Slashdot Mirror
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 noticed today that Yahoo started putting ads up that interrupt you -- i.e. you click a headline and an add page comes up, with a link to the real story -- forcing you to find the link and absorb the ad for a second.
Is this all we're talking about, or is there something more "sinister" going on that I missed?
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
Am I the only one who didn't see the advertising link in question? I know there's this large banner on the right that says 'ADVERTISEMENT' at the top, but they've had that for months, and you'd have to be a moron to think they're putting it forward as real 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 can safely say that Yahoo isn't the first company to do this. Better yet, morning news shows are the worst. Weight loss, hot movies, fashion 'tips'... just thinly disguised product placement.
Dear sirs, it is my sad duty to inform you that journalistic integrity is dead.
Well, check out www.whatreallyhappened.com... there's still *some* left, I think. They're just alarmist, as opposed to corrupt.
What is the deal here. I can only find a coloum clearly marked Advertising. This has been done by UK sites for a while by the way. I feel sorry for Yahoo as I thought they were quite cool earlier on but now has pretty much nothing but "milk toast" to offer.
Help fight continental drift.
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've been using My Yahoo for awhile now to get my news, but the corporate bias is pretty evident; stories always seem to have a twinge of flavor in favor of the dollar. Whenever I see 'evil cyberterrorist arrested' I typically hit slashdot to get the REAL story.
The popups Yahoo uses are even getting past my disabled Javascript lately. If I have to deal with headlines as ads on top of bias and popups, well... bye!
Does anybody know of a news portal type site which goes EASY on this sort of thing? Ads where they ought to be rather than ads all over the place, including in the news headlines themselves? Is there an acceptable 'mainstream' news outlet that's not as invasive as this?
How can anything that has the label "ADVERTISEMENT" (in all caps, to boot) above it be considered 'highly misleading'? It seems pretty clear to me....
Okay, you don't have to like this type of advertisement and there can be thoughts about the 'psudo journalism' feel of it, but as long as it says that it's an add, how is it any different from the "Special Advertisement Section" that shows up periodically in Newsweek, Discover, Sports Illustrated, etc.? Just ignore it and continue reading what you want to read....
-Mark
I mean, why didn't they think of this sooner?
"..so you see, Sir, we HIDE the ads randomly IN the news. Then when they click on a news headline, it really brings them to an AD!"
"So...... basically we're going to lie?"
"YES!!"
"And what happens to the new story that is replaced by an ad?"
"WHO CARES?!"
"Good lord, Johnson, that's BRILLIANT! I knew I wouldn't regret hiring my ex-wife's cousin."
It would be much trickier of them of course to have the ad links appear randomly, so that they're difficult to duplicate. That would be a pretty difficult thing to prove...
Ñ'
They're putting ads between letting you read articles and the like. It seems to happen randomly as far as I can tell and they're doing it on http://groups.yahoo.com/ too - that's where I first came across it. It's unpleasant to say the least, but not dishonest.
I don't like trolls and mod against me if you like, but I'd prefer if you'd reply.
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
I quit watching TV as a teen because I was tired of the brainwashing. These days if I'm visiting someone who has it on I will watch with them so as to not be a snob. Recently I caught a little bit of Good Morning America. I was amazed by how much of the show is blatant advertising for products. My friend said most other "information" shows on TV are the same way. Every outlet in our culture is being geared towards the Consumerist movement.
So now the "News" sites on the Internet are doing the same thing. It's sad to see the progression of the Internet from a bastion of equal speech to yet another Consumerism-in-overdrive medium.
If slashdot starts redirecting the "Reply" button to ad sites, I'll post all my karma-capped UIDs/passwords on a first-come, first-served basis. The advertisers will win, and so will the trolls.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
It's similar to when you visit something like moviepost and there is a link to Teen Sux and Fux and it's really a link to another pr0n portal site.
I think the difference though is two-fold. Movie post stopped doing this. Picpost, it's sister site also started labeling these types of links as another 'Gallery'. Secondly, this is pr0n site and you expect some underhandedness.
Yahoo[!] is a site that people expect some level of professionalism. I've gotten so many of our family members to use Yahoo as a portal because it's still somewhat lightweight, and easy to use. Yahoo also goes back a long way... to when I was 15 ['95-'96?] and I figured they weren't into this sort of thing.
