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.
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.
Or maybe just a mistake?
I've been to yahoo news quite a bit, and occasionally, a link goes bad, but still triggers the ad.
Taco should know this too. Slashdot goes down every once in a while (usually jsut a DB thing, but it happens). Yahoo is run by humors. To err is human...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
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 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?"
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.
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.
When I saw this on the /. front page, there wern't any comments yet. I immediately clicked the link to yahoo, and I could find no ads presented as news headlines. I'm quite certain yahoo couldn't have pulled it THAT fast.
Half the headline links DO point to non-yahoo sites, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if one of those sites use those newfangled interrupting ads that make you wait 10 seconds or some crap before the actual page appears. I've seen ads like that break on more than one occasion, and I wouldn't be surprised if thats what caused the fuss.
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
If only Victoria's Secret did as much in your face advertising as X10. No one would mind pop up ads then.
Neither. The offending item in question is the section on the right hand of the page under 'Advertisement'. Sometimes it loads as a box of links that look like news. Sometimes it loads as something else that is obviously an ad. Reload the page a few times and you'll get it. (I posted this down below, but nobody seems to have noticed yet.)
I have a strong belief in the Second Amendment.
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
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