Show HN: Detect articles with corporate sponsors
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http://www.weightymatters.ca/2014/07/7-nutrition-hashtags-yo...
I wonder if you could do a linguistic analysis to gauge bias and ad-iness, and show a score. Gather a corpus of paid advertorials and compare to ostensibly unpaid material.
At my company though, those articles are ghost-written, and then they ask every employee to retweet and share it on Facebook and LinkedIn. It hasn't gotten to the point where we get in trouble for not doing it, but I fear that point is quickly approaching.
One line that I won't cross is if they start requiring me to post to social media using my personal accounts, and I will change jobs over it.
Talk about native advertising!
Since then I've learned to expect that at least 80% of the stories in papers are planted stories. That is they are stories whose ideas and information is provided by PR firms.
The best ones are the ones where it is not obvious.
A recent crazy but is it? example: national quasi-public radio here in Eastern Europe has been running reports on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investm...
They sent a reporter to USA to interview what seems to be overwhelming pro TTIP sources.
A public radio station struggling for funds sending a reporter on a month long junket? Something does not vibe right here.
I am hoping the financing comes from some EU public fund and not something even more nefarious.
This reminds of the time that US paid journalists if they run anti-drug stories.
Here's a very leftist source but I assume the facts are correct: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/01/will-j13.html
I don't want to see links to native advertising. I don't want to see the short leader blurbs about them showing up when I visit the front page of other news sites. I don't want to even be aware that native advertising exists, I want it completely torn out of any article or website that I go to.
Ironically I would likely even pay a small one-time fee for such an extension/program.
(I should disclaim that these are my personal opinions as someone in the industry, and I don't claim to speak on behalf of my employer)
"Native advertising" like The Atlantic's Scientology advertorial is unequivocally bad. It's sneaky, it's underhanded, it purports to be unbiased reporting when it's anything but. However, that is really the exception rather than the rule. (It's worth noting that this has been the status quo in print magazines for quite some time; brands provide 1- or 2-page ads which are presented to look like an article that belongs in the magazine, with a tiny bit of "This is an advertisement" text stuffed in a corner. I'll scan a few if folks are interested. They're massively worse than the sort of native advertising under discussion here.)
"Good" native advertising is the practice of letting brands pay to attach their names to thematically-relevant articles, whose content is not bought, directed by, or advertising the brand who wishes to advertise on it. This pays really well for media outlets, converts well for advertisers, and results in less obtrusive, annoying advertising for readers. For example, from the FTC workshop on native advertising:
> [An example] is American Express, who came to us looking to reach female small business owners. So what we created on Mashable was a site called -- sorry, a content series, including videos and articles and info-graphics called "The Female Founders Series" where we profiled female entrepreneurs in technology, profiles and videos and vignettes, that we published on Mashable that were presented by American Express.
(http://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_events/1713... page 43)
In this case, profiling female startup founders is directly in Mashable's wheelhouse; it is relevant to our audience (which is socially and technologically savvy, young, and a majority of whom are female), and it's relevant to our advertiser. At no point are Amex's services pushed or touted or even talked about. Amex doesn't get to write the articles or have any editorial control over them. Our KPIs are typically engagement, so in order to deliver on our end of the deal, we have to provide content that people enjoy and want to share. The sponsorship is clearly disclosed in the interest of transparency, but at no point does the sponsor get to inject their brand, agenda, or marketing fluff into the actual content; it is always adjacent to it in the form of "sponsored by" highlights and traditional ad units.
The key difference here is that Amex can say "We want our name to be in front of people for every page view of this series of content", rather than "We are going to do a traditional ad buy which will be demographically targeted to US females 19-30 years old, which may or may not end up associated with this series of content". They can't say "Write about this founder, and tell the story of how Amex made her business succeed"; we flat out will not do that.
I'm of the opinion that this kind of advertising is actually better for all involved, as long as editorial independence is maintained. All media is sponsored at some level - advertising drives the entire industry - so if the benchmark for "good" content is "content that advertisers don't have any stake in", then...well, good luck. Advertisements that advertisers push through otherwise-respected media outlets in the guise of articles written by the outlet from a journalistic standpoint are bad, but they are the tiny minority of native advertising.
1) http://mashable.com/2013/04/11/social-ad-revenue/
Ad revenue article sponsored by a marketing firm that sells a product in relation to that.
