Brave New Media

The building I work in also provides office space to creatures from another universe. We work upstairs; they work downstairs. We smile and nod as we pass in the lobby or on the way to the vending machines, but we have only the vaguest sense of who they are and what they do and that's just the way we like it.

We're in news. They're in advertising. We keep separate.

This is a cardinal rule in print journalism. Advertising and news have to be separate and independent of one another or the news loses all credibility.

We have ads in the paper for all the local GM dealers and we have articles in the paper covering the strike at the local GM plant. We have ads in the paper touting the latest no-down-payment, adjustable rate mortgages, and we have articles in the paper covering the effects of the subprime lending collapse. Political candidates buy campaign ads in the newspaper and the newspaper covers those political campaigns. The meaning of those articles would be lost or tainted if our readers had grounds to suspect that the selling of those ads had any influence over the substance of our reporting.

So this rule is important. Non-negotiable. Inviolable. The wall of separation between news and advertising in print journalism is a bearing wall -- poke holes in it and the whole structure will collapse.

That's how print journalism works. In the wild west frontier of "New Media" online journalism, things seem to be a bit more ... flexible.

For a look at the New Media future, take a peek at IndyStar.com. Check out the article "Big Ten honors IU's Gordon." It's an otherwise unremarkable account of Indiana's freshman guard earning conference honors in basketball. "Gordon scored 33 points against Chattanooga last week, breaking George McGinnis' school record for most points in a debut game ..."

But what's this? The word "game" there is underlined and in green text. It seems to be a link. Context and convention would suggest, if you had to guess, that this link would take readers to an article on the Indiana-Chattanooga basketball game so they could read more about Eric Gordon's auspicious Hoosiers debut and his 7-for-11 shooting from behind the arc. But hover your mouse over the link and you'll instead get a tool-tip pop-up box touting the X-Box 360. Click on the link and it takes you to the X-Box 360 site. The word "game" -- within the article -- is an ad for a gaming system.

Let's try another one: "$66M to aid IU, Kenya anti-AIDS program."

First sentence: "The federal government has awarded a $60 million five-year grant to a partnership between the Indiana University School of Medicine and a Kenyan university that fights HIV/AIDS in that country." The word "government" there is a link, taking the reader, inexplicably, to this advertising site for HP's BladeSystem c3000.

Second sentence: "Currently the program provides care for about 52,000 Kenyans who have HIV." "Program" is a link to this ad for something called AMD Virtual Experience 2.0, which I guess is a computer program, but not a computer program that has anything to do with Kenyan anti-AIDS efforts.

Fourth sentence: "Indiana University School of Medicine will also donate $6 million over the next five years to the effort, housed at the Moi University Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya." The link word there is "Kenya," which takes readers to this ad for American Express' bonus miles travel rewards program. The elliptical connection there being, I suppose, that one could use one's double SkyMiles to travel anywhere, including to Kenya. Or something.

IndyStar.com's ads are provided via Vibrant Media, which calls itself "the in-text advertising leaders." Their approach is similar to the Google Ads that you'll see here in the sidebar to the right, except of course that Vibrant's ads do not appear in a separate sidebar identified as advertising, they appear in the text itself. These ads breach the wall of separation between content and advertising. They do so proudly and zealously -- that's their selling point.

On a page dealing with their "editorial policy," Vibrant makes their case for why these embedded ads -- this seamless integration of news and advertising -- doesn't constitute a threat to the independence of news from advertising:

Vibrant In-Text Advertising cannot influence online editorial content. The IntelliTXT technology is implemented in real-time and deployed after editorial content is produced and posted online. Similar to many online advertising solutions, this is an automated process that cannot influence, or be influenced, by the editorial team within Vibrant Media's partner publications.

I appreciate this attempt to acknowledge the ethical questions involved, but I think my response to that would be, "We've already established that, madam. Now we're just haggling over price." In-text advertising, in my view, opens a door that should never be opened and blends two separate universes that should never be blended. This is Bad News for news.

But perhaps I'm overreacting. What do you think? Would you like to see your preferred online news sources -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, Talking Points Memo -- follow the Star's lead and begin embedding in-text ads in the content of their news stories? Does this development worry you at all?

