Remember last year when the blogosphere was up in arms about Marquis? Oh, if you weren’t around back then that company paid bloggers to write about its company. Some bloggers got paid almost $1000 to write about them. Seemed sleazy, right?
But no one complains about bloggers taking a similar deal from advertising companies like Google and Chitika.
The funny thing is that Marqui was giving 100% of its marketing dollars straight to bloggers without any intermediaries. Now they can buy the same kind of exposure by using an advertising system like Google, Chitika, Yahoo, but only a percentage of their dollar spent goes to the blogger. The rest goes to Google or Chitika or Yahoo or, soon, MSN.
One advantage to the AdSense model is that bloggers don’t need to change their editorial, although there is a subtle effect there too (if you write about topics, like Camcorders, that advertisers are more willing to pay for advertising for, you’ll make a lot more money, so if you’re in it for the money there’s a pressure to give the advertising networks what they want).
Anyway, I just noticed that the blogosphere looked very critically at the advertising Marquis was doing, but hasn’t looked critically at the other advertising that is now appearing on blogs (and will intensify over the next year — Google is even paying a referral fee for bloggers to get their blogging friends into using its advertising system).
Well, I was one of Marqui’s paid bloggers, and I see a lot of misrepresentation of the program here.
Yes, we had to write about Marqui. No, we didn’t have any restrictions on what we wrote–it didn’t have to be positive, and often it wasn’t.
Yes, it had to be on our existing blog, but no, it didn’t have to masquerade as “standard” content–and most of the people who participated in the experiment were *extremely* transparent in their marking of the content–visually and verbally.
Michael, you say “Marqui was so far over the line that most of us didn’t even consider it a grey area.” I’d argue with the “most of us” part of that statement. Clearly there were people who saw it as a Bad Thing. But there were far more who saw it as an interesting experiment.
FWIW, here’s the post that Molly Holzschlag wrote when she decided not to continue with Marqui.
Robert,
There’s an even bigger scandal than Marquis that nobody seems to have picked up on.
I’ve been a regular reader of Gizmodo, the gadget blog that’s part of the Gawker empire. They have a very insidious practice of inserting “advertorial” content — bought and paid for by advertisers — and passing it off as genuine editorial material.
Case in point: Gizmodo recently had a series of posts about a “contest” to give away a Shure earphone. It invited readers to submit emails, and supposedly generated 10,000 emails from users begging for the pair of crappy headphones. Links…
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/contests/shure-e3g-earphones-giveaway-133913.php
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/contests/shure-e3g-giveaway-nonsense-133967.php
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/announcements/shure-e3g-giveaway-winner-david-k-134532.php
Now, they’ve started a similar “contest” for a pair of crappy headphone clips. (Basically, plastic paperclips.)
http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/announcements/earbudclip-giveaway-finalists-your-turn-to-vote-136148.php
The Sure people paid big money to Gizmodo for these inclusions. On the “for advertisers” page, it notes that it has conducted all sorts of stealth advertising, ranging “from exclusive sponsorships of categories to custom contests.” It cites a similar giveaway for HP iPods as a successful example.
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/announcements/advertising-with-gizmodo-008027.php
It’s insulting that they will attempt to pass these paid advertisements off as editorial content, without any notice to the reader. They’ve lost all credibility with me.
Robert,
There’s an even bigger scandal than Marquis that nobody seems to have picked up on.
I’ve been a regular reader of Gizmodo, the gadget blog that’s part of the Gawker empire. They have a very insidious practice of inserting “advertorial” content — bought and paid for by advertisers — and passing it off as genuine editorial material.