2) http://mashable.com/2011/11/18/hubspot-sponsored-post-1/
This is basically plugging what Hubspot is selling.
3) http://mashable.com/2010/12/15/sponsored-technology-500-list...
Here is another one that basically plugs itself.
The other two examples are much worse, granted, but it's worth noting that the other two examples are almost 3+ years old at this point; we ran with that for a bit while trying to figure out native advertising, but the company has moved on from that kind of advertising. You'll also notice the giant [SPONSORED] in the headline, slug, and highly visible advertising disclaimers at the top and bottom of the post. There is no ambiguity about their "bought" status.
I honestly just googled "sponsored posts Mashable" and went down this list:
http://mashable.com/category/sponsored-post/
I didn't bother looking at the dates.
Clickz:
http://www.clickzacademy.com/training.php
They sell information-oriented products for marketing and are reporting on the size of such markets. That is a huge, massive conflict of interest.
It is like me saying "Look at this huge market over there, here let me help you learn how to tap into it...for $199" and then publishing it as if it was a newsworthy article.
So you have a company that is pushing a product while simultaneously publishing articles related to the value of that product without editorial oversight.
Does that not seem like a conflict of interest to you?
Simply blindly syndicating that sort of thing is the same as native advertising imo.
> Every brand is an expert in its field [1]
Which is patently false. We can say, "well they didn't mean every brand, that'd be ridiculous!" and yet, the integrity of their own copy doesn't hold ... which shows that they can't even be honest with themselves/partners with respect to being objective and honest in their content.
Ya, that demo is just repeating a home depot marketing campaign.
> "Good" native advertising is the practice of letting brands pay to attach their names to thematically-relevant articles, whose content is not bought, directed by, or advertising the brand who wishes to advertise on it.
It rings very much like industrial sponsors of medical research, and that has failed in particularly spectacular ways in the past.
By contrast, the "modern" native advertising we do tends to be some of our highest-engagement content. It's generally high-effort, well-researched, well-produced stuff (and has to be, in order to satisfy our obligations to the advertiser) that people enjoy and which converts well.
I think that rational and reasonable people are right to be suspicious of the practice; after all, the industry has an established tradition of advertorials already. But I think it's worth pointing out that the "native advertising" trend is about moving away from advertorials and towards content that more naturally marries media and advertiser interests.
In a perfect world, nobody would have to run native advertising. But in the meantime, when it's done properly, I don't really have any issue with it when it's transparent and isn't just a reprint of a PR release.
Do you think a series about solar energy sponsored by BP is not going to be less critical of BP?
While the distinction you make is valid in theory, it requires a legitimate firewall between advertisers and journalists, a safeguard that is in rapid decline in most places.
Personally, I presume any sponsored content is influenced by the sponsor.
A good team won't take a deal that will tie their hands; if BP says "We want a solar energy series, but you can't say anything bad about us", then that deal isn't likely to be struck. We might pitch them on an alternate series that doesn't risk putting them in the crosshairs, but letting the brand have any say in the content is a big no-no, and the sales team works to try to find advertising opportunities that work well with advertisers, rather than working against them.
Just personally, I think it's healthy to assume that any sponsored content is influenced by the sponsor, but I don't think it's valid to write off any content that happens to have a sponsorship attached to it as invalid, inaccurate, or biased. Be suspicious, but equating native advertising with PR dronespeak is flawed.
They'd say "we want a solar energy series, and we might want another in three months depending on results". The writers would simply not bite the hand that feeds them.
(emphasis mine)
Just so we're aware he's already in partial agreement (using his own words) with your point.
I really do hear what you're saying, and I 110% agree that it's a legitimate concern. If I saw a post on solar energy sponsored by BP, I'd be looking for the hook, too. That's why you need a good business development and sales team; recognizing those conflicts and working around them before they become an issue is a critical component in making this kind of thing actually work.
So they talk to a "Branded Editor" who writes the intro and then you post it as a series of native articles which is just marketing content straight from Home Depot.
It seems BP would be able to do the same thing which is effectively identical.
Maybe this seems fine to you but it doesn't to me.
It is one thing to have what are essentially links to other sites as "native advertising" its quite another to let them shill on your site. Imo anyway.
