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New Online Advertising Model Riles Journalists
Wynken de Word writes "A new online advertising model linking commercial messages to individual words of editorial content aims 'to tap one of the last ad-free frontiers of the Internet -- the text of articles and message boards -- in what [company backers] bill as the ultimate contextual advertising play' according to this article at Ad Age, a leading advertising industry magazine. On the other hand, the article notes: 'If it looks like a pop-up, feels like a pop-up or interrupts like a pop-up, we might as well just assume consumers will outright hate and reject the format,' said Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer of Intelliseek, a Cincinnati research firm that tracks online consumer buzz."
This is what happens when you look at a successful advertising model, like google's AdWords, and learn the wrong lesson from it. Although I'd be willing to bet that someone sufficiently brain-addled will see "24x more clickthroughs than banner ads!" and think the idea is the best thing since the discovery of fire. Get your ads out of my content!
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Boy, if the hyperlinking habits of bloggers messed with google's pagerank algorithm, just imagine the damage this will do.
-Colin
A wiki is a collection of community written documents, with useful links to related articles. For example Wikipedia, an encyclopedia written in Wiki. See those blue links scattered on the page? They lead to articles.
Seems like they took the idea, but they sell the words! It will be annoying.
For example See the word Linux on a page. Joe user will think great, I'm going to learn about linux! But get in your face adverts for linux support services instead!
Wikis are good, Adwords are bad!
I have a fetish for traffic cones
I predict sales of the British classic Beowulf will increase by epic proportions. (Do I get bonus points for the pun?)
Speculation about where "M$" points to?
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Maybe its because I'm from a journalistic background, but I really think that the one sacred ground is the journalistic content. You can add adverts and flying noisy banners, nags and clickthroughs, and i'll still read the article.. I won't like it, but it hasn't crossed That Line. This does.
Hiding adverts inside of the content, appearing as part of the context, is disgusting. I'm sickened by the concept.
News 20 years from now: "This just in... McDonalds tastier than ever! More at 11." I only can hope something changes to destroy this trend by then.
you had me at #!
Are you kidding? I mean, If I'm reading an article, and I see part of it highlighted as a link - I'm going to assume its going to be more content for the story I am reading, maybe adding a deeper explaination or background to whatever phrase is highlighted. If I am seriously studying a story, and follow a link to somehting like "air saferty", I want to see an article on air safety, not some page with 100 flashing banner ads trying to convince me that i need to buy a 'terrorist detector 2000' for only 29.95.
The only way that I could ever see this justified AT ALL, and i still think its not cool, would be that Every ad linkd from the story is labelled "AD" somehow - either by bracketed text, or maybe the link being a different colour from normal links.
I find it very hard to see any way that this isn't a bad thing. I think it could turn in to a very bad think.
Remember - Adverts were first picked up by old paper media as a way to support the actual journalism - It would cover the costs to create and deliver the content. Now it seems we're getting closer and closer to the content being made to deliver the adverts. How long until articles are being changed to fit in certain key words from advertisers? Scary.
To a certain extent, I agree with your post, but you're missing one critical point: To a journalist, credibility is key and it's the product he's selling. Without credibility, their only career option is the Weekly World News or the New York Times (zing!). When you start to intersperse ads into journalistic content, it blurs the line between impartial reporting and paid shilling and is diametrically opposed to journalism's most basic foundations.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
If you're familiar with the Prisoner's Dilema, you can understand ad agencies... if only one ad out there is intrusive, it will bore its way into the conciousness of a huge number of people. If they all do it, people get irritated or just filter it out.
So, if everyone plays nice ads are modestly effective. If one person plays dirty, they win by a good margin. If everyone plays dirty, ads are less than modestly effective. Human nature being what it is, nobody wants to play nice if the guy playing dirty will beat them... so everyone plays dirty and everyone loses.
Also, ad agencies don't care if they ruin the quality of everything their campaigns touch, so long as the client sees enough effect from the effort to pay for the next campaign. They get their souls from the same place as most lawyers, and Darl.