I guess I should point my family members [read: Newbies] to Google for more than searches... I hope their directory gets better.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I followed the link and the "news" stories are clearly marked as an advertisement. Perhaps not blazingly marked, but the section that they're all in has the word Advertisement over it. It is also on the right side of the page where there is typically a advertisement banner, so if you have decent location memory (read: consistent page design)for ad placements, it should be noticeable as such.
It looks like all of the things in the "Technoscout" section are simply advertisements/product offerings displayed as news-like articles or press releases.
None of the articles in the main sections had any advertisements mixed in with them.
Not that blurring the line between news and advertising is a good thing, but I do sympathize with Yahoo's position. Money must be tight over there, and every ad they link to as "news" means less time paying writers to rewrite coporate advertising into "pseudo-news"!
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
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.
Don't forget that lots of portal companies depend on ad revenues to support their business. Yahoo gives an awful lot away, it stands to reason that they'd try everything they can to get some revenue coming in.
This really isn't anything new, though. I regularly see advertisements (in particular on TechTV) that are done well enough that, if I'm not really paying attention at first, I have to do a double-take and look for the "Paid Advertisement" text to make sure it's not an actual show of some sort. Anything to expose those products to viewers' eyeballs.
Really, though, who's surprised by this given the recent collapse of banner ad revenue on the web?
My sigs always suck.
Not good news, or well-reported news, or objective news, but I didn't see any full page X10 ads either.
That could have something to do with The Proxomition, though.
--
--
E_NOSIG
Ok, I dutifully followed the link. Here's the list of news stories on the page. Someone tell me which one is the stinker.
News Stories
- Santomero Sees Room for More Rate Cuts - Reuters (Jan 10, 2002)
- Recession wiped out '02 surplus, report says - USA Today (Jan 10, 2002)
- Last-Minute Shoppers Save Retailers - AP (Jan 10, 2002)
- Recession top cause of deficit - USA Today (Jan 10, 2002)
- Debts, recession make bankruptcies surge - Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Jan 10, 2002)
- Rates Remain High. Blame Bush Budget or Big Expectations? - NY Times (registration req'd) (Jan 9, 2002)
- New debt may stall recovery - Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Jan 9, 2002)
- President keeps hammering on his tax-cut proposal - San Francisco Chronicle (Jan 8, 2002)
- Fed Officials Differ on Rebound Timing - Reuters (Jan 8, 2002)
- Recession's grip begins to loosen - Chicago Tribune (Jan 8, 2002)
- Santomero: Data Provide Hope for Recovery - Reuters (Jan 8, 2002)
- Factory Orders Down in November - Reuters (Jan 8, 2002)
- Chain Store Sales Dip in Jan 5 Week - Reuters (Jan 8, 2002)
- Factory Orders Drop 3.3 Percent - AP (Jan 8, 2002)
- Bush Says He May Not Seek Balanced Budget This Year - NY Times (registration req'd) (Jan 8, 2002)
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
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.
The news article says last updated at 2:05 PM, this was posted at 2:54 PM. /. story is obviously incorrect now... at 3:00 EST... So does this mean that it was a goof on Yahoo's part? Does that mean that /. needs to appologize for criticizing Yahoo for selling out?
This
I would just love to know what all is going on with this... a mistake (or two) were made.The mistake could have been somebody not checking up on the story before posting it, the webmaster on yahoo making a mistake, or us for believing it that Yahoo is above this and that they covered their tracks when they were caught.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
This doesn't suprise me one bit. At the risk of repeating the tired old mantra, concentration of big media will lead to lapses in journalistic integrity driven by the bottom line. I noticed the following recently: MSNBC did a piece last week about how well the X-box was selling (depite the fact that the PS2 out sold it 2:1 during the holiday season). Disclaimer: I have a PS2. The piece was done by a reporter who gave his two sons (14 and 17 I think) a X-box and see if they liked it. Suprise: they did. Thumbs up for the X-box. No disclaimer at the end of the story that Microsoft owns X% of MSNBC. You have to be a smart cookie today to see through the bullsh*t.
My 2 cents.
Advertising isn't great, sure, but thats a pretty selfish way to do things; like going to church but never dropping some change in the plate. Other people are forced to deal with more intrusive advertising thanks to ad-blocking. Are you just betting on enough dumb/lazy/ignorant people to view ads to keep your experience ad-free?