To let a brand "shill on your site" is called advertising. It's fine to hate it, but it is what it is. At question here isn't the practice, but rather, the degree to which it's made clear to the reader what is advertiser-produced and what is not, and the question of whether advertising copy is being pitched as not-advertising or not.
Given the chance, how would you do it better?
> It is one thing to have what are essentially links to other sites as "native advertising"
You already have "Presented by" posts that link offsite. Only use those types of "native" ad units.
It works with Google, it works on Reddit, etc.
It has no conflict of interest issue.
You don't have the issue of "Presented by" not being interpreted as "Paid for by" [which is what it is and not everyone will realize it]. Etc.
Get rid of the shill syndication that is basically "reporting on the market we sell stuff in".
But hey, if you are happy with it, go for it. I'll just go elsewhere.
In my opinion, an article that is influenced by the political view of the writer or the editor is exactly as bad or good as influenced by a sponsor. Even if it's not on purpose. I once had a long talk with a journalist friend about how it's almost impossible to write a completely objective article because so many things influence how the story is perceived. Like the order in which two sides of an event are presented.
I think native advertising has great potential and I hope media companies that do it deceptively will be punished by their users. But i guess that's naive, since people don't really do that with those whose editorial content is just wrong and or inflammatory.
I actually think that's why native advertising is a ray of hope for the industry - by allowing advertisers to fund (but critically, not direct) the creation of content up-front, it actually opens up the financial means to produce content that might otherwise be unprofitable. In a perfect world, it would be unnecessary, but media is a low-margin industry already, and the bills have to get paid somehow. If you have better ideas on how to do it, there's a lot of money waiting to be made. :)
I think that such content would fare better if it wasn't presented as 12-page expose. It's true, people (myself included) have extremely short attention spans these days (frankly, for good reasons). The content should adapt. I don't say, skip the 11 pages and go for List of 10 Reasons Why This Shocking Revelation Will Mesmerize You. Just drop the story format and make content explorable. I'd love to have a tl;dr of the important points and then an ability to go and explore chains of evidence, and even the full biographies of everyone who talked to the journalist and their dogs.
Anyway, just my 2¢.
Anyone who's read Bob McChesney or Noam Chomsky on the media should be familiar with the institutional forces you mention.
(It also sounds likely that content written by a given corporation's PR flacks have bad conversion rates. Because their bosses demand it to sound too crude, like some dictator's attempt at propaganda. Professional journalists can make the propaganda more indirect and sweeter-smelling. That's not to disrespect journalists; many of us make our money at least indirectly from advertising.)
This is bending the public perceptions on a subject in a subtler, but still pernicious, way.
The easiest way to distinguish such coverage is to find a particularly unlikely phrase in one of the articles and Google for it. If you find a bunch of other articles with the same or very close wording, you know that you are looking at a press release. Try it!
But native advertising, for the lack of a better work, is sneaky. For all I know Dell may have simply suggested the article subject. Or they may have submitted spelling or grammar revisions. Or written the entire article at Dell corporate headquarters.
The only bulwark I have, as a reader, is your word. A promise that your editorial process will not be compromised by advertiser interests. The editorial process is a black box that I can't open or inspect. And that should concern me.
I recently watched a PBS Frontline documentary on the creation of the mass-surveillance programs under Bush and continued under Obama. One scene stood out in my mind. The editor of the New York Times had a story, maybe as early as 2003, that contained Snowden-esque revelations about the burgeoning mass-surveillance programs. After a meeting with top-level officials, including members of the President's cabinet, he decided to axe the story. The NYT editor had an opportunity to bring the public into the discussion about mass-surveillance. But he made a mistake - he held back. His poor judgement allowed the program to continue to grow unchecked for nearly a decade.
The point is, if the editorial process of the nation's "paper of record" is so amendable to the interests of the state, why should anyone believe a tech publication like Mashable is any less amendable to corporate interests?
The only way to restore trust is to verify. Add good start is to embrace technology like the AdDetector plugin. Publish a list of URIs of all articles that contain native advertising, so tools like AdDetector can easily identify and label such articles. Let us know how many words are written by staff, how many are written by the advertiser, and who decides the subject matter. Give us transparency.
On one level I really don't care if Mashable or any other publication re-prints corporate-written articles whole cloth. Just tell me about it so I can make an informed decision about what I'm reading.
