Labels: Ethics, IntelliTXT, Technology, Web
Answers to Questions About CIO/LinkedIn Deal
In this blog post from Sunday, CIO editor in chief Abbie Lundberg answers most of the ethical questions put forth in this blog and others about the web site's use of pop-up windows in the text of articles.
CIO's In-Text Links: Ethical or Not?
Via a post on Paul Conley's blog, I learned that Framingham, Mass.-based CIO is putting what appear to be paid links in story text (example). Correction, 6:26 p.m.: CIO editor in chief Abbie Lundberg says that no money changed hands. I don't know for sure what the business arrangement is for these links, and according to CIO's own letter to its readers the links are part of a larger offering of social networking tools involving LinkedIn. But still, judging by that letter and this story from Reuters, it seems apparent that this is at least in part a commercial deal.
Conley considers these links to be unethical, just like the IntelliTXT in-text ads that have appeared on eWeek's site and others. He bases part of his argument on the assumption that the links were not approved by editors, though, and CIO's editor in chief says she did give her approval.
My initial thoughts on this -- and note that what I write here does not reflect an official ASBPE stance on the issue -- were that these links perhaps were a bit different from other paid links. At least they show potentially useful information and not just ad copy. My main objection was how annoying it was to have the links right in the story text. Are CIO's readers keen on networking as to warrant putting social networking information on every company name within the story? And that LinkedIn logo is a bit irritating, sort of like reading copy with a ™ trademark symbol next to every mention of a company's name. Also, there's the question of whether the links should be clearly labeled with the word "advertisement." As Paul notes, BusinessWeek's implementation of a similar feature puts the links in a separate sidebar. I don't know that that makes it more ethical, since there's no notation indicating whether the LinkedIn pop-up is part of a business deal and what role Hewlett Packard plays. But it's at least less obtrusive and more in line with how similar links (the social networking links to Digg and Del.icio.us) are handled.
The comments people have left on CIO's site so far (even discounting Paul Conley's comment) show a mixed response. Granted, since so far most of the comments are anonymous, there's no way of knowing if all the comments were left by actual CIOs and not, say, editorial consultants or competitors of LinkedIn. Still, as one commenter to the CIO announcement put it:
It would be great if this were a tool created by CIO editorial and tech staff on their own initiative, using an open application programming interface (API). But it's not. [See correction above -- this does not apply.] In fact, according to the Reuters report, LinkedIn must approve all applications created using its API. In other words, the links are not strictly based on editorial judgement, as called for in ASBPE's code of ethics. [Again, per Abbie Lundberg's correction, the stricken sentence does not seem to apply to the CIO situation.] And if you're trying to help the reader network, why not include other networking sites like Facebook, Friendster, Naymz, and Plaxo?
ASBPE will likely issue an official statement on this matter; if that happens, I'll update this post to add a link to that statement.
Update, 4/16/08: ASBPE President Steven Roll has commented on the issue over at the ASBPE National blog.
Update, 4/22/08: Abbie Lundberg clarifies most of the issues raised in here a post on CIO's Difference Engine blog.
Conley considers these links to be unethical, just like the IntelliTXT in-text ads that have appeared on eWeek's site and others. He bases part of his argument on the assumption that the links were not approved by editors, though, and CIO's editor in chief says she did give her approval.
My initial thoughts on this -- and note that what I write here does not reflect an official ASBPE stance on the issue -- were that these links perhaps were a bit different from other paid links. At least they show potentially useful information and not just ad copy. My main objection was how annoying it was to have the links right in the story text. Are CIO's readers keen on networking as to warrant putting social networking information on every company name within the story? And that LinkedIn logo is a bit irritating, sort of like reading copy with a ™ trademark symbol next to every mention of a company's name. Also, there's the question of whether the links should be clearly labeled with the word "advertisement." As Paul notes, BusinessWeek's implementation of a similar feature puts the links in a separate sidebar. I don't know that that makes it more ethical, since there's no notation indicating whether the LinkedIn pop-up is part of a business deal and what role Hewlett Packard plays. But it's at least less obtrusive and more in line with how similar links (the social networking links to Digg and Del.icio.us) are handled.
