In a num­ber of public pla­ces inc­lu­ding a cinema mul­ti­plex in Cam­bridge and Lei­ces­ter shop­ping cen­tre (UK) I have come across ter­mi­nals tou­ting, “Free Public Inter­net Access” or “Free Inter­net Zone”, these are owned by ope­ra­tor Red Moon Inte­rac­tive (that I do not has­ten to link to). At first sight you may think “fan­tas­tic, I can check my mail amidst my hec­tic Christ­mas shop­ping spree” or something just as simi­lar. Approaching the ter­mi­nal you will be pre­sen­ted with a list of cate­go­ries, “Auto­mo­tive”, “Com­pu­ters”, “Clothes” etc. and a search box. I wan­ted to check the release date for a cou­ple of video games not out yet so I typed in my que­ries and hit go on the touch sen­si­tive screen.

Red Moon sta­tes on its page,
“Red­moon Inte­rac­tive pro­vide free Inter­net access in Shop­ping Cen­tres and high foot­fall loca­tions across the UK through our net­work of inte­rac­tive touch screen ter­mi­nals. Using our ser­vice your cus­to­mers can search the Web or check their Email free of charge without lea­ving the com­fort of your pre­mi­ses.”

My results soon appea­red, alas I recog­nise this page struc­ture, it’s a “Made for Ads” or “MFA” site. All of the search results, which claim to be genuine, were irre­le­vant cost-per-click ads that somehow matched a key­word. Attemp­ting to gene­ra­lize my search in hopes of obtai­ning some form of rele­vance brought no luck and only the most gene­ral of terms such as “video game” brought any rele­vance wha­tsoe­ver. Hea­ding back to the main page I clic­ked the various cate­go­ries, a new list of ads per­tai­ning to a spe­ci­fic cate­gory appea­red in a dif­fe­rent colour. Every sin­gle link on the ter­mi­nal took you to an ad, in order that you may find any con­tent you had to click an ad. There is no address bar to con­firm the page you are on or to enter a new page. This makes the ter­mi­nal a poten­tial secu­rity risk and rife for phishing scan­dals that attack the non-savvy Inter­net users likely to use this “ser­vice”. Even the email links lead to ads for online email providers.

From my web sleuthing it appears the ads are pro­vi­ded by Over­ture which is now Yahoo! Search Mar­ke­ting , and they state: “The move opens up the oppor­tu­nity for adver­ti­sers to reach a more loca­li­sed audience in the run-up to the launch of Overture’s geo-targeted searches. For exam­ple, con­su­mers may use the ter­mi­nals to search for spe­ci­fic ser­vi­ces in their local area while out and about. […]  Overture’s spon­so­red links will be retur­ned whe­ne­ver a user con­ducts a search via the front screen on any INFO-NET ter­mi­nal. (2003)”

I won­der, do Yahoo adver­ti­sers know that their ads are being used in such a way? Would they wish to be asso­cia­ted with such a com­pany? Do they want peo­ple to view their sites in a public place where online purcha­ses are risky and unli­kely?  Obviously ads for shops within the mall will have some rele­vance and may lead the shop­per to their store, howe­ver the adver­ti­sers them­sel­ves will not see goals or direct purcha­ses online and the value of such ads can never be accu­ra­tely deter­mi­ned remo­tely by the adver­ti­ser. As for those ads that need web based returns, whether it be click-throughs or sales, any hope of achie­ving these through such a ser­vice is highly unlikely.

My expe­rience with the access points, a rough 20 minute test explo­ring dif­fe­rent ave­nues of search, as I wai­ted for a film scree­ning, conc­lu­ded that this is a com­mer­cial ven­ture (albeit a cle­ver one) that I could and would not clas­sify as a ser­vice. Fin­ding what I wan­ted pro­ved impos­si­ble and kno­wing that each click would gene­rate a tiny pro­fit for Red Moon with little to no return for the adver­ti­ser, as a web adver­ti­ser myself, was infu­ria­ting. If you add to the mix the non-savvy users that will igno­rantly click on all links in frus­tra­ted hopes of fin­ding something of impor­tance you get a highly pro­fi­ta­ble busi­ness that further deva­lues online adver­ti­sing. Indeed, the less of a ser­vice Red Moon pro­vi­des the more users will return to the search index or “results” to try another site, thusly buil­ding a tidy pile of cop­pers through cost-per-click ads.

If you are loo­king to ins­tall these ter­mi­nals please take note of this. The ina­de­qua­cies of the Red Moon ter­mi­nal to pro­vide a ser­vice to its users will be directly pro­por­tio­nal to its pro­fits — the lon­ger it takes to find infor­ma­tion, the more ads are clic­ked, the more money is made. Red Moon, as an anony­mous pro­vi­der, has no repu­ta­tion to main­tain with its users; it is those that host the kiosks that will ulti­ma­tely be faced with the dis­grunt­led sur­fers and dec­li­ning res­pect of its patrons. Once more, the secu­rity of this ser­vice is questionable.