> if the editorial process of the nation's "paper of record" is so amendable to the interests of the state, why should anyone believe a tech publication like Mashable is any less amendable to corporate interests?
Well, for one, corporate interests can't legally destroy the company, throw its employees in prison, seize their assets, or do the other various things that the government can. The other thing is that if Brand X won't agree to play by the rules, we can go do business with Brand Y. It's a legitimate concern, but I do think it's fundamentally different.
My concern with things like Ad Detector is that I think it feeds a fundamental misunderstanding of what native advertising is, and breeds mistrust that isn't necessarily warranted, because of the lack of distinction between advertorials and advertiser-not-involved-in-content-production articles. Having more information is good, but if the plugin leads people to believe that not-advertorials are advertorials, then it's not doing anyone any favors.
I think part of the point is that we already think that as consumers.
I feel like you and your well-intentioned colleagues may be fighting an uphill battle against an already-established colloquial definition of Native Advertising.
Plugins like this are given rise because people already feel tricked by Native Advertising, and for those who choose to use the plugin it's safe to say we're fed up with it.
From our perspective, you people (publishers) had a chance to not abuse this but unfortunately a few bad apples have ruined it for you. Don't hate the plugin that protects your consumers, hate the publishers who ruined it for the rest of you.
Exactly. We've burned ourselves on this too many times on too many different occasions.
Instead of full transparency, I'd wish to see a publisher going full-blown, overdrive, in-your-face transparency. Don't wait for a browser extension like this. Put the big sign at the top of an article that says "yes, this content was paid for by XYZ", or "company XYZ paid to be on all banner ads in this article, but didn't have any say about the content". Publishers, be honest with us, and slowly, you may regain our trust.
But only for a while. How long do you think it would take until some publishers would accept extra payments to attach a more "favourable" sign to an article? I would give it less than 6 months. (In other words: maximum of two fiscal quarters.)
The next logical step would be to accept payments to withdraw the sponsorship banner altogether, followed by outright extortion to keep the banner away. (Only it wouldn't be called extortion. It would be sold as tiered pricing.)
That is how much trust I have in the online publishing industry these days. And I fear I am not cynical enough.
I like the idea of the plugin - where it isn't clear that content is sponsored, make it clear. Sponsorship information should always be disclosed, plain and simple. I am not sure that I like the implementation - the banner says "This article is an advertisement", which is bluntly inaccurate in the cases of most native advertising, and may lead the reader into drawing incorrect conclusions about the content and who wrote it.
I follow Noah Webster's reasoning here: usage is meaning. Language follows "the same republican principles as American civil and ecclesiastical constitutions". And the term "native advertising", in common usage, refers to PR copy disguised as an article.
If you're doing something different, great! Come up with a name to distinguish it from the other stuff.
Portraying this "growing sentiment" (that I frankly don't really see--here on HN? or somewhere else?) in the voice of a teenage leet/text speak kid (with the "!!1") doesn't really help your credibility. It's a straw man and I'm not entirely sure why you're arguing this.
Regardless of this dubious way of presenting your argument, there's still a very clear conflict of interests with "native advertising" even when it's not right-out "advertiser paid to publish their PR copy disguised as an article". This conflict of interests is a bane for quality journalism, it will cause a bias in what's written eventually, no matter how you turn it. The fact that this bias is way more subtle than "PR copy disguised as an article" doesn't make it better as much as it makes it more insidious (up to the point that the author might even defend it with a straight face) (probably in a manner very much like what you are defending in this thread here and right now).
TL;DR: Qui bono?
If an advertiser is paying to have their name linked on an article, I think it'll influence whether a writer includes some interesting but negative bit of information about the advertiser- regardless of any other involvement of the advertiser.
It's this subtle sort of interaction between a publisher, author, and advertiser that causes conflicts of interest without anyone trying to be sneaky or anything- just the perfectly natural instinct not to bite the hand that feeds you.
That's what I've never understood about native advertising. If it's as pure as its proponents say, why is it even needed? Why does a print magazine need a "native" article when they could sell a massive, full-page ad on the page right across from that article? Doesn't it accomplish the same thing? And if advertisers aren't somehow exerting an editorial influence, then what exactly has been gained here?