Seems kinda selfish to me. If you don't like advertising, but still want your content, why don't you do something about the model that everyone has to rely on now to provide content for 'free' to the likes of you. What makes you so special that you can step to the head of the line, so long as critical mass doesn't follow your lead?
"Old man yells at systemd"
1. Click on link...
2. Refresh page until right side banner shows Techno Scout with links below it...
You may notice a single word disclaimer above the banner that says, "Advertisement"
A reasonable person should easily be able to tell the difference...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
In an insidious trend, Yahoo and Slashdot began leveraging what is commonly known as the "Slashdot Effect" to generate revenue-producing pageviews on the popular directory service. An anonymous source, who we will call Cmdr Tapas commented; "It's really very easy - we post an inflammatory article about Yahoo on our service, our readers flock over there with torches and pitchforks, and Yahoo pockets the pageviews. Then I get a fat check sent to my home a month later."
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
My girlfriend used to work in the advertising department of a reasonably big website.
They went out of their way to make their advertising and their news blend together to the point that it was tough to tell one from the other. Little advertising snippets complete with links would be written up as though they were headlines on the news page. When you clicked on the links, you either went through to the manufacturer, or you went to some rah-rah fluff an internal copy writer had sketched up.
I was originally going to mention the site she worked at, but by the end of this post, I thought better. Never makes sense to burn any bridges...
:-)
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
Are we sure they're really doing this? At least on the page I got when I clicked the link, I didn't see any such thing. Perhaps it was a *gasp* minor error or mistake. Like that never happens here at Slashdot... ;-P
Even though I did not see anything unusual at Yahoo. This sounds exactly like the ads in every computer magazine I subscribe to. There are multi page articles that look like news stories except in small print at the top of the page it says "Special advertising supplement" or other such crap.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
The only Ad links I see are on the right side of the page in an ad shaped box under text that clearly says ADVERTISEMENT.
It think it's slimy of the advertiser, but I wouldn't blame Yahoo for it. I got caught by it once before, but since then mentally block it out.
Or does it not appear (at least to me) that the banner ad itself has been slashdotted. I can see the article just fine... but the banner just times out.
I wish this would happen more often.
Unless someone is confusing that 'technoscout' ad on the right-hand column for a real news article - I have no idea what this article is talking about.
Confusing this ad for a *real* news article is like actually thinking you *will* win something for punching the monkey.
*** I am the real stylewagon
The following is from the MacQuarie dictionary. I found it quite amusing.
yahoo
noun 1. a rough, coarse or uncouth person. --interjection 2. an exclamation expressing enthusiasm or delight. --phrase 3. yahoo around, to act in a rough, loutish manner. [from Yahoo, one of a race of brutes having the form of human beings and embodying all the degrading passions of humanity, in Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift]
Number three seems to descibe their new business model to a tee.
Not to mention that the first time I loaded the page, it actually had an X10 ad on it. Mixing up a legitimate news link with an ad link would be a trivial scripting error.
Nothing to see here, folks.
I wonder how long it will be before these types of redirects are moved onto the server side, with non-obvious redirects, to force you to click onto the ad site.
If only Victoria's Secret did as much in your face advertising as X10. No one would mind pop up ads then.
I was searching for information via www.hotbot.com, and in my search I put -sex -porn, which filtered the sexual adult content BUT the ad system the hotbot used still displayed ads for adult content that could easily be called "lude". I sent them an email with a nice complaint basically saying that there advertising for thing some explicitly doesn't want to see, and they should probably display something else.
I ran the same search everyday, for a week, when it stopped doing that. They never did reply to my eMail. Imagine my surprise.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Really he should check his sources (even when it includes himself) if he wants to be taken seriously in this business.
Anyone see a retraction coming?
Wow! What a great idea! Here are some more sure fire tips off the top of my head relating to advertisment revenue:
Mix up the headlines, so when you click on a legitimate headline, it takes you to some random advertisement site instead, preferably one selling an x10 camera or helping you find your old classmates.
If you want to make even more advertising revenue, try sending the user to 10 or so advertising sites, more sites = more $$$.
Have advertisments that fly around the screen in front of what they are trying to do. They will be impressed by this technical feat.
Use lots of blinking. Nevermind that someone will probably get a seizure and sue you, blinking lights make people want to buy things.