Comments

[SweetCraspy]

I can't stand them. I compulsively highlight and otherwise mouseover text as I am reading, and I often get the popup. On my machine I have adblock kill them. You can block everything coming from Intellitxt or Vibrant Media very easily in Firefox, even though they are not strictly images or flash. (Maybe they are flash, I don't really know).

I think that they can affect the article, despite Vibrant Media's claim. If I'm writing an article and I know that the word "game" is likely to get us ad revenue and "competition" isn't, my word choice is suddenly a lot more important to the bottom line. So we could have a shrinking of vocabulary of the news.

Also, the risk of horribly inappropriate and offensive advertisement skyrockets. Image reading a story about hurricane Katrina and seeing an ad for raincoats.

[cjmr]

I hate both on-line advertising and the mouse-over snap-up links, and block both whenever I can.

The more work a website makes me to to block the stuff I don't want to get at the content I do, the less likely I am to visit the site at all.

Thank you for having easily blockable ads, BTW, Fred.

[Roberta Taussig]

I'm with you, Fred, that sort of advertising from within the text of the news is WRONG. Plus, it is likely to be ineffective. The irritation of having my train of thought interrupted in mid-read will make me less likely to visit the site and much less likely to have a good feeling about the advertiser.

A plague on their house.

[Jason T]

Doesn't worry me, but does bother me. I suspect we'll see this system replaced over time by systems that actually yield better results for advertisers. The "game" in the above mentioned ad really has nothing to do with the "game" in the article, so the link is just confusing and misleading (and the box appearing on mouseover is just irritating, bad design). Basically, these ads "work" when they trick people who don't know better not to click. That's just not a good way to direct people to your ads, compared to a system where ads might be among the links people are actually knowingly looking for (i.e., Google's system).

As for the ethics of the situation, though, I'm not clear on why this is so different from what goes on at a newspaper. Embedding ads in the article's space doesn't imply editorial endorsement to me so much as "Gotcha!"-style hucksterism on the part of the advertisers, kind of like making a magazine or newspaper ad that looks like a real article (which I see all the time). Moreover, the automated system described here could be argued to be even more ethical because there is no chance of a thinking, breathing human who argues from on high that content has to be changed in order to keep current advertisers.

Still, I find the fake ad links so distracting that seeing them will actually drive me to search for an article on the same topic on some other site. I hope they don't last much longer.

[Chris M.]

I read IndyStar's online sports section nearly every day, and they always hyperlink words like "game" in an awkward manner--it's been happening for awhile now. I haven't thought much about it before, but I would agree that linking to non-related consumer products within any article is distracting at best and ethically dubious at worst.

[MikeJ]

I'm always shocked when I hop on someone else's computer. If the owner is a techie I can at least count on firefox and adblock being present, but it causes me pain to get on a civilian's computer. Flashing ads everywhere you look, nonsense like these ads, argh. If I don't have time to fix the computer to browse properly, I just don't use the web.

On a related note, I can't stand the topic links that WaPo and Salon add to articles. Every instance of a proper name winds up being a hyperlink to a search results page for that name. Again, I'd go nuts with greasemonkey.

[Peter Boysen]

I've come across these ads numerous places, and they are universally annoying. Online news, editorials of any sort, reviews, and so on and so forth... almost any written article has the benefit of a virtually infinite context. A good blog post can link to various other points of interest that reinforce your argument (sure beats APA or MLA bibliographies), and yet incorporating ads in a way that guises itself as being one of these advantages is roughly the equivalent of editorial spam. It ruins the tool for everyone, and very quickly dispels any real sense of legitimacy to an article.

Ergo, all around, I agree with you.

[Retrogrouch]

I usually do not read NYT. I get most of my news from the McClatchey Washington Bureau site, which does not use in text advertising. In fact McClatchey has one of the least advertising intensive sites out there: www.mcclatchydc.com

I remain baffled that Newspapers do not understand just how easy it is to switch online to a provider with more integrity. They do not understand that blogs are popular because the authors develop integrity with their readers - something newspaper sites seem unable to do. They seem to think of blogs as amatuers in pajamas, but I know damn well I can count on Fred, or the other authors I frequent not to steer me wrong. I cannot count on Newspapers to do that - shame really. One thing newspapers should be doing is putting the editors name on the byline under the writer or news service listing on every single online piece. This would allow me to get to know each editor and develop a sense of their competence and integrity.

