with you that a vote would be more compelling. However, unfortunately I’ve seen massive amounts of gaming when it comes to polls (basically all one company has to do is blast their readers/subscribers/friends to vote to “win”). When it’s random it encourages an even playing field.
However, next time I do this Dennis, I promise you that I will find a more compelling and engaging route (I already have some idea).
@Anittah. Trust me, I’m reading through all of the entries either way as comments are sent to me via e-mail on any post I write 
Denis Hancock
Adam – thanks for the timely feedback!
This gaming problem seems to be a recurring theme on many loosely related issues right now… I suppose I can see why random might have been preferred for a contest on such a short timeline.
Good to hear you have some thoughts about a more engaging route though – I’ll spend some time on the topic as well.
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Soooo much work to actually read entries … “Better” is a function of many variables after all, and random involves little investment of that finite resource, time.