Use really big animations and lots of them so the page will take a long time to load. Many people are impressed by lengthy download times.
I'm sure there are many others.
It sounds like Yahoo is well on their way to tricking users, er, generating more advertisment revenue.
I Heart Sorting Networks
This has been the case in news since. . . since forever.
Pretty much any corporate "press release" is really an advertisement. isn't that about 90% of so-called "business news"?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
lately? I'm so tired of the advertising blitz you get when you go to use a search engine these days. Especially the pop ups. Thank goodness for google.
Ultimately these types of advertising tactics will not prevail, as people simply will use something else. And there will always be some new site waiting to take market share away from companies who do this.
I Heart Sorting Networks
Contrast that to members of the American Society of Magazine Editors who must follow strict guidlines about the inclusion and identification of advertising content (in both paper and online publications). Their ethical standards (Here) include:
Neither links nor other references to special advertising sections, or "advertorials," shall appear in the table of contents, directory of contents, or in any listing of editorial content of an online publication.
and
The layout, design and type face of advertising pages should be distinctly different from the publication's normal layout, design and type faces.
Does anyone know if Yahoo or any other portals have been pressured to accept such codes of ethics?
squid-redir lets you block anything from anywhere, based on the URL. This rule, for instance, blocks all Flash at the Motley Fool:
It substitutes a 1x1 transparent GIF for the Flash. Something similar would work elsewhere...if you want to cut off all Flash from all sites, you can do that:
It works on any system that can run Squid and Perl, and it'll work with any browser (I usually use IE, though I also have Lynx, Konqueror, and iCab available). More info and the block list I'm currently using are available here. Here are the Yahoo-related rules I'm currently using:
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Right click on any image... say ones produced by ads.x10.com -- or maybe us.a1.yimg.com -- or everyone's favorite ads.doubleclick.net... and then you're presented with a nice option to "Block Images From This Server". Thanks Mozilla!
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
I mean... there are sites that advertise nothing BUT X10. Those crappy little cameras must be selling like hotcakes, or they're getting that adspace dirt cheap. Is it just good marketing? I know the product sucks, so they can't be relying on the business of repeat customers. X10 makes some nice products, but that camera isn't one of them. Yet its the only thing they advertise.
Maybe I should get into the business of selling garbage by advertising it via annoying ads. It certainly seems to be working well for X10. Hmmmm.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
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
...and I'm no prude. In fact, the content of the ads doesn't get the least bit of rise out of me in any way; it's way too tame for that.
BUT... I do object to having companies in general resort to using the absolutely most base and crass material in order to sell their product. It's ugly, it doesn't add to anyone's experience, it shows a lack of intelligence on their part, and (perhaps most importantly) they imply that their customers and customers-to-be can't think rationally and make all our purchasing decisions with our genitalia.
So, yes, I do object. They can do much better.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Yahoo is putting up "interstitials" - ads between link and story. So what?
sulli
RTFJ.
A simple browse through the X-10 Website will reveal this page, which details their advertising policies.
They even allow you to run a cookie which will completely disable X-10 Ads. All you have to do is click here and it X-10 ads will never again appear for the next month or so, then just click on it again to reset the cookie.
It isn't that hard folks....theres no need to bitch about it, just fix it!
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
Well, I *finally* found it, after refreshing the page several times. Right in that banner ad-shaped box and underneath the text that said "Advertisement". Incidentally, the link was also underneath the box that said "Technoscout" (the online retailer). Yeah, I can see how Yahoo really tried to slip this one past me.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
I cannot, otherwise, find any references to this practice.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
Since Rob (cmdrtaco) is making such a big deal about Yahoo advertisements that are incidently clearly marked as advertisements, I wonder what his reaction will be when Slashdot itself begins much more aggressive advertising.
For those who missed it, about two months ago Rob posted an article here explaining that Slashdot was seriously considering running large ads (kinda like CNet, etc) and possibly pop-ups, etc sometime in the first quarter of 2002 (ie. about now) too since standard banner ads aren't getting enough click-throughs.
Oh boy, it's going to be interesting to see the backlash from readers here when the BIG ANNOYING Yahoo like ads showup here on Slashdot - then perhaps Rob's article was just a red herring to test the waters so to speak to test reader reaction to Yahoo like advertising so Slashdot can see how aggressive they can be with their own advertising. Enjoy the final days of relatively ad-free Slashdot...