The comments people have left on CIO's site so far (even discounting Paul Conley's comment) show a mixed response. Granted, since so far most of the comments are anonymous, there's no way of knowing if all the comments were left by actual CIOs and not, say, editorial consultants or competitors of LinkedIn. Still, as one commenter to the CIO announcement put it:
I'm not so sure I like this new feature … it's a bit distracting and adds an amateurish feel to the articles. … [the links] will only distract me from the content on your site. You might want to rethink this one … [second set of ellipses is mine]
ASBPE will likely issue an official statement on this matter; if that happens, I'll update this post to add a link to that statement.
Update, 4/16/08: ASBPE President Steven Roll has commented on the issue over at the ASBPE National blog.
Update, 4/22/08: Abbie Lundberg clarifies most of the issues raised in here a post on CIO's Difference Engine blog.
Labels: Ethics, IntelliTXT, New Product/Content Development, Technology, Web
Updates on CMO, Ethics
An update (admittedly belated) on the now-defunct CMO magazine, which was based in Framingham:
Paul Conley reported last month that former CMO editor-in-chief Rob O'Regan has a blog called Magnosticism, where he blogs mainly about marketing and advertising. But the blog also houses some of the content from CMO. Since CMO's closing, the articles are is no longer available from CXO Media, but the company has given O'Regan permission to reproduce them on his blog.
You may remember that CMO won ASBPE's Magazine of the Year award in its first year in existence.
In the same post, Conley notes that Ryan Block, editor in chief of the blogazine Engadget, has posted an open letter to the industry about IntelliTXT-style pop-up ads that appear on keywords on some web sites' stories.
You can read our previous posts on the subject of IntelliTXT here.
Paul Conley reported last month that former CMO editor-in-chief Rob O'Regan has a blog called Magnosticism, where he blogs mainly about marketing and advertising. But the blog also houses some of the content from CMO. Since CMO's closing, the articles are is no longer available from CXO Media, but the company has given O'Regan permission to reproduce them on his blog.
You may remember that CMO won ASBPE's Magazine of the Year award in its first year in existence.
In the same post, Conley notes that Ryan Block, editor in chief of the blogazine Engadget, has posted an open letter to the industry about IntelliTXT-style pop-up ads that appear on keywords on some web sites' stories.
You can read our previous posts on the subject of IntelliTXT here.
Labels: Advertising, Boston/New England, Ethics, IntelliTXT, The Business of Publishing, Web
IntelliTXT Ads Back at ZD
After removing paid links from within stories on some of its sites, Ziff Davis is again using the IntelliTXT service on at least one site. This time it's PC Magazine's site. (For me, at least, it took a few seconds after the page loaded for the links to show up. They're the green links within the story text.)
I'll let Paul Conley tell the story.
The backstory is here and here.
I'll let Paul Conley tell the story.
The backstory is here and here.
Labels: Advertising, Ethics, IntelliTXT, The Business of Publishing, Web
Update on IntelliTXT
Sorry to be slow getting to this, but anyone who hasn't been reading Paul Conley's blog might not have heard that Ziff pulled the IntelliTXT paid links that were appearing in some of its properties' online articles.
Meanwhile, CMP started using the links, but then stopped.
For more on what IntelliTXT links are, see previous post.
Meanwhile, CMP started using the links, but then stopped.
For more on what IntelliTXT links are, see previous post.
Labels: Advertising, Ethics, IntelliTXT, The Business of Publishing, Web
Are Magazines, Web Sites Just "Ad Platforms"?
An update on this week's earlier post:
- Internet marketing expert Prescott Shibles is against the use of paid links in edit copy, but is open to the idea that there might be a different implementation for InTelliTXT and similar services that would not be unethical.
- Wooden Horse Publishing's Meg Weaver wonders if magazines will be replaced by "ad platforms." She cites an article on AdAge.com, "Publishers Move Into Agency Territory and Marketers Take Notice" (registration required to read article abstract; subscription or pay-per-article access required to read entire article). Weaver notes that consumer publisher Hachette Filipacchi Media US has purchased Internet ad company Jumpstart Automotive Media, while Meredith has purchased two interactive ad agencies and a marketing firm.)