NYT times lost any credibility they might have had with me by publishing Judith Miller. Using In text ads is unlikely to win me back.

Besides, when I see hypertext links I expect the link to take me somewhere usefyl. PLaces that do not lose credibility. I think it shameful that people who run newspapers do not understand that their value added is credibility - and act to potect it at all costs.

[Chris Koeberle]

When I see a link like that, I never think "The author of this article endorses [the advertised product]." I normally hover the mouse over it to see what it links to (in the status bar), then recoil in horror and re-evaluate whether I want to be visiting a website that harbors such ads. And if all such links were ads, I think that would be the end of it. But some websites use similar behavior to either provide a definition of words, or provide a preview of the linked page. Because of those other uses of the same technology, I think there's something to your argument that it's hard to tell whether or not the article's author is endorsing the product.

[jon erickson]

These ads remind me of trying to thumb through a magazine and getting only the thick or recessed advertisements. You can no longer just thumb through a magazine. In fact, it is now necessary to page through 10 or 20 pages of ads just to find the table of contents so you can find the page number of the article you want to look at. It is the same way that junk mail impersonates a bill or check or christmas card to get you to openthe mail. I agree with the above poster; that I am less and less willing to visit blogs or sites that MANIPULATE my attention in the same way that I have stopped looking at magazines and refuse to patronize businesses that LIE TO ME BY MAIL.

jON

[Satchel]

WORRY me? It makes me want to run in shrieking circles while tearing my hair out by the double handful. Yikes!!!

[tom]

In-text advertising worries the hell out of me because it is absolutely a breach between content and advertising. And it will get worse (more effective and more likely to influence content. Like other commenters, I am irritated by their presence but that is irrelevant. The problem is, if they don't develop new sources of revenue, McClatchey and other print media will die. I have been reading a McClatchey paper for almost 50 years and the decline in advertising pages is astounding.

[Reverend Ref]

I'm with jon, how much longer until

every

single

word

is linked to some useless information about a product that I don't want.

If you're linking to something to support the argument, or as a way to provide more information than you want to type, that's one thing. But linking to a Hummer ad because the story mentions hummingbirds is just obnoxiously asinine.

For what my opinion is worth.

[Chrissl]

I've only recently encountered these links for the first time, and they strike me mostly as highly annoying because they are so STUPID. Whatever engine inserts these links pays absolutely no attention whatever to context, relevance, or anything except the spelling of the individual word -- so they are anywhere from somewhat irrelevant to wildly, hilariously irrelevant to the text I'm actually trying to read.

Unfortunately the low incidence of hilariously irrelevant ones means they're not even worthwhile for the entertainment value.

Now that I'm aware these silly links exist, it only reinforces the habit I've already developed to check the status bar for where any nonobvious link actually GOES before clicking on it.

Perhaps this technique will die the death of banner ads, which have such a low click-through rate that they're almost completely ineffective as advertising....

[LL]

I work in advertising and I'm unfamiliar with this. You want people to click on ads knowing where they're going (ie, your commerce site) and wanting to go there, not pissed off because they thought they were getting information they needed and instead ended up on your site. Believe it or not, advertisers don't want to piss off potential customers. When you annoy people, they rarely want to buy stuff from you.

[Dahne]

I find those instantly identifyable, since they tend to look much different from "real" links, and I already know that mainstream media doesn't do the thing with linking relevant information through logical or clever placement like anybody at all comfortable with web communication does.

I don't bother with ad filters beyond the basic pop-up blockers, because my head filters it out on its own. As soon as something is idetified as "ad", I know there's no reason not to ignore it.

Those in-text links are just a particularly tacky way of doing things. One of those things that sounds brilliant to people who have no idea how the internet or the people on it really work. When I see a source that uses it, I take them less seriously. But then, I don't consider most mainstream media credible in any but the most rudimentary of ways. I go to them for bare facts, and skim past the painfully smug bad writing, and the ignorance it implies. If I want someone to actually process the facts, I go to a blog.