I had a really long, thought out post typed out. But then slashdot went belly up. Not sure exactly what happened, but for a forum which kicks microsoft in the head each time they fubar, i find it quite ironic that at least once a day i come to find that 1: im not logged in, 2: i can't post anything, and 3: a few posts disappear into a black hole, from which they never return.
Anyways.. to recap my post.. Advertising is not a sin to me - we've had to deal with misleading adverisiments in printed press for a long time. I think the group personality here lends itself to sensationalism way too easy. Me, i'd rather see 5 banner ads on CNN than have to pay for CNN. Its not 1992 anymore, and websites carry a LOT more data than before. The internet has become a part of our economy - not a novelty relegated to just a few fortunate souls in acadamia and dialup ISP patrons browsing websites served on T1's. This is the multimedia internet, and while you or I may or may not like the barrage of images and sounds, i'd be willing to bet Joe America uses it - or else it wouldnt exist. 'Tis the nature of capitalism.
I've posted a proposed end-users bill of rights in my journal. I'd love to hear more thoughts about it. I asked slashdot about it, and, somehow, the entire post was marked as "Rejected" as soon as the submit page came back up. Interesting, eh?
Not necessarily. How many people read InfoWorld, InfoWeek, Mac World, Mac Week, Computer Buyer, ... The list goes on and on of "magazines" that, as far as I can tell, are nothing but advertisements. Yet many decent magazines have gone under while these are still going strong.
It is my fear that as more venues repackage ads as news (TV news has been doing it for years), more people will just kick back and take the ads as news. I'm not sure if that's cause or effect of my cynicism. Maybe both.
Actually the free p*rn sites have been doing this for years! If this is true, then they are taking a page from the p*rn people. That is how they get people to go to specific sites. At least they haven't started sending you to the customers site.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
How did this article make it on Slashdot? Do the powers at be even research the submitted stories?
This is nothing new. Yahoo's related stories links are in fact links to other websites. Those websites, some of them, have pop up ads that show up when you go there. It's not Yahoo's doing.
As for a new story link that didn't show a story, only an ad, I couldn't find one.
~ now you know
What makes you so special that you can step to the head of the line, so long as critical mass doesn't follow your lead?
Because I can. Its my freedom of choice...I choose to live as AD free as possible.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Does anyone know if Yahoo! has ever been Slashdotted?
I remember a few years back when a "hacker" performed a DOS attack on Yahoo which was moderately successful, but I'd like to know if it's ever been brought down by "innocent" traffic.
~ now you know
Yup...
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Naturally this is the high ideal, and almost no newspaper can live up to it 100%, but anyway, history shows that sometimes some guidelines can be established and even followed, by and large.
The Web is different from paper media, of course, and different situations require different rules, but to me the it seems like we are repeating one old and well-known problem here, and could learn from the way it was solved in the past. Maybe some well informed slashdotter would care to fill in the details for all of us to learn from?
In Murphy We Turst
I work in the online news business and this is nothing new. I'd say most news stories are based on press releases, which in turn are a way for companies to advertise new products and services without actually paying for ad space. And in the slightly-more-insidious zone, there are stories called "advertisals" that are totally advertisements, reported on by the newspaper and looking just like independent reports that are paid for as a form of advertising.
It's been done by the Times, done all the time by the Post, and for many papers is the most lucrative form of advertising. Every hear of a shopper?
What you need to remember here is that newspapers are now, and have been for a while, simply vehicles for the advertisements that make the paper money. The nickle you pay covers most of the $.27 worth of paper you're buying and is just to elevate the paper above the sleazy shoppers and coupon mags in your imagination and justify a higher ad rate. When you lay out a newspaper, you lay the ads out first...content, stories and comics and columns, are just there to fill in the dead space. It's sort of cynical to think about it this way, and it's this sort of business that leads to a reluctance to make waves with articles or opinions, for fear of losing advertisers (and not readership, which isn't as important to the immediate business of the newspaper).
Hey freaks: now you're ju
It says, in huge letters at the top, "ADVERTISEMENT".