Here's a paragraph grabbed from Weaver's article:Meredith's president of its publishing group, Jack Griffin, summed up the new direction of today's large magazine publishers when talking about his own company: "What we're doing is equipping Meredith to be a robust marketing-communications provider."
Labels: Advertising, Ethics, IntelliTXT, The Business of Publishing, Web
Ziff Davis, eWeek, Again Subject of Ethics Controversy
The same day I posted about a recent Folio: profile of Ziff Davis Media, B2B publishing consultant Paul Conley published a blog post titled "Ziff Davis crosses the ethics line again."
Conley's post centers around Ziff Davis' decision to once again use Vibrant Media's IntelliTXT in-context ads on some of its sites, after pulling them from eWeek earlier this year. (See earlier post on this blog, "eWeek/IntelliTXT Flap," and two earlier posts on Paul Conley's blog, "eWeek crosses an ethical line" and " eWeek retreats in ads-within-edit scandal" for background.) The ads are back in eWeek and also appear on the company's CIO Insights web site.
Folio: published a story about the controversy on May 3. The article quotes Ziff Davis editorial director and senior VP Michael Vizard as saying "The IntelliTXT ads are clearly labeled as advertisements in compliance with existing ASME and ASBPE guidelines as we understand them. Should these officially recognized bodies adopt specific policies related to IntelliTXT ads, we would welcome that clarification and would also be inclined to comply with those guidelines."
ASBPE's ethics guidelines do, in fact, state that links within editorial content should be under editorial control. But in response to Vizard's statement, the ASBPE ethics committee has attempted to clarify the issue. The last sentence of the relevant portion of our Code of Preferred Editorial Practices, Section VII, Paragraph D, previously read:
A short news item about the whole matter will soon be issued by ASBPE national and posted on the ASBPE web site. I'll post an update when it appears. In the meantime, here are other posts on the topic:
From ASBPE ethics committee member Jeff Seglin:
From Paul Conley's blog:
From custom publisher Rex Hammock's blog:
For a contrarian view, see this post on Eric Shanfelt's personal blog:
(Shanfelt is a former senior VP of emedia at Penton Media Inc.)
Update, 5/16/07: Also see "ASBPE Speaks Out on Hypertext Link Issue," on the news section of ASBPE's web site.
Conley's post centers around Ziff Davis' decision to once again use Vibrant Media's IntelliTXT in-context ads on some of its sites, after pulling them from eWeek earlier this year. (See earlier post on this blog, "eWeek/IntelliTXT Flap," and two earlier posts on Paul Conley's blog, "eWeek crosses an ethical line" and " eWeek retreats in ads-within-edit scandal" for background.) The ads are back in eWeek and also appear on the company's CIO Insights web site.
Folio: published a story about the controversy on May 3. The article quotes Ziff Davis editorial director and senior VP Michael Vizard as saying "The IntelliTXT ads are clearly labeled as advertisements in compliance with existing ASME and ASBPE guidelines as we understand them. Should these officially recognized bodies adopt specific policies related to IntelliTXT ads, we would welcome that clarification and would also be inclined to comply with those guidelines."
ASBPE's ethics guidelines do, in fact, state that links within editorial content should be under editorial control. But in response to Vizard's statement, the ASBPE ethics committee has attempted to clarify the issue. The last sentence of the relevant portion of our Code of Preferred Editorial Practices, Section VII, Paragraph D, previously read:
Contextual links within editorial content should not be sold, and generally should not link to a vendor’s Web site, unless it is pertinent to the editorial content or helpful to the reader.It now reads:
Contextual links within editorial content should not be sold. If an editor allows a link, it generally should not link to a vendor’s Web site, unless it is pertinent to the editorial content or helpful to the reader.ASBPE national president Roy Harris relayed this change to Folio: and it was posted as an addendum to the May 3 article. As Roy says in an accompanying statement to Folio:, "We feel the code offers a clear guideline: Editors, not publishers or ad-sales folks, should make the final decisions on ALL uses of links within edit copy. Also, ad links within editorial text should NOT be sold under any condition."
