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Sponsored Content Watch

Jul 3 2014 @ 12:00pm

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A reader writes:

I noticed today that “partner” has invaded the Cheat Sheet at the Daily Beast. When youScreen Shot 2014-07-03 at 1.41.33 AM moved from the Atlantic to DB, I loved the Cheat Sheet as a quick-glance headline source for important news before I delved into more long reads and blogs. Today, they have the #8 spot as an ad for the National Geographic channel special on the 1990s, in addition to all the banner and sidebar ads for the same. It’s bastardizing something unique about their website and a remarkably stupid idea. Why would people who are wanting to read the headlines very quickly, waste their time with labeled “partner” ? We just keep scrolling. They keep missing the point.

Thank you for not seeking to monetize your ideas in such a crass way. I’m a proud subscriber to the Dish and hope that you can remain independent of advertising.

My favorite part of their disclosure? “This content was not necessarily written or created by the Daily Beast editorial team.” It reminds me of one surreal discussion I once had with the Beast’s ad department. I wondered why they couldn’t find an advertiser for the View From Your Window. After a bit, they came back and wondered if we could change the feature to “The View From Your Hotel Window”. There might be a sponsor for that.

Speaking of which, how about this for irony:

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Why not just leave out the middle man and ask GE themselves?

In The Dish
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Sponsored Content Watch

Jun 24 2014 @ 5:44pm

A reader points up north:

Your watchful eye on the metastasizing world of advertorials and so-called “native ads” is an essential counterpoint to what’s becoming an alarming trend, even outside of US borders. Case in point: a series of unmarked oil industry advertorials that recently made it to print in newspapers owned by Canada’s right-leaning Postmedia. Hawk-eyed readers were able to connect the dots and alerted Advertising Standards Canada (whose webpage is emblazoned with the motto “Truth in Advertising Matters”). After a review, the organization decided not to issue a ruling.

An increasingly desperate oil sands industry is pulling out all the stops to curry public favour with Keystone on wobbly ground and the Northern Gateway pipeline being met with fierce public opposition. It’s discouraging to find that all too many media organizations are willing to undermine the tireless work of their reporters with deceptive advertising practices.

A Canadian economist, Robyn Allan, tried to write a rebuttal to a piece about the oil industry that she read in a Postmedia newspaper:

[She] took issue with the economic claim [that Canada is losing $50-million a day due to limited export markets]. When she submitted an opinion piece in response, she was informed it couldn’t be run because the article she was responding to was actually a paid advertisement.

It wasn’t labeled as such; yet, as our reader noted, Advertising Standards Canada declined to censure Postmedia, which owns nearly every broadsheet daily in the country. Then it happened again – another paid pro-oil-industry piece not labeled as such. It gets better:

Read On

In The Dish ,
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Sponsored Content Watch

May 9 2014 @ 12:19pm

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Dish readers remain vigilant:

It’s official: the New York Times takes sponsored posts on its regular website. Screenshot attached. Same typeface – pretty sneaky!

How long does it take you to spot it? Update from a reader:

Umm no, it’s not the same typeface for either header or blurb. The font size is about the same but the “PAID POST” is slightly bolder, and the blurb is sans serif whereas blurbs for non-sponsored content is with serifs. That being said, however, due to the font size being the same size and the presentation on the page itself, it does lend itself to deception, despite the slight differences. The sneakiness is putting just enough differences that eagle-eyed readers would spot it but to the casual reader, the difference isn’t enough to highlight that it’s sponsored.

In The Dish, Updates
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Sponsored Content Watch: “Propaganda, If You Will”

May 1 2014 @ 10:01am

Greater Israel edition:

Zionists are having to think of new, more subtle ways to defend the occupation and dispossession of Palestinians. A new battlefield has opened up in an unlikely place: BuzzFeed, the fast-growing soft Screen Shot 2014-04-29 at 2.32.16 PMnews website that rose to prominence by disseminating videos of cute animals, but now has pretensions to serious journalism.