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
This is no different from multipage ad inserts that frequently crop up in Newsweek, Time, and a variety of other "news" publications. You'll see several pages near the center of the magazine, organized in the same columnar layout, the same style of headlines and photo captions, and sometimes even the same fonts as the rest of the magazine, but they'll be stories about the Horrors of an Unclean Bowl or the Heartbreak of Psoriasis or the like, instead of real news like Clinton's new three-breasted intern. And in small type, somewhere on each page, will be the word "ADVERTISEMENT," in order to allow the reader to differentiate it from all the "real" news on the rest of the rag's full-color pages.
So this is nothing really new.
. . .but definetely not new.
Magazines and newspapers have adds like these all the time. Every so often I come across an interesting headline, but about three paragraphs I start to wonder. Sure enough, there's a tiny "advertisement" on the bottom of the page.
Some of the slicker ads on tv could pass themselves of as regular tv. Anyone see the adds for blimpie sandwhiches which looked like CNN segments?
Even on radio, at least locally, there are bits that sound like "man at the field" reports, but are in fact paid ads for a car dealer or grocer.
Just my opinion here, but I thought the slashdot crowd was by definition smart enough to know when to call a spade a spade. Geeks and nerds are also supposed to be savy to pop culture, but the crowd here is so sensitive to ads as to be quite incredible. Please get a grip everyone.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
1. Ad banners are one of the main causes of the dot bomb.
:)
Um. Okay. I'll give you that because I'm too lazy to ask why.
2. Its my net connection and computer, I will determine what travels into my system.
That doesn't really stop you from being selfish.
3. Most 3rd party banner services are privacy killers.
So turn cookies off, or block cookies from those domains. No argument here.
4. If I like content, I always hit the tip jar if its available.
What if you sorta like it? Or you don't like it, but you keep coming back? And how do you know how much bandwidth/etc cost you are incurring on the content provider, and thus, whether you are providing a meaningful or suitable payment?
5. Is skipping ads with a TiVo any different?
No, but again, who says that mentality isn't responsible for why content producers are clamouring for chastity-belt right IP/copyright restrictions? You're circumventing someone's revenue stream, so it has to be made up some other way.
6. Smart web masters will set up their ads to defeat my filters. Most of the time its trivial to defeat ads. "/ads/", hello?
Ahhhh. You do it cause it's easy. You're why they keep having to rely on technology to control behaviour. Cause you're too lazy to respect the operational wishes of others. Gotcha.
7. 90% of what I filter is "ads.doubleclick.net" and "servedby.advertising.com"
I'm guessing to included this one cause you wanted to round your points off to a nice even 10?
8. Ads are ugly and the flashing animation could almost set off epileptic seizures.
And the powerlines by your house flood the water in your brain with an electromagnetic field partly responsible for the 4 times increase in cancer rates in the last 30 years, but you don't seem too concerned about that? I mean, c'mon buddy, if you wanna convince me, you can't really expect to rely on a point like this, can you? DHTML and flash is used in TONS of things other than advertising. I suppose you block every domain you ever find DHTML/javascript/flash on?
9.I don't believe in your imaginary friend so I am unlikely to put money in its plate.
Tis a poor debater, he who infers personal details of others based on their examples. I'm athiest. The plate was an example. I'll use littering then. It's okay for you to litter, so long as eveyone else doesn't? (Or, in case you are so fixated on the trees and not the forest, take any example where by you enjoy a priviledge that would be unavailable if everyone wished to take advantage of it.)
Frankly, I don't care about dumb/lazy/ignorant people. Its their lot in life to suffer.
Ah, a conservative. Funny how you all complain when it's a close friend or family member that ends up being that ignorant person. I guess the only thing I can hope for is that someone close to you suffers a little from your own actions. It is, unfortunately, ironies like that that seem to be the sole cure for conservatism, or, as I like to call it, the "I'd never be that dumb!" syndrome.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Here is the "article" yahoo linked to, although it plainly says "advertisement" right above the link. For those of you unwilling to support the ad, the article appears to be a normal review of the X-10 Camera and gives you information at the bottom to find out how to buy it.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Here's a screen shot of the ad. Notice, it does say "advertisement" above the ad.
screen shot
danec. http://www.carlsoncarlson.com/dane/
This still doesn't make banner ads, web bugs and tracking cookies ok to invade my browser as I shouldn't be forced to support bad revenue models and privacy invasion. Thats why I love the PayPal tip jars (never done the Amazon ones). I like to show my support with cold hard cash, not viewing annoying animated gifs
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Um. Okay. I'll give you that because I'm too lazy to ask why.
