BuzzFeed Says Posts Were Deleted Because of Advertising Pressure
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
According to the NYT, one of the articles was taken down because it accused Axe (the body spray people), who happened to also be an advertiser, of "advocating worldwide mass rape", which the editor-in-chief decided was beyond even BuzzFeed's questionable writing standards.
Another article, about Internet Explorer, was written by a editor who had recently worked on an ad campaign for Microsoft while on another job. BuzzFeed took the IE article down (again, according to the NYC) to avoid the appearance of conflict, and instituted a policy against such rotating-door behavior going forward.
And finally the last case involved removing an editorial piece that criticized a Pepsi advertisement created by BuzzFeed itself.
If those were really the only three cases of content being changed because of the relationship with advertising, I'm not sure even I think there's a major issue here. At least at this time. While reputable papers like the NYT or WSJ of course have firm policies in place to avoid even the perception of conflict of interest, I don't think anyone is putting BuzzFeed anywhere near their level yet.
To be honest, when I heard the rumors last week that "BuzzFeed was manipulating content due to pressure from advertisers", I admit I just assumed the worst of them, too.
But this might be a case of me (and probably a lot of people) expecting poor behavior from a company simply because we're not fans of their product.
Maybe that's actually the biggest lesson from this? (Or maaaybe... the NYT is in on it too, and this is all part of an elaborate cover up by Big Advertising.)
Further, this type of thing makes me sad that ads are the biggest winning revenue model for web companies, and as more people turn to the web as their primary news source, it becomes harder to differentiate between "eyeballs-for-sale" and "somewhat unbiased" news.
TL;DR follow the money
The Telegraph saw its politics editor resign after claiming that the newspaper had suppressed stories other reporting investigations into money laundering against HSBC, a major advertiser, run the Chinese government's version of the repression of Hong Kong protests to similarly protect its relationship with HSBC and carried paid Russian and Chinese government propaganda supplements (although the newspaper proper did take an anti-Russian editorial stance). When the Guardian gleefully reported the troubles at their right wing rival, the Telegraph responded with an anonymous front page story insinuating the Guardian's advertising sales management were responsible for suicides on their team.
A content mill deleting some questionable opinion pieces that wouldn't have passed editorial review at other media companies doesn't seem to fall into the same level of scandal...
I think it's a pretty open secret that the comparable brief lightweight pieces and listicles on fashion, travel etc. that appear in the supplement sections of even respectable publications are heavily influenced by who the fashion columnist had lunch with and what freebies they've been given, and nobody really cares.
We start worrying about chilling effects on free speech when they cheerfully ignore major scandals involving high street banks because that high street bank is attaching strings to their money.
Although "people" shell out tons of money on casual/social Facebook games and such, they are incredibly price sensitive to content like news or videos. They also use AdBlock to basically steal content without letting publishers recoup the production costs and other investments.
I've spoken to and worked with several major publisher networks over the years that have tried various solutions with subscriptions but every attempt has led to a massive backlash or drop in traffic as users would rather go elsewhere then pay to read. Just look at how much negative feelings there are towards paywalls or any site that requires membership.
There have been trials already by Google to solve for this but the original idea with Google Wallet [1] failed and they're now trying out the Contributor program [2] but still having trouble.
[1] http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/google-launches-micropaymen...
I'm a thief for protecting my PC from malware? From here [0]:
> Some Huffington Post readers fell victim to malicious advertisements spread through Google's DoubleClick network
[0] http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/04/faked-flash-based-ad...
There are also several high quality ad networks that don't do this and the entire industry is doing it's best to fight back against ad fraud, but it's not an easy problem. If someone mailed you something you didnt want, do you blame the post office? There are only so many checks that are possible and we're doing our best.
I'm sorry you experienced this and but you're blaming the wrong party and depriving the publisher of their revenue.
This includes fighting back against the tracking of users across multiple sites, right? That's one of the more direct ways that people categorize 'good' and 'bad' ad networks.
The social networks and Google know far more about you then the other ad companies.
And as you have just demonstrated this is a problem even with the top tier ad networks. Mind you I would have blocked ads anyway because with the exception of Twitter the ads aren't worth reading (Twitters ads are split about 75%/25% ads I need/want to read and junk which is astonishingly high).
