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Yahoo News Posts Advertisements as News
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo is now putting ad banners as news stories. This is highly misleading and is an awesome way to sell out."
I don't really think Yahoo has been sold in in a few years, but this
is a new level of yucky. No doubt it is a sign of things to come:
the news is the ad. The ad is the news. It's one step worse then the
bizarre advertising/news merge that was amazingly evident when Disney/ABC was doing
with Monsters Inc while Time/Warner/AOL/CNN was hyping Harry Potter.
Oh, in case they change it, basically they have a list of news stories,
and one of them links simply to a page advertising (not surprisingly) X-10. The link isn't marked as an ad -- its simply one of the headlines in
the news list. It's one thing to have more ads... it's another to
simply disguise the ad as actual news. Update The ad was yanked.
For those who missed it, there were a dozen news articles, but one
was an advertisement. It was indistinguishable from the actual news.
I scanned through the news articles and while an x10 ad (and boy, why does it have to be x10) popped up underneath the news article, I didn't see any articles merely being links to advertisements. What am I missing here?
Witty quotes suck.
I didn't see any. Can someone toss up a link to an actual ad? (I can't believe what I just asked for)
Press releases have been masquerading as news for a long time. I worked in a small office once where we sent out press releases saying that this person had sold so much insurance or that person had sold so many dollars worth of real estate. They were advertisements, pure and simple. But they were presented in the local paper as a real news story.
The only difference is that in this case the ad is paid for and presented as news instead of being "free" for those places that write their own press releases.
I don't think the ads are from Yahoo... If you follow the news links, most go to external sites. Some of those external sites have pop-up ads, not yahoo. Simple.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
The mixing of news features and advertising is nothing new, although I must say the New York Times Tolkein Archives "Sponsored Feature" is a much classier treatment than Yahoo's use of banners as news stories particularly in the way it handled two other movies, Monsters Inc and Harry Potter, which was worse than misleading -- it was ugly and devoid of interesting content.
The nice thing about the NYT Sponsored Feature, by contrast, is that they have a great deal of good content in their archives, and presumably the sponsorship goes into getting the stuff off microfilm and out of file drawers and onto their web pages.
I sent an e-mail to X10 a few days ago when I'd finally had enough. Complaining about the existence of the ads? No -- that's sure to fall in their category of "necessary evil", i.e. marketing dollars, and I knew that if I was to have any chance of not being deleted (vicariously through my e-mail), I'd better not trip down that lane.
No, what I objected to was the content of the ads. Now, call me a prude if you must, but frankly I am turned off by a company who will insist on popping up ads which feature shots of cameras panning over scantily-clad females and lingering on the cleavage whilst accompanied by a tag line reading "see what you're missing" or "who knows what you'll see?". Okay, so I'm an adult -- what about those parents who (rightly or wrongly) wish to be able to have their children surf the Net through a supposedly safe medium such as Yahoo and not be inundated with sleazy ads?
We all know that children aren't safe from the spammers or the mistyped domain names that have been pounced upon by the porn people; but they're up-front (yes, ha-ha, no pun intended) about their intentions. X10, on the other hand, is just being tacky, and overloading at least this particular consumer with their tackiness.
By the way, I also pointed out to them that, for what it was worth, I am probably in one of their prized target demographics -- early 30s and technically astute with a reasonable amount of disposable cash.
No reply from X10 customer service so far. There's a surprise.
I couldn't find a single ad amongst the links. I did get an X10 pop-under, but all the news links were completely legitimate. I'm betting on a script error that threw the ad to the main window instead of a popunder, but that's not my point.
If you can't replicate a situation, it cannot be taken as fact. Since the link in question wasn't included, it's impossible to say what really happened. However, (prefaced with IANAL) this kind of "news" reporting treads dangerous ground, as you're saying something that's potentially defaming a corporation and there's no viable proof. Editors, be more careful next time. I don't want to see this site die in a cyberspace libel suit (or something similar).
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
Sorry about the conservative slag, but I do tend to learn towards socialism and a kind of forced 'taking it for the team' approach to community. That is, I don't mind being a martyr if everyone will join me. ;)
No problem. Too many people think that personal responsibility is a conservative value. I believe you cannot have liberty without personal responsibility and self determination. No offense but I see socialism as the absence of personal responsibility as the group as a whole will take care you when you make poor choices and you are only as strong as your weakest link.
I do have to disagree with the banner-responsible-for-bust thing.
I think if you go back and read what I typed that it was 'one of the main' not 'the main' cause of the dot bomb. But the reliance on banner ads instead of charging for content from the beginning has convinced the web viewing public that all content should be free -- outside of pr0n which had the right business plan from the start. Make the suckers pay upfront.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
How dumb do you have to be to not know that at least 25 percent of all 'news' segments/articles are overtly or at least partially written to influence your opinion one way or another.
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How many planted stories are there to influence the voting public.
Consider the simple case of using 'right wing' to describe conservatives while never ever using 'left wing' to describe liberals.
Consider all of the times one or more news stories of national interst are not covered by any national media?
Didn't that used to be called bias/fabricating public opinion?
Some articles omitted from national news coverage:
Federal budget surples is projected for the next ten years: (not covered how opponents of Bush are falsely stating that there is a deficit)
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1944&seque
Funny how stories unfavorable to conservatives are always national news, but not stories unfavorable to liberals.
Federal reinsurance coverage for terrorist acts:
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=3087&seque
No one is covering wheither or not the government should be in the business of providing aid to victims of terrorism?