People thought ad banners would generate tons of revenue instead of pursuing other revenue streams. Now the internet populace expects free content and ignores ad banners (either with my method or visually ignore them).
3. Most 3rd party banner services are privacy killers.
So turn cookies off, or block cookies from those domains. No argument here.
They always track IPs across domains along with cookies like 'web bugs'.
4. If I like content, I always hit the tip jar if its available. What if you sorta like it? Or you don't like it, but you keep coming back? And how do you know how much bandwidth/etc cost you are incurring on the content provider, and thus, whether you are providing a meaningful or suitable payment?
I am not a fool, I only pay for what I like and avoid what I do not like. I am not a masochist.
9.I don't believe in your imaginary friend so I am unlikely to put money in its plate.
Tis a poor debater, he who infers personal details of others based on their examples.
I was teasing as he assumed I believe omnipotent imaginary friends. Which I do not. The last two comments were meant to round it off to 10. Not #7.
Ah, a conservative. Funny how you all complain when it's a close friend or family member that ends up being that ignorant person. I guess the only thing I can hope for is that someone close to you suffers a little from your own actions. It is, unfortunately, ironies like that that seem to be the sole cure for conservatism, or, as I like to call it, the "I'd never be that dumb!" syndrome.
I am not a conservative. Most conservatives are bible thumpers, as I do not believe in a omnipotent imaginary friend, it would be hard to label me as such. Libertarian would be closer but most are pothead screwballs so I don't associate with them. I don't see how I am responsible for the failings of dumb/lazy/ignorant people or for their care and feeding. If I choose too, that is my choice but it should never be required.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
In case you missed the ad on Yahoo, see Here:
ABC News Story.
I believe this ad is displayed with each story. Though, like others, I do not see the deception --- the text 'news stories' are labelled as an advertisement at the time.
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
this is the reason why the bbc website is good, no adverts ever, so there's certainly no chance of confusing ads with headlines. BBC News
And no it's not just for the UK, they have plenty news for the rest of the world too, American for example.
Do any of you synchronize the New York Times with AvantGo? If so, check out the first 1-3 articles. They are usually reviews of shows, product discussions, etc. Call me paranoid, but they always promotes something - even headline stories usually appear only as the second or third article. Coincidence? I don't think so. A fair price for a "free" service? Maybe so, but it's sleezy not to tell the user up front.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Fair enough. I see some of your points; in fact, we probably have similar goals, in the sense of forcing website operators to deal with the 'true' economics, where people are interacting with the product and content in the way they choose to.
;)
.com bust on the fact that technical engineers still havn't grabbed hold of the reigns yet. Some day, the tech sales people will be car salesmen, and the programmers will be like car engineers. Until this generation, on the whole, learns to force their hand, we'll continue seeing ins and outs of the technology (computer) field that don't equate properly to the true worth and value of the products. As people get smarter about computers, the sales person ability to upsell and oversell decreases, leaving the true power of innovation and creation in the hands of the developers and architects.
/too/ much about the ads in magazines. It's a young industry, but I think the right buttons are being (or slowly starting to be) pushed. :) A good example of that is popunders. It started with popovers, and we're starting to get alot more requests from advertisers to run popunders instead in order to get enough inventory to run campaigns. Believe me, it's encouraging.
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.
I do have to disagree with the banner-responsible-for-bust thing. I think that content creators over estimated people's appetites for new information. Not so much of a problem here at slashdot, but look at all the big portals, and I know you'll know (or already do) what I mean. Anyhow, that and the general empty promise of technology for the sake of technology, as it realtes to bringing wealth and happiness was a shame. I think technical people knew it, but, as usual, the people doing the selling were only looking at the amount of stupid amounts of capital they were sitting on and equating that with the true value of what they were selling. I personally blame the
> They always track IPs across domains along with cookies like 'web bugs'.
I know, I write the software. You can turn 3rd party cookies off with IE6 (i know, i know), and this will be a mandatory opt-in policy (3rd party cross domain cookies) in a few years, I promise. The entire industry is being forced to move that way, and I do agree that it's better that way. I don't like advertising, but if you can't beat em, join 'em and make it as difficult as possible for your employers to be evil. Trust me, I'm on your side, but this'll only work if people believe we can turn advertising online into a non-intrusive method of earning revenue that has the trust of people, in the same way that people don't complain
"Old man yells at systemd"
Okay, now I've seen everything. An advertiser, in a box labeled ADVERTISEMENT, is using marked up hypertext to get his message across! The horror!