[hf]

this is an automated process that cannot influence, or be influenced, by the editorial team within Vibrant Media's partner publications.

Did he just confess that editors have no effect on the article, or that the article text has no effect on the ads within it?

[MatthewF]

Thank you for having easily blockable ads, BTW, Fred.

Wow, such blatant assholism. "I don't value your content enough for you to make a half-cent off the ads I see on your site, Fred, so I block them." And you say it with such pride! Amazing.

On topic, the inline ads are very irritating, much more so than any other type of ad, including the incredibly annoying flashing ones.

[Nix]

hf, he just confessed that his ad-insertion engine is so stupid that the ads it inserts have no relevance to the articles they're inserted within. Even more dangerous than adverts that may influence authors' word choice are adverts that may influence authors' word choice, piss off users violently, and *don't work*.

One subscription publication I subscribe to recently tried activating these things for non-subscribers. The firestorm of criticism was so intense and prolonged, and the links were so blatantly irrelevant, that the experiment lasted, I think, four days.

Would that everyone else was as sensible.

[bad Jim]

Compared to perfumed inserts in advertising supplements? Not even close. Not even close.

[Nenya]

Oh, so THAT'S what those buggers are. I've been quite puzzled lately to see links like that in a few places, that didn't seem particularly relevant to the topic of the article--I'm used to the relevant, useful kind, where the link means "see also: this opinion here" or "for more information, or for what Jane said, go here". Sometimes even just a link to the appropriate Wikipedia article can be very useful. But this stuff? EURGH BLECH.

(Or, what Dahne said at 12:17. And what ze said about the mainstream media, too. Only for the facts, and bearing in mind that the facts they report may be wrong, too, do I usually read regular newspapers online.)

[Nenya]

bad Jim: I always kind of liked the perfumed strips in ladies' magazines when I was a kid, since I never got to buy perfume of my own at age 11. But I can see how they would be quite annoying to those who weren't looking forward to them.

[g]

IntelliTXT has been around for quite a while. I've yet to encounter a reader who doesn't loathe it. They go to considerable lengths (or at least they used to; I haven't looked recently) to defeat attempts at blocking them. And yet websites keep using them.

It's a nice example of the law of unintended consequences. Almost all web advertising these days (including IntelliTXT, I think) is sold "per click" rather than "per impression", which you'd think would encourage advertisers to make ads that offer things readers are actually interested in. And some of them do. But Vibrant Media have chosen a different approach: to hell with relevant or useful advertising, just get people to click on their ads by accident. Ugh.

[Ben]

I've never, ever seen one of these IntelliTXT ads that actually linked a keyword to an advertiser in a sensible way. I can't imagine that advertisers get much value out of them.

[KnightHawk]

I was eighteen when I saw those planes hit the twin towers on the news. Before then, I pretty much ignored the news, because it didn't seem relevant to me. From then until we went into iraq, I was a news junkie, newspaper, online sources, hell, I was so hooked on Fox news it wasn't funny.

But then I noticed what everyone else did: the news wasn't doing its job, it was just repeating the party line so that the news networks could get their place at the table, and, in some ways worse, would go galavanting off for months to speculate about things no one with half a mind should give two shits about (Anna Nicole's baby? Oj? Anyone?). Don't get me started on their wild speculatng about dirty bombs, the supposed attack on the golden gate bridge, how you should stay home on halloween because there's this email circling threatening a terrorist attack, and the generalized fear mongering.

After the news in general's complete failure to take a serious hard look at the Bush administration's plans and reasons for going to Iraq, I completely lost faith in them. So shit like IntelliTXT doesn't worry me--it's just another symptom of the larger lack of credability and loss of contact with the larger world that the mainstream media suffers from.
Love. Peace. Metallica.

[CapnAndy]

Those hover-ads are asinine, intrusive, poorly aimed... and blocked. So who cares?

[cjmr]

MatthewF,

Huh? Fred doesn't get paid unless we actually click on the ads, right? Since I never click on advertising, what does it matter if I adblock?