Case in point: Gizmodo recently had a series of posts about a “contest” to give away a Shure earphone. It invited readers to submit emails, and supposedly generated 10,000 emails from users begging for the pair of crappy headphones. Links…
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/contests/shure-e3g-earphones-giveaway-133913.php
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/contests/shure-e3g-giveaway-nonsense-133967.php
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/announcements/shure-e3g-giveaway-winner-david-k-134532.php
Now, they’ve started a similar “contest” for a pair of crappy headphone clips. (Basically, plastic paperclips.)
http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/announcements/earbudclip-giveaway-finalists-your-turn-to-vote-136148.php
The Sure people paid big money to Gizmodo for these inclusions. On the “for advertisers” page, it notes that it has conducted all sorts of stealth advertising, ranging “from exclusive sponsorships of categories to custom contests.” It cites a similar giveaway for HP iPods as a successful example.
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/announcements/advertising-with-gizmodo-008027.php
It’s insulting that they will attempt to pass these paid advertisements off as editorial content, without any notice to the reader. They’ve lost all credibility with me.
Liz, I don’t think anyone misrepresented the Marquis issue. Nobody said people had to write about it positively. But you DID have to write about it, which is more editorial influence than ANY ad network that Scoble linked to has over a blog.
Liz, I don’t think anyone misrepresented the Marquis issue. Nobody said people had to write about it positively. But you DID have to write about it, which is more editorial influence than ANY ad network that Scoble linked to has over a blog.
Jeremy, I would argue that since the posts about Marqui were clearly labelled as “sponsored posts” they actually had relatively little “editorial influence.”
I know quite a few people making money off of adsense who carefully select their titles and vocabulary for posts to maximize their revenue. It’s disingeuous to say that’s not editorial influence. And it’s significantly less transparent.
My 11-year-old son got advice from a number of bloggers making big money in the “I blog about things I love and make money doing it” space–some of those folks sent him ebooks on maximizing your revenue with adsense. Both the advice and the books were filled with suggestions for how to craft your content so as to increase your adsense hits. He chose to ignore the advice, because he didn’t want to change the way he wrote…but it’s clear that not everyone makes that choice.
Whether the advertising network is dictating content is a red herring here, I think. That wasn’t the case in either scenario. The bigger question is “did the blogger’s content change because of the revenue generating activity”–and I think the answer is yes in both cases.s My argument is that in the case of Marqui bloggers that influence was completely transparent, whereas in the case of Adsense-supported blogs it’s far more insidious.
Jeremy, I would argue that since the posts about Marqui were clearly labelled as “sponsored posts” they actually had relatively little “editorial influence.”
I know quite a few people making money off of adsense who carefully select their titles and vocabulary for posts to maximize their revenue. It’s disingeuous to say that’s not editorial influence. And it’s significantly less transparent.
My 11-year-old son got advice from a number of bloggers making big money in the “I blog about things I love and make money doing it” space–some of those folks sent him ebooks on maximizing your revenue with adsense. Both the advice and the books were filled with suggestions for how to craft your content so as to increase your adsense hits. He chose to ignore the advice, because he didn’t want to change the way he wrote…but it’s clear that not everyone makes that choice.
Whether the advertising network is dictating content is a red herring here, I think. That wasn’t the case in either scenario. The bigger question is “did the blogger’s content change because of the revenue generating activity”–and I think the answer is yes in both cases.s My argument is that in the case of Marqui bloggers that influence was completely transparent, whereas in the case of Adsense-supported blogs it’s far more insidious.
While most of the Marqui bloggers were pretty transparent about it, I for one found their *RSS feeds* confusing, there was usually little but a category name to indicate I was about to read a Marqui post.
Most of the Marqui bloggers did a fine job separating things, other than that. I’m glad most of them stopped, because Marqui doesn’t interest me, but I wasn’t ever offended by any blogger. In particular, I found Molly’s comments throughout very interesting.
I apologize for saying “most of us” considered them far over the line, there was actually quite a bit of debate and my “us” was a rather biased group.
Most AdSense users don’t bend their content to fit the ads, but I’m sure some do. Heck, I’ve done it – I have 20 or 30 weblog ideas, and the ones I am actually starting first are those that can make money. If that’s insidious then call me insidious.
The important thing is that ads are clearly marked as ads. I don’t think Marqui did enough to mandate that (although most of the bloggers did it themselves) and I think that was the core of the issue.