Instead of the Flash ads that alternate with this ad, this sneaky individual is advertising with text and links. It's sneaky for advertisers to entice you with content.
Give me a break Slashdot. Pop-up ads are evil, banner ads are evil, Flash banner ads are evil. HTML is evil?
Personally, I think that exit-pops are wrong and should be illegal. If I choose to leave your site, you shouldn't be allowed to harass me. Pop-unders are questionable, as it sneaks the space under. Popups bother me less.
However, Slashdot is right, someone sending me 500 bytes of HTML is MUCH worse than a 30k Flash ad.
Slashdot, grow the fuck up!
Alex
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.
You are right about overkill for ads but I also use Squid for general caching but then again, I love solving problems with sledgehammers. Junkbuster is a good product for this purpose.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
It happens randomly (it's an ad, after all), in the fart^H right column, so here's a screen shot.
That does not appear to be an advertisement, even remotely.
...to see their book,
The Space Merchants coming to life in such interesting ways.
I enjoy "Art in Advertizing". I like commercials that catch my interest, that teach me something, or that are just plain funny.
"Advertizing in Art", is the logical and emotional opposite. Just like Yahoo hiding ads in "news", to subvert the emotional "idea space" that art occupies merely for the purpose of advertizing only makes me angry.
Much like the gun control organizations and mass media news who report each others "editorials" as if they're headlines, building the scam on a foundation of misrepresented opinion.
I still use the term "MokeCoke", decades after reading The Space Merchants. "Oh, don't worry, it's just a harmless alcoloid, and you could break yourself from the habit if you REALLY wanted to..."
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Let us not forget that in TV's early years, even the high and mighty bastions of Ethical News were not immune to the power of the Almighty Buck.
I refer, in part, to the ash tray with the lit Winston cigarette eternally burning on the front left of Walter Cronkite's desk during his readings of the evening news.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
This was about a year ago. Fox News did a "story" about the Subway Diet, and how Jared lost 200 pounds eating at Subway. This was about a week before the Subway commercials featuring Jared started airing on Fox.
I think that was the day I stopped watching TV news for good.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Absolutely...it read like the writer was getting blown by an Apple intern or something. ;)
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
At one point the company was changing its name and they kept it secret from the staff until the day before so they could get a free press release in the state's only daily newspaper. If it had leaked out to some of the national dailies then the local one wouldn't have run it.
When the regular marketing twit went on holiday and up-and-coming marketing person doing unpaid work experience got vastly more press releases in the paper than her. This was the beginning of the end for the poor intern -- who was religated to secretary for the almost a year she was a paid staff member.
whats with everyone bashing on yahoo for doing what the porn industry has been doing for years.. I hate it when I'm looking at porn and the next thing I know I'm hit with ads for more porns sites instead of the tasty jpgs the thumbnails lead me to believe I'd encounter..
I agree totally. It may be slightly misleading, perhaps even more misleading than one could reasonably justify. But the space to the right is not only fairly clearly labelled as an advertisement, but it's also the same space that ads always appear on Yahoo and many other sites. The only difference here is that the ad doesn't clash horribly with the rest of the site (aside from the nasty unseriffed font). It's very common practice. If you do so little reading of news on the web that you don't realize it, you need to spend some more time hardening yourself to online advertising. It's just a friggin' game at this point; every few months, you've just got to learn to filter out a new kind of ad.
Steven N. Severinghaus
The other day I was reading a news page at MSN, and when I clicked a link to view a story I was presented with the following:
The news story came up on the screen and was displayed for a few seconds (just long enough for me to get two or three sentences read) and then the entire window faded out and a full-window ad faded in to replace. There was a link in the ad page to take me back to the news story, and there was also a link to comment on the advertisement. I chose the comment link, and told them that it was the most fuck-brained advertising idea that I had ever seen, amongst other unflattering remarks.
The times, they are a changin'.
Many newspapers, especially business oriented ones, in the UK are ENTIRELY paid for ads pretending to be articles.
You get a few genuine news snippets and the rest is just 'this company is great' type news. Everyone knows it and reads them on that basis.
I assume its the same the world over with these papers?