A short news item about the whole matter will soon be issued by ASBPE national and posted on the ASBPE web site. I'll post an update when it appears. In the meantime, here are other posts on the topic:
From ASBPE ethics committee member Jeff Seglin:
From Paul Conley's blog:
From custom publisher Rex Hammock's blog:
For a contrarian view, see this post on Eric Shanfelt's personal blog:
(Shanfelt is a former senior VP of emedia at Penton Media Inc.)
Update, 5/16/07: Also see "ASBPE Speaks Out on Hypertext Link Issue," on the news section of ASBPE's web site.
Labels: Advertising, Boston/New England, Ethics, IntelliTXT, The Business of Publishing, Web
eWeek/IntelliTXT Flap
In case you missed it: Woburn-based Ziff Davis publication eWeek has been the subject of some Internet controversy for its use of IntelliTXT contextual ads, which are hotlinked from within the text of editorial content. The IntelliTXT service was developed by the company Vibrant Media.
Rather than repeat what's already been said, I'll direct you to some of what's been written about it:
- "eWeek crosses an ethical line" from Paul Conley's blog
- "eWeek doesn’t want me to visit eweek.com" from Matt McAlister's Inside Online Media blog
One thing I will repeat that's mentioned in Paul Conley's post: ASBPE's ethics guidelines state
The editorial department should control all editorial content on a publication’s digital publication, including Web site, blogs, e-newsletters, digital magazines, and others. Standards such as accuracy, attribution, fairness, and balance applying to a publication’s printed editorial material also apply to a publication’s Internet or digital presence.
Care should be used online, as with printed material, to avoid placement of advertisements in or near editorial content in a way that could compromise editorial integrity or confuse the reader.
And I do have a few comments about this 2004 post from John Battelle's Searchblog, which Matt McAlister's post above also links to: "IntelliTXT: Your Advertising Peanut Butter Is In My Editorial Chocolate..." Although the piece is almost three years old, Battelle makes an interesting devil's-advocate argument that contextual ads within articles might not be so bad after all. Battelle's reasoning, in brief:
... [M]agazines that are essentially catalog magazines ('magalogs'), or most of the Seven Sisters (Glamour, Vogue, etc) ... pretty much exist to move product, and they don't pretend otherwise. A system like this would work quite well for the online kin to these kind of publications. ...
Second, there are an entire classes of content-driven sites which claim absolutely no pretense of editorial objectivity. Whether they are fan sites, directories, blogs, corporate advertorials, for-profit domain-specific portals, you name it, the tradition of sites which carry their biases proudly or are baldly commercial in nature is rich and growing, and IntelliTXT may well give these kind of sites a new monetization model.
Leaving aside whether directories, blogs, and fan sites are, or ought to be, commercial in nature, I'd say that at best the IntelliTXT model is annoying--in the same way that even editorial links can be annoying when the text is vague. In both cases, you aren't really sure what kind of information you'll get if you click.
IntelliTXT links are distinguished from editorial links by a green double-underline format. Vibrant Media CEO Doug Stevenson tells Battelle that the links are a service, and that the reader won't see the ad unless she makes a conscious choice to click an IntelliTXT link. But the format is not enough to distinguish them as ads to the casual user, at least at this point in IntelliTXT's life. And -- in the 2007 iteration, at least--you don't have to click on the link for the ad to appear. Just rolling over it does the trick.
It's also interesting that, according to Battelle, Stevenson basically argues that the links don't inherently represent a conflict because the publisher decides what words to link, so that if the links aren't appropriate, it's the publisher's responsibility. Battelle doesn't quote Stevenson's exact words, but if Stevenson did in fact mention only the publisher, I wonder why he doesn't think the editor should be the decision maker when it comes to links.Labels: Advertising, Boston/New England, Ethics, IntelliTXT, Technology, The Business of Publishing, Web