There’s lots of anti-advertising sentiment out there, and anyone with a new advertising idea needs to tread lightly. It reminds me of the dreaded “commercialization of the internet” years ago and of the complaints I got when I added ad banners to a site in 1996.
At any rate it’s an interesting world of grey areas, which makes it harder to divide the world into good guys and bad guys. Maybe we’re all good, except the spammers…
While most of the Marqui bloggers were pretty transparent about it, I for one found their *RSS feeds* confusing, there was usually little but a category name to indicate I was about to read a Marqui post.
Most of the Marqui bloggers did a fine job separating things, other than that. I’m glad most of them stopped, because Marqui doesn’t interest me, but I wasn’t ever offended by any blogger. In particular, I found Molly’s comments throughout very interesting.
I apologize for saying “most of us” considered them far over the line, there was actually quite a bit of debate and my “us” was a rather biased group.
Most AdSense users don’t bend their content to fit the ads, but I’m sure some do. Heck, I’ve done it – I have 20 or 30 weblog ideas, and the ones I am actually starting first are those that can make money. If that’s insidious then call me insidious.
The important thing is that ads are clearly marked as ads. I don’t think Marqui did enough to mandate that (although most of the bloggers did it themselves) and I think that was the core of the issue.
There’s lots of anti-advertising sentiment out there, and anyone with a new advertising idea needs to tread lightly. It reminds me of the dreaded “commercialization of the internet” years ago and of the complaints I got when I added ad banners to a site in 1996.
At any rate it’s an interesting world of grey areas, which makes it harder to divide the world into good guys and bad guys. Maybe we’re all good, except the spammers…
[...] Robert Scoble posted over the weekend about whether there should be more debate or critique over the use of ad programs like Adsense or Chitika by bloggers (as there was earlier in the year with Marquis paying bloggers to post about them. His post caused a bit of a stir among some publishers who didn’t feel the comparison was fair. [...]
Let us think in theory:
If I was getting into the megazine business and I had a choice of starting Robb Report or Third World Review, assuming, in theory, I would get the same number of subscribers for both, which would I choose?
If I want to develop a charity magazine, I’ll go with the Third World Review and call up Bill for a donation.
But if I want something that makes money, while informing my readers about the latest and greatest luxury, so I can continue doing so every month, I’m going with Robb Report.
Let us think in theory:
If I was getting into the megazine business and I had a choice of starting Robb Report or Third World Review, assuming, in theory, I would get the same number of subscribers for both, which would I choose?
If I want to develop a charity magazine, I’ll go with the Third World Review and call up Bill for a donation.
But if I want something that makes money, while informing my readers about the latest and greatest luxury, so I can continue doing so every month, I’m going with Robb Report.
I still Adsense.
A Nice thread over at ProBlogger on an interesting topic: Hypocritical Bloggers. It struck a bit of a chord with me, probably because… well, I am one myself.
Darren weighs in with his good thoughts in response to Robert Scoble’s post. W…
[...] Darren weighs in with his good thoughts in response to Robert Scoble’s post. Which led me to some thoughts of my own. Advertising is slowly disguising itself and seeping into the entire internet and threatens to eventually evolve into an indecipherable melting pot of ads and content. [...]
Hey-
Hasn’t anyone really read about why the heck any of these companies are doing this. Google, Yahoo, Chitika, Kontera, and everyone else plus their momma that has an affiliate style program wants a piece of the traffic *YOU* can get *their* advertisers in front of. It’s that simple, no smoke and mirrors. Google and the other companies would rather throw folks that get traffic a bone and not the whole meal rather than spend the time and *more* money to dig it up themselves.
No need to call folks hypocrites or anything like that. Everyone jumps on something that makes money. It’s just common sense.