A group called reThink Israel has paid for eleven articles on BuzzFeed in the last two months. The content of the articles — all written in the typical BuzzFeed “listicle” style — is at first glance relatively harmless and apolitical. One is headlined “12 Neighborhoods That’ll Stop You In Your Tracks.” It features photos of trendy neighborhoods in such cities as London, Montreal and Melbourne, along with “Tel Aviv, Israel” and “Haifa, Israel.” Another article promises readers “12 Sounds From Israel You’ll Soon Be Obsessed With,” and then there is “17 reasons Jaffa is the Brooklyn of Israel.” …

The financier of reThink Israel is the American casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

Read On

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Sponsored Content Watch

Apr 25 2014 @ 12:21pm

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Alex Mayyasi wonders why that those “recommended links” you see appended to so many stories on legitimate news sites seem to have gotten a pass in the sponsored-content debate:

On one hand, that might be understandable. Taboola links don’t seem nearly as deceptive as a full article. Over email, Taboola CEO Adam Singolda pointed out that companies like Facebook and Google host links or advertisements from Moneynews and the Aftershock Survival Summit. This author’s daily e-mail from The New York Times includes ads for financial products and mortgage sites just as scammy. Is Taboola sponsored content any different from trashy ads?

But in the case of scammy ads, the difference between an ad and a sponsored link is crucial. The illusion of journalistic integrity provided by the news publishers that host these “headlines” is key to the sale of these useless financial products, scam diet pills, and shady mortgage deals. “With Outbrain Amplify,” Outbrain tells customers, “links to your content appear as recommendations on the web’s largest content publishers including sites like Wall Street Journal, Reuters & People.com.” Bloomberg News, The Atlantic, and the other publications hosting sponsored links are not just hosting advertising for these deceptive sales pitches; they are enabling them.

And the beat goes on.

(Image from Politico)

In The Dish
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Sponsored Content Watch

Mar 26 2014 @ 3:10pm

A new low: journalism guru, Jim Romenesko – the kind of guy who once would have trashed this kind of thing – runs a sponsored post from the Koch brothers. Update: A reader points out that Romenesko has been posting sponsored content for nearly a year now.

In The Dish
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Sponsored Content Watch

Mar 21 2014 @ 12:32pm
by Chris Bodenner

A reader sees it moving to TV:

With all the discussion about The Atlantic, Buzzfeed and others blurring the line between journalism and sponsored content, I thought this might add to the discussion. Robert Feder is a longtime Chicago media journalist who has moved from his spot at the major papers in town to the blogosphere. This afternoon, he posted this blog post about the disturbing trend of the local Fox affiliate (and to a lesser extent, WGN TV) is airing segments during their news programming that are paid for by companies looking to promote their products. At the end of segments, a brief “this segment was sponsored by [company name]” is all that tips viewers that what they have already watched is not news and should be viewed with a degree of suspicion.

This, to me, is every bit if not more disgusting than the proliferation of sponsored print content, as it is much less obvious than even the best camouflaged sponsored piece on Buzzfeed. Viewers should not have to watch every segment with suspicion that it is a paid piece in case such a revelation is made at the end of a four minute interview. I assume that if it’s happening here, it’s happening elsewhere, and that both chills and repulses me.

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Sponsored Content Watch

Feb 26 2014 @ 3:41pm

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National Review joins the movement disguising ads as articles.

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Sponsored Content Watch

Feb 18 2014 @ 1:45pm

From the reader who flagged the tweet:

I can’t tell whether it’s serious, but I can tell that people are seriously pissed:

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But the beat will go on … and the press won’t write about it.

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Sponsored Content Watch

Sep 13 2013 @ 12:12pm

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A reader writes:

Huff post currently has a sponsored post about PRO-natural gas. They are always posting anti-natural gas stuff on the website, and that’s clearly where they stand. But they still accepted sponsorship for something that goes against their supposed values.

Maybe that’s a brilliant new ad strategy: take a position, unnerve your opponents, and then get them to pay you to run their views in a form that looks almost exactly the same as regular editorial copy. The only flaw in this strategy is running your own position in the first place without getting money for it. Maybe the next phase of sponsored content will go to the next level: websites entertaining bids for paid “articles” for any point of view whatsoever. Then you can let the editorial staff go. The business side can always manage the pro and con paid pieces … and would anyone notice anyway?

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