Instead of whining about implicit deals (no such thing among strangers) and the difficulty of doing your job, make the ads worth actually seeing and your problems will tend to go away.
The ad companies aren't whining, the users are. We do try to show you better ads and its not to be nice but because they would naturally perform better. Showing you stuff you want is good for you, for the ad companies and the advertisers. However people also complain about being tracked and tracking is required to know about your interests and show you the right stuff. You can't have one without the other.
Using adblock means denying publishers any revenue for their content that you're reading for free and stops ad networks from learning more about your interests to give you better ads.
So, which would you rather have? Or do you have a better solution?
Sturgeons law applies to products too, but because the market is now international only the best products are worth buying so most ads are either for crap, trying to get you to buy products that aren't the best bargain or brand awareness ads which can't be made to be worth seeing.
If you want better targeting why is there no place where I can select the kind of things I am interested in? Why can't I take an ad and say I have no interest in that kind of product (In online dating the only thing that matters is traffic, so I would never go to a pay site)? It is valuable information to you, allows better targeting and a better chance I will buy the product.
Why is it that when I search for "apartment in <city>" I get 3 months of ads for the same apartment listing site, rather than for sites that will mail me curtains, which would be something I wanted?
Make ads worth watching and I will, but this is a 3-way road now - you are going to have to make the ads worth it for both the publisher, the client and the user because as a user I now have options if you don't.
You can do that with Facebook ads, can't you?
Well, yeah. You're a thief for robbing content creators of their revenue. However, that's justified because you're trying to protect yourself from Malware. You're sort of conflating two separate things. You may not be trying to steal, it may not be your intention at all, but you cannot deny that it is the end result of your actions. Actions which are indeed justified.
Though, I suspect ad companies will find a way around adblock programs soon. It wouldn't surprise me if they came up with some sort of package an owner of a website could download, then install into their web directory. The ads would then be served locally instead of from easy-to-block 3rd party networks. This would make blocking ads infinitely harder, especially if you've never visited the site before. Your adblocker wouldn't know if the ad is a regular image file or if it's an ad since it's being served up locally.
Those words seem to me to imply depriving someone of something with monetary or otherwise significant value.
I am sure that copying bits is not equivalent to stealing because it does not take something away from someone.
Even ceding that point, I do not believe the publisher stating terms linked from publicly available documents binds me to a contract, ethically or legally. If it's a site that I've signed up for, and require an account to access the content on, then I am more sympathetic to the argument.
But the internet works because things are open. Publishers know this -- they know they cannot paywall their content (generally). So they want the benefits of the open community (discoverability, traffic, etc.) but they want it on their terms.
Pretending that one implicit contract (I serve content you will also request the ads I tell you to look at) is more important than another. If you want openness on the internet, you have to accept it when things don't favor your business interests.
I feel like we've had the adblock vs. no adblock debate so many times that no one will change her position. So, I won't. Until I am 99% certain that the ad delivery networks used by content providers will not do any of the following, I will use a blanket adblock:
- Autoplay video with sound or, really, any sound at all
- Move on the page (movement within the ad is fine with me)
- Pop up over the page like those absolutely horrendous "survey" or "give us your e-mail" modals do
- Carry malicious or infecting payloads
It also drives me nuts that I pay the New York Times for access and I still get ads on the mobile client.
This unfortunately makes the whole industry look bad and the top companies are trying their best to fight back against all these crappy formats and fraud.
At the end though, the implicit deal is that you are reading content produced by the publisher, and it's accessible for free because you're exposed to ads. If you don't like the ads, please don't read the content. That's all there is to it. You're free to vote with your traffic and show publishers that their ad setup won't be tolerated, but adblock plugins are an easy way out that helps no one in the long term.
EDIT: I can tell by the downvotes that people find this a touchy topic and would rather just install adblock then consider the realities.
There's also the issue of the simple time investment in curating ads. If I just somehow knew every website that depended on awful ads for the majority of their revenue, I'd happily avoid most of them, and everyone would be satisfied.
But the volume is so tremendous, an adblocker for me is surrender. I would like to support good ads and avoid/punish bad ads. But there are just so many websites, so many ads, I cannot mentally catalog it all and remember "oh right I'm ideologically avoiding site <blerp>" as I skim Google. Given that, uBlock is the only thing keeping my old laptop from collapsing under the weight of the bad ads that appear from every direction.
