Crazy Guide to the Internet

I read an article about something interesting that I now can’t seem to find on the internet. The article was about a study conducted by some Indian doctors that indicated that wheat grass juice can reduce transfusion requirements in Thalassemia patients. A paper on the subject in Indian Pediatrics from 2004 is what I was able to google.

One of the (many) problems with modern day drug discovery system is that it is driven completely by a template that provides no incentives to discover naturally found active ingredients with therapeutic properties. Discovering new drugs is an expensive process requiring tens of millions as investment before the drug can be commercially exploited. Most drug candidates don’t make it. If you amortize the cost of these failed drugs over the few successful ones, the costs multiply rapidly. The entire edifice of the pharma industry rests upon the ability of companies to successfully exploit a successful drug through patent protected pharmaceuticals. The problem with naturally found active ingredients is that a patient can get the cure without buying the pill.

I believe that there are many, many cures to diseases as well as ways to stay healthy (nutraceuticals) that can be found in natural substances. Ayurveda is entirely based upon finding remedies in natural substances rather than man made molecules. Unfortunately, to take Ayurveda from what some might call ritualistic mumbo jumbo to authentic medicine requires investment – to isolate active ingredients, do pharmacological testing and clinical trials. How does one justify this investment if at the end of it, the remedies will still be available freely?

Tough problem to crack. Somebody needs to come up with a business model that allows them to justify the required investment. I don’t think this business model can emerge in the developed countries where the powerful pharma industry will snuff it out. But in a country like India, there is still hope.

I was pondering for a while on the topic to post.At last managed to get a topic for today.The post would focus on few ideas to test new ad and creative type on live environment.When you traffickers receive any new creative/ad format which you wanted to know how it would look on the live publisher, here are the ways you can carry out this test

• Live testing of campaigns MUST be executed in short time.Once the test ad is live, test what you needed, and turn it off instead running it for days(which is a huge mess)

• Always check for the preview and click through on the ad server before going to make live

• If you wanted to do a quick test, book huge inventory, set highest priority, and scheduled it for one day(simply traffic as exclusive/roadblock campaigns).So this test ad becomes live as soon as the Ad server pushes.Note very very importantly this type of test should be finished in short time, say 10 ~15 min after the ad server pushes.Else, it would results in unnecessary impressions delivery and also would compete with other premium advertisements running.So be utmost careful while executing this

• Another good practice is to target.By this you actually reduce the competition with actual live ads scheduled.Pick the less traffic page group of the publisher to target.Usually the publisher would have less ads scheduled, so the possibility of competing is less

• You can also geo-target .Idea is , you target the test ad to to your local(country/state/city)this way you narrow down and keep yourself out of competing with scheduled ads.Example if you are in india further drill down to city level say ” chennai/bangalore/mumbai” which is your target city