Sep/091
Blurring the Line Between Advertising and Editorial
Recently, many popular websites such as Fox News, Popular Mechanics, and IGN have started to use in-text advertising, a technology that turns an article’s words into mini-advertisements. When readers move their cursors over these double-underlined words, a pop-up advertisement appears and blocks some of the article’s text.
Once limited to niche websites, many mainstream news sites now use in-text advertising, blurring the line between editorial and advertising. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, journalism ethics experts believe the trend is ethically problematic and “quite corrosive of journalistic quality and credibility." A spokeswoman from Dow Jones, the organization that publishes the Wall Street Journal, stated that beyond being unethical, the ads “interrupt the reader’s experience.”
But the companies that produce these in-text ads, including Vibrant Media and Kontera, see them as “part of their continuing experimentation with different forms of online advertising.” They believe their technologies help website owners sell additional ads in a time when prime real estate on their sites is sold too quickly.
Image Space Media applauds companies like Vibrant Media and Kontera for their experimentation with online advertising technology. What do you think?
October 5th, 2009
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I’m a marketer myself and your information always seems to get my business brain going!!
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