ISEDB: Norton Renders AdWords Advertising Useless

The new Norton Personal Firewall blocks not only pop-ups, but also paid listings on major search engines. In fact, the program defaults this feature as "on," right from the get-go, preventing users from seeing popular pay-per-click (PPC) ad systems like Google's AdWords. The Symantec team doesn't seem to understand that many purchasers of their product actually like the highly-targeted, relevant paid listings in Yahoo, MSN and Google. Since most of this media is PPC, advertisers will not feel much effect, other than more limited inventory.

Unlike pop-ups that are despised almost universally (resulting in the proliferation of pop-up-blocking software and toolbars), paid search listings are often more relevant than spam-filled algorithmic search results. Maybe the Norton team will wake up when a whole bunch of Norton Personal Firewall purchasers call tech support wondering where those relevant links went.