[ako]

Does Fred get paid when we click on stuff? SixApart runs Typepad, and I was under the impression that they got the money, and Fred got cheaper or free blogging for having ads at all.

[Richard Hershberger]

I regard these ad links as part of a broader phenomenon of poorly conceived links. Wikipedia has this institutionalized. An extreme example is that a date such as "May 4, 1980" will be two links, one to a page listing stuff that happened on May 4, and another that lists stuff that happened in 1980. The second one might be useful for providing context, but for the life of my I can't guess what anyone imagines the purpose of the first one could possibly be. But clearly there are hordes of editors furiously adding these links and congratulating themselves for making the world a better place.

Hyperlinks are the web equivalent of endnotes. Often endnotes are bare citations. Read a book like this and you learn to ignore them unless you have some particular reason to check the citation. Others provide useful or entertaining parenthetical asides. Reading a book like this I will keep a bookmark on the correct endnote page as I read.

I trained myself long ago to ignore hyperlinks just like I ignore many endnotes. Whether the link is to an ad or to some other irrelevancy doesn't really matter.

[Geds]

I first ran in to IntelliTXT when my mother's computer was infected with a virus that plastered those things on every single website. It even stuck them in to email messages. I can't help but associate them with viruses and adware and whatnot. At least they're generally easily distinguishable from hyperlinks, though.

SweetCraspy: You can block everything coming from Intellitxt or Vibrant Media very easily in Firefox, even though they are not strictly images or flash.

Um, how exactly does one do that? I recently switched over from Avant to Firefox and the one place where I don't like Firefox as much is in the adblocking. But if it can get rid of those things...

Of course that won't solve the problem that my primary internet time is on IE 6.0 at work. There's only so much I can do with that.

[cjmr]

You may be right, ako. My husband's LJ has an ad at the top. In exchange for placing the ad, LJ gives him additional features on his blog that he'd otherwise have to pay for. Since we have no control over the content of the ad, I decided to pay for my LJ. (I just checked and he has his own ad blocked on his own machine.)

[Geds]

Often endnotes are bare citations. Read a book like this and you learn to ignore them unless you have some particular reason to check the citation.

You obviously aren't a historian...

[cjmr]

An extreme example is that a date such as "May 4, 1980" will be two links, one to a page listing stuff that happened on May 4, and another that lists stuff that happened in 1980. The second one might be useful for providing context, but for the life of my I can't guess what anyone imagines the purpose of the first one could possibly be.

Well, it's fun for making blog posts of 'historical things that happened on my birthday'. (Not that my birthday is May 4.)

[cjmr]

Geds, do you have the adblock widget for Firefox installed? It's a download, not part of Firefox.

[peatey]

intelliTXT on your paper website worries me because it is an ad service that pisses off readers. The two reasons Google gets so much ad revenue is because the ads are 1. highly relevant to the content, and 2. unobtrusive to the reader, so only the reader who is looking for ad service notices them. IntelliTXT is definitely not relevant (using the same word but loses the context) and definitely abusive of the user.

It's services like IntelliTXT that make visitors violently want to block ads, not google. Like Bush and the neo-con theory, incompetence ruins all potential merit of any policy that any further discussion of the theory is useless, even if it is likely that the policy is also wrong on theory.

http://www.fibble.org/archives/000462.html
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

[Geds]

Geds, do you have the adblock widget for Firefox installed?

That's kind of what I figured...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

If this is the add-on that will block IntelliTXT, thank you peatey. (I can't check right now, as I'm at work...)

[Iain]

I've never been particularly impressed with the relevance of Google ads, but at least they are discreet.

As for advertisers influencing editorial decisions, I'm afraid the horses have left the barn. The advertisers own the media, except for a handful of independent newspapers. At any rate, that's my impression. I suspect a large part of the public shares it.

[Stan Taylor]

I was going to make the same comment about Google ads that peatey makes above.

But as for VibrantMedia's 'Editorial Policy' that you mention above, I'm not concerned about the ads influencing the authors themselves. I get that part.