Hey-
Hasn’t anyone really read about why the heck any of these companies are doing this. Google, Yahoo, Chitika, Kontera, and everyone else plus their momma that has an affiliate style program wants a piece of the traffic *YOU* can get *their* advertisers in front of. It’s that simple, no smoke and mirrors. Google and the other companies would rather throw folks that get traffic a bone and not the whole meal rather than spend the time and *more* money to dig it up themselves.
No need to call folks hypocrites or anything like that. Everyone jumps on something that makes money. It’s just common sense.
Robert:
Thanks for raising the topic, but I must disagree with you that the blogging community has not looked critically at this issue. Since I began blogging a year ago, I’ve watched this debate grow with each passing month.
At times, it’s taken the form of a debate between “making money with a blog” vs “making money because of a blog.” In fact, here’s a ITConversations link dated nov 2004 which speaks to that debate: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail284.html.
More recently, people like Seth Godin have raised the issue more specifically related to Adsense here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/11/monetize_this.html and Ramit Sethi here: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/archives/2005/10/heres_a_pattern.html.
And I’m sure there are plenty more. Lately, it seems to be the hot button issue around the blogosphere.
Whether we as the blogging community look at this issue critically or not, I believe, is irrelavant. You know as well as anyone else that if a blog is poorly written or written without passion for the subject, people won’t read it, and the blog won’t survive. It doesn’t matter if the the blogger runs ads on their site or not.
But the other fact is this. Blogging has more than one business model. And those bloggers who provide
*valuable* information on a topic about which they’re passionate deserve to be compensated for it if they so choose. Just like you.
You can’t expect to create a medium like blogging, evangelize it far and wide and expect millions of people to use that medium only in the way you see fit. That’s just arrogance.
Yes, it’s great to express a sense of responsibility for how the medium develops, but in the end, it all comes down to the realities of the content market. If Jeremey and the crew at b5media start writing to *primarily* sell ads rather than writing to *primarily* serve readers, where do you think they’ll be in a year? They know that. Still, it’s not why they blog.
They blog, I suppose, because here’s a business model that allows people to do something about which they’re passionate AND be compensated for it. Is that not the holy grail of human existence; to do what you love and earn a living at it?
Robert:
Thanks for raising the topic, but I must disagree with you that the blogging community has not looked critically at this issue. Since I began blogging a year ago, I’ve watched this debate grow with each passing month.
At times, it’s taken the form of a debate between “making money with a blog” vs “making money because of a blog.” In fact, here’s a ITConversations link dated nov 2004 which speaks to that debate: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail284.html.
More recently, people like Seth Godin have raised the issue more specifically related to Adsense here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/11/monetize_this.html and Ramit Sethi here: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/archives/2005/10/heres_a_pattern.html.
And I’m sure there are plenty more. Lately, it seems to be the hot button issue around the blogosphere.
Whether we as the blogging community look at this issue critically or not, I believe, is irrelavant. You know as well as anyone else that if a blog is poorly written or written without passion for the subject, people won’t read it, and the blog won’t survive. It doesn’t matter if the the blogger runs ads on their site or not.
But the other fact is this. Blogging has more than one business model. And those bloggers who provide
*valuable* information on a topic about which they’re passionate deserve to be compensated for it if they so choose. Just like you.
You can’t expect to create a medium like blogging, evangelize it far and wide and expect millions of people to use that medium only in the way you see fit. That’s just arrogance.
Yes, it’s great to express a sense of responsibility for how the medium develops, but in the end, it all comes down to the realities of the content market. If Jeremey and the crew at b5media start writing to *primarily* sell ads rather than writing to *primarily* serve readers, where do you think they’ll be in a year? They know that. Still, it’s not why they blog.
They blog, I suppose, because here’s a business model that allows people to do something about which they’re passionate AND be compensated for it. Is that not the holy grail of human existence; to do what you love and earn a living at it?
[...] weren’t’ve been following a post at Problogger.net about whether bloggers are hypocrites. This spawns from an article taken from Scobleizer [...]
[...] Scoble’s recent post titled One place blogosphere is hypocritical: advertising brings up an interesting issue concerning advertising & blogs. [...]