I remember being solicited for this in 2008, maybe 2009.
While it was pretty obvious that I could 'win' the award by paying for a conference ticket, I considered it - just so I could send out the press release, put the logo on my web site, and drop the name in client presentations. I figured I might get more value out of it than the few thousand dollars it cost, since we were selling into ad agencies and they seemed to value awards very highly. I also figured they wouldn't know this particular award was meaningless.
In the end I got a little too irritated by the sales guy's hard sell and passed, but I'm not certain it was a rational economic decision. Lots of ad technology companies trumpet their phony awards to the skies.
While it was pretty obvious that I could 'win' the award by paying for a conference ticket, I considered it - just so I could send out the press release, put the logo on my web site, and drop the name in client presentations. I figured I might get more value out of it than the few thousand dollars it cost, since we were selling into ad agencies and they seemed to value awards very highly. I also figured they wouldn't know this particular award was meaningless.
In the end I got a little too irritated by the sales guy's hard sell and passed, but I'm not certain it was a rational economic decision. Lots of ad technology companies trumpet their phony awards to the skies.