It's the mixing of ads and article that I object to. On the web, hyperlinks are considered part of the text, usually attributable to the author. VibrantMedia is violating the reader's trust of the author by essentially injecting their junk links into the author's text. If the writer does use hyperlinks in the article, then it becomes damn hard to differentiate writer's content from advertising-injected content (I know--from hearsay anyway; I'm another Firefox/AdBlock users--that the junk links look different from real hyperlinks, but I think the principle still stands).

[Richard Hershberger]

"You obviously aren't a historian..."

Professional interest qualifies as having a particular reason to check the citations. I am a fairly serious amateur historian of early baseball. When I read a book within that field I refer to the endnotes constantly. When I read a book on, say, the English Civil War I am much less likely to. Something might catch my attention, but I don't know the literature well enough for there to be any reason to look at every note.

[Geds]

I know--from hearsay anyway; I'm another Firefox/AdBlock users--that the junk links look different from real hyperlinks, but I think the principle still stands

IntelliTXT crap is generally green and usually has two lines under it. I think that's the convention it's supposed to use to differentiate itself from hyperlinks across the board.

Professional interest qualifies as having a particular reason to check the citations.

Yeah. I was just messing, anyway.

There's plenty of stuff I run in to where I have no idea what to make of the footnotes that are just citations. In books/articles that deal with history, mythology, religion or politics I compulsively check notes to get an idea of the spin or comprehensiveness of the research. I've also found that I hate endnotes and those reduce the likelihood that I'll check the author's sources, especially if everything is gathered in one place at the end of the book.

I think I used endnotes instead of footnotes on one paper in college, then got an object lesson a week later while peer reviewing on how annoying they are. I had a strange urge to apologize to my professor.

[Brandi]

Opera has some adblocking, but does anyone know of a good adblocker for it? I use a HOSTS file, but that's really a scorched-earth approach...

[balt]

The debate of contextualizing ads is far from unique to the digital age, and the divide in print media is far from clean (think the special Fall Fashion section in this Sunday's paper -- featuring articles on the fashion show at the mall last week and filled with ads for stores at that same mall).

One BIG difference though, is the merger in blogs of the editorial and advertising departments that allow newspapers to seperate (or pretend to seperate) advertising and editorial decisions into a single person. Assuming (and it may not be a good assumption) that Fred gets the revenue for the ads on his blog, does that impact his editorial decision-making process? Does it matter if it does?

[hf]

The advertisers own the media, except for a handful of independent newspapers. At any rate, that's my impression.

There is this little problem, which makes the Wall seem irrelevant.

[hapax]

Assuming (and it may not be a good assumption) that Fred gets the revenue for the ads on his blog, does that impact his editorial decision-making process?

Well, that would explain the 6-part series on the Gay Hatin' Gospel. Nothing brings in the big advertising dollars like sex 'n' religion. Woo Hoo!

[Geds]

Not just sex, hot man-on-man action.

That's where the money is in political blogging.

[Alexis]

No. These ads suck so much that eventually they'll just disappear. In the meantime, I doubt they're influencing anything.

[paradoxbomb]

I hope everyone realizes just how many sites on the net that you use every day are supported by advertising. Google, Yahoo, DailyKos, Digg, Reddit, Slashdot -- just to name a few -- are all supported by advertising. Some are definitely worse than others (IntelliTXT and those execrable flash walk-across-what-you're-reading ones in particular), but they're all keeping the heavy costs of maintaining and serving websites manageable. So block or disparage them if you want, but realize that without them the Internet wouldn't be what it is.

[Spalanzani]

Fred: You know, I think this particular type of ad is very dumb.
Everybody: Yeah, that particular type of ad is very dumb.
paradoxbomb: But if there weren't any ads, the Earth would explode and everyone would die!!!

[paradoxbomb]

Yup, that's exactly what I wrote.

[MikeJ]

So block or disparage them if you want, but realize that without them the Internet wouldn't be what it is.

Whooo hoo! We can only hope. It was much better before we were drowned in ads and you damned kids got on my lawn.

And peaty, yes, that's the adblocker you want, but you also want to get the fliterset.g updater. It'll help keep your blocklist up to date. I don't know if it is what is blocking the intellitxt ads or some other piece of voodoo I have running. Adblock will do it, you just need to give it the right recipe.