Actually it's a lot like spam blocking in some ways. Spam is such a voluminous problem, you are forced to implement blanket policies, leverage advanced technologies in heuristics, and maintain large networks of whitelists and blacklists, just to get on with life... that's what good ads and ad-free sites seem like, ham lost in a sea of spam.
Also, because Adblock plugins can just stop network requests from ever happening, it's actually hard to accurately measure everything. Lots of publishers also arent that technical or have large dev teams so it might seem simple to the Hacker News readers but reality is more difficult for these sites operators. Wordpress actually runs more of the big famous sites then you may be aware of, just because it's easy and doesn't take a big ops team.
Which brings up a technical challenge- there's a vendor I like who implements targeted ads that follow you around the web. The ads are extremely benign and I would want to permit them- but they are hosted on a platform. How do I permit only certain vendors on an ad platform, without allowing the entire platform...
1) the opt-out choice relies on the same tracking cookies and stuff which would be blocked by adblockers
2) not every company offers opt-out because its a gray area of regulation, especially across global regions
3) you would have to opt-out of the infinite choices you dont want, just to let in the single one you do
I think one part of the issue is that the intent isn't so clear. You'll always have people who want the content regardless, but they're a lost cause from the onset.
Rather, for the rest, those sites/publishers would be well suited to making their intentions clear; i.e. "If you aren't going to view [click?] our ads, we don't want you reading our site."
There are many sites that outright block adblock users. For all the rest, it seems odd that, if they had that implicit contract in mind, they aren't blocking adblock users. Or issuing such a statement of readership intent.
Example: PageFair was a company that measured adblock usage and also showed messages like this, until their javascript tag got on the adblock list and suddenly their entire platform because useless.
I think the bigger issue is the trusting someone to do data-collection for ads. When everything is "pay per click" or "pay per eyeball" both sides have incentive to engage in click-fraud. All these awful networks seem to be solving that issue by creating a third party who has to attract both advertisers, and affiliates, and thus shares(at least partially) the motives of both parties
A possible solution would be to develop an adblock product which whitelisted "good" ad networks by default (I think adblock plus has this feature for google ads at least). Getting that list populated and maintaining it would be tricky but feasible.
And I've been an adblock user, but I'll admit that I've stolen content from sites by using adblock.
The "seller" gets to decide the "price", the "buyer" can agree to the "seller's" terms, attempt to negotiate, or decide not to partake in the transaction. The internet at times allows that script to flip.
I'm still not sure where the ethical boundaries lie, even as I've typed this response I can't decide what is right and what is wrong, or to what degree.
It seems to me that the idea that sites are taking advantage of users tendency to use default settings has about equal footing with the idea that users are taking advantage of sites when they don't use default settings.
There's no need for a paywall to work around that ambiguity, just return different content to registered users (and explain up front that the page is provided in exchange for the user viewing the ads).
I'm not sure there is one, which is one way the internet flips the script. I'm not entirely sold on the idea that using adblock is unethical or stealing. Seems much closer to something like a donation box, where the "seller" puts the goods out there and hopes that the "buyers" will give money (in the form of clicking on ads or at least not using adblock).
It's a loose set of rules, the internet, but no one is really obligated to play buy those rules. The question arises, what does the internet look like if everyone uses adblock? What sites disappear that we care about and what disappears without a complaint? And what works in ways we wouldn't have imagined before?
Though to be fair, over the years I've mostly avoided the most intrusive ads by failing to install Flash.
Readers have a direct relationship with publishers. Advertisers have a direct relationship with publishers. But readers do not have the direct relationship with publishers, and indirect access to readers is what the advertisers is paying the publishers for.
Most of the money made in these causal games are by big whales, you will not get that in media.
The vast majority of the money in those are from a select minority of players with very deep pockets, addictive tendencies and mechanics that exploit those tendencies.
And in some cases, ads. A strength of closed platforms, I guess.
Not sure how you would translate that to online content of this sort. Nor that you would want to; how sustainable is such a model in the long term?
>they are incredibly price sensitive to content like news or videos.
When they can find almost the same content for free, often without ads? Yeah, they're not going to go out of their way to pay for it. Perhaps one simply can't expect to make money off of such content without the quality/product being vastly above and beyond what others will do for free.
>They also use AdBlock to basically steal content
I wasn't aware that Adblock actually deletes things off of servers now.