It seems to me that there are two options: 1) "native advertising" is merely a hypeword that makes it easier to charge a premium for ad space, because it gets buyers irrationally excited. 2) The thing of value being sold w/ native advertising is actually a very tiny amount of editorial influence, something which otherwise is incredibly scarce and, ethics aside, would understandably carry a very high pricetag.
edit - of course there is the other option, which most likely is the real-life case: 3) Native advertising is valuable because it is not a traditional ad-space, consumers aren't used to it, and most readers will not recognize it as an ad unless they read carefully (and how many publications are read carefully, really?).
EDIT: Actually I thought about it some more. Maybe native advertising only works for entertainment content. A brand can present it, and because there's relatively little scrutiny on the part of the readers, it's fine. New York Times writing about energy policy is on the other side of the spectrum. Massive scrutiny. Any brand influence will be flagged.
Maybe entertainment has just had more time to learn the ropes. I watch Pardon The Interruption occasionally, and I think they have a "presented by ..." every episode while listing a few beers. However, if in the middle of a discussion Wilbon stood up, showed off his duds, and said "This episode presented to you by Snazzy Suits Inc" ... well, that'd feel pretty crappy.
Maybe that's basically the point news media is at right now. I wonder, then, what would doing it better look like? I think something like "This week's spotlight on 'Videogames and Violence' sponsored by: Blizzard and Madden 2015'" could potentially be better. Remove the sponsorship from a single article to a swath of articles with differing viewpoints, and always have a couple sponsors instead of only one. I think that's closer to something that feels right, as a reader. Maybe.
Native advertising is when the content of the article is influenced to push the sponsors message.
It's a sophisticated version of 'advertorial' and deserving of all the shit that gets kicked at it.
Of course, all content is potentially influenced by sponsors messages, but with native advertising people should be in no doubt that this was an explicit part of the process.
AllareGreen is a "..free browser extension for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox that exposes the role money plays in Congress. Displays on any web page detailed campaign contribution data for every Senator and Representative, including total amount received and breakdown by industry and by size of donation."
In fact I am rudimentarily working on a Bias Detector type application that shows, if it is sponsored content, if the main principals mentioned in it are on the payroll of companies etc (does some other things such as Sentiment analysis, chronology ordering etc).
I never notice advertisements, and I am surprised more people aren't the same. You've been doing the same thing for years -- it's so easy to tell what's content and who's not.
I so occasionally get caught by the very clever ones - and so what? If you're big on privacy, I guess you would care more tun I would
As I'm growing older I don't mind donating small amounts of monies to good websites and projects. I just wish more people were like me in that regards -- it'd definitely be more profitable IMO. Has anyone got any experience in this (a/b testing maybe?!). I think this behaviour came from the ease of buying from Google Play or the App store... It's almost like, "I just spent $35 on apps last night?"
Some corporate advertisements really are stupid. I just imagine someone's crated the perfect advert and the client goes, "make it pop!!!". Those are the ones I would not mind vanishing - but if it's helping the website then I'm all for it -- my continued visits are purely based on their content and ease of use.
What you've said is interesting too -- isn't that what Ssvbtle tried to create? A network of honesty, journalistic integrity etc...
Your request for http://ad-assets.nytimes.com/paidpost/dell/will-millennials-... was blocked. Block reason: Host matches generic block pattern.
Yep, definitely noticed it was an ad. One more reason to install Privoxy.
I clicked your link and immediately closed it. Then opened, looked closely, and my eyes did not catch on to anything so I closed it again.
Your second link was very informative, interesting stuff though.
The rest of you can't tell me your browsing habits have not evolved enough to know what is which and this is that?
I've been working on some projects along similar lines. First one is http://churnalism.com/extension
Browser extensions which check news articles against a central database of press releases, and can highlight shared text. Disclaimers: It's pretty UK-centric and I think the infrastructure needs a lot more work. I'm somewhat hesitant to expose it to HN at all... but hey :-)
There is also http://unsourced.org, which lets you attach warning labels onto news articles. There's a browser extension for that too, but the whole project is pretty quiescent right now while I work on other things. But I've got a lot of plans for both these projects...
Not one of mine, but for a more US-oriented tool, also check out: http://churnalism.sunlightfoundation.com/ (again a website + browser extension combo)
I'm more interested to see how it performs on less obvious sites that at least maintain an air of journalistic integrity.
Installed.