Anyways, are impressions alone still worth that much? Or (reaching a lot here) is there some tacit acknowledgement of people clicking on ads they would have otherwise preferred not to see?
With content though, quality isn't cheap but the mainstream isn't interested in paying for quality. They would rather read crappy articles like BuzzFeed or the Daily Mail because its "good enough". In that case there's just not enough demand for high-quality content, and what demand there is doesn't understand the value enough to pay for it. Why is paying $4 for Starbucks nothing but $5 a month for a great site so much?
Anyways, the basic agreement is you're reading content, produced at cost by the publisher, for free by agreeing to view ads along with the article. If you use AdBlock, you're removing your part of the deal while consuming for free, and declining to let publishers recover or make any money. If that's fair to you, fine, that's your personal thing. But it's a simple situation.
And yes, impressions have value. Same way billboards or any advertising has value. You can test the results between a lack of ads and showing them and there's always a measurable difference. The industry isn't this big because it doesn't work.
The problem with your argument is that readers did not actually make an agreement to see the ads.
Why doesn't your argument go farther? If there's an implicit deal for the readers to see the ads, why is there not an implicit deal for the readers to not scan over the ads? Or an an implicit deal for the readers to carefully examine each ad? Or an implicit deal for the readers to carefully consider each ad and click on the ones that interest them most?
There is no default, implicit agreement for readers to do any of these things, because the publishers are making their content freely available on the Web for anyone to read. Many people make their media freely available, for a wide variety of reasons: to educate the public, to entertain their friends, or simply for the Maslowian need for self-expression. When people make their work freely available, there is similarly no obligation to pay them for it.
Lots of businesses, even digital media businesses, can work fine behind a paywall. Book-length writing and digital music, for example, where the media is actually unique and valuable. But the democratization of publishing means that people can volunteer all kinds of high-quality mediaand the bar for media of high-enough value to be worth paying for is getting higher. It's not just listicles and quizzes that are low value, the 79th article about a widely-reported story also has really low marginal value. People do not deserve to be paid for media of such little value that nobody would pay for it, especially when they're already giving it away for free. =/
The value to me of my first cup of coffee in the morning and the value of the fifth article treading over the same story everyone else is reporting, even if it is important, is just your basic water-and-diamonds problem.
2) If content has low value, then there wouldn't be visits. But people are still going to all these sites and still reading it so obviously there is lots of value they're getting.
3) The agreement is implicit. There are plenty of legal constructs for this, not everything has to be a signed physical contract. Our society would not exist like it does if that's the only way for binding agreements to be made.
4) The publisher is responding to your request for content with their article + ads. They already take the risk of you not seeing the ads for various reasons. We've had this in other media forever, like how you can just walk out of the room when there are commercials on a tv show. It's a priced in risk. When you actively tamper with that though, then there are problems. AdBlock actively changes what you get by going against what the publisher meant to be delivered for your request. You wanted an article for free, they agreed to give it to you with some ads included. Changing that on the fly is not "ok".
Both of my last jobs provided me with some subscriptions for free (i.e. Financial Times and some industry publications). Yet whenever I encountered their paywalls while browsing, I would always close the tab, since I didn't want to have to type in the password. It's embarrassing but true.
Honestly, though, the news one reads is very personal. You're reading politics, gossip, salacious stories... I don't want people to know what I'm reading, and I don't think increasing advertiser's ability to track you is the answer.
There's no reason every consumer of media has to pay for media content though. It can be supported by the top 5% or 1% of subscribers.
For example, perhaps people would pay for a membership/donation model for a higher price point -- for $500 or $900 a year, the local newspaper provides unlimited print/digital/podcasts, as well as discounted/free conferences, parties, meet & greets, social networks etc. Newspapers also add great credibility, so if there's a way to demonstrate that they've independently verified something (i.e. a 'media audit') there may be a way to monetize that.
> They also use AdBlock to basically steal content
> without letting publishers recoup the production costs
> and other investments.
I bet the WSJ would see a net profit from making HN a non-paywall referrer.
If you can show a different message to people with AdBlock, then you can just show them ads in the first place.
If you think about it, it can be as simple as just displaying a message 'underneath' an area of the screen where the blocked content would appear. Blocked content = displayed message.
The only way to do that is if you serve the content and then perhaps have a request to some ads or a resource that looks like an ad and will get blocked. When the request fails, you catch it and then "hide" the content from the user or only request the content in the first place after this check. This is fragile though since the plugins can just unblock that testing resource very easily, and some already do manipulate sites like this.
Either way, this sounds easy but can require lots of tech resources, SEO workarounds, accessibility requirements, etc. Just not a turnkey option. PageFair is a company that tries to offer this but they been put into the various adblock rules and are now pretty much ineffective which shows the constant arms race... and this is a company working on this fulltime.
> than a moral certainty that greed for content is good
> but greed for money is bad
They also use AdBlock to basically steal content
The whole problem with your industry is that you are still operating under the mistaken belief that "impressions" drive purchasing behavior. As if having some image forcibly burnt into my brain will influence my subconscious desires enough to cause me to make a purchase sometime later. This idea is and has always been pure snake oil. I don't want to see your ads, and I'm not going to click on them or buy what they are selling anyway. If anything I'm less likely to buy a product after I see it in a banner ad because they are annoying and I don't buy products that annoy me. You have no business telling me that it's "stealing" when I configure my browser client not to show me ads that I don't want to see. The implication is offensive. Do you think that running a spam e-mail filter is "basically stealing" too?
1) Spam is not the same, you didnt ask for it so you are rightly refusing and actively blocking it.
2) Content is not free. Someone had to create it, and they can either charge you directly or let you see it for free by also showing you ads. When you block those ads but still read the content, you're stealing the access/time/production/value of that content without letting the publisher recoup any of their investment or make any profit.
3) I'm not really sure where this anger comes from. Advertising is such a big and growing industry because it works. This is not some evil conspiracy nor are all the companies full of idiots. You will find regular people much like yourself working at all of the advertising agencies, networks and publishers.
Impressions do work. It's not a "belief", it's a fact. Think of it like an empty road with a billboard and a store at the next exit. You can have a blank billboard and see how many people stop at the store. Then put up an ad and measure again. That delta is a significant and measurable difference and with digital advertising, it can be tracked to a very specific level to prove it works. There are also many different types and formats of ads which work in different stages of the sales conversion funnel. YOU might not think it works, but that's not what the massive amount of data and results show every day.
My anger comes from the fact that businesses are constantly trying to sell me things by harassing me. I have no problem with paying for things that I actually want, and I gladly pay for content if it will make the ads go away, but it normally doesn't. If you buy a subscription to a news site you still see ads. I pay plenty for content when I buy books, though. If people are not willing to pay for the content on a site like BuzzFeed, it just shows how little that content is worth.
And advertising is really not a growing industry, at least not as a share of GDP. It's basically a zero-sum game. Online advertising spending is only growing to the extent that it is replacing spending on radio, TV and billboard advertising. Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-03/advertisings...
1) Impressions do work, that's what my example was about. 2) Ads are the trade for free access to content. If the ads paid for the road you're driving on, then yes you'd be "stealing" access to the road by ignoring the ads.
The businesses aren't harassing you, they're just spending on ads and those ads show up on publishers who have opted to use the advertising model instead of subscriptions/paid access. There are lots of issues with paid access like not enough demand, price sensitivity, hard to gain new traffic/shares, etc. Advertising is just more reliable and easier to implement and allows for quicker growth.
If sites are using subscriptions and still show you ads (and you're actually logged in as a paying member) then they're trying to extract more money or the price is not covering all of their costs or something in between. That's an issue with the publisher, not the ad companies.
Everything is zero-sum when measured to GDP because there's only 100% of the GDP to go around. GDP is a VERY big number and it's growing, and thus the absolute dollar amount of advertising is also growing and outpacing supply of inventory. That being said, advertising won't become a larger part of GDP because there are only so many buyers that also have to grow as businesses first to increase their total budgets. It makes sense that it tracks in line with the economy and it's not really feasible to make big changes because businesses are not going to stop spending on something like manufacturing their product to instead divert it to advertising.
Something which boggles the mind is how a lot of people who work in advertising still don't understand the concept that you do not have an innate right to your users' brains.
Putting it down to the technical level: When you send me bits, I have complete right and control to refuse them on a selective basis. I have a right to write a program that will refuse them on a selective basis. I have a right to share that program with other people, and those other peope have a right to run said program.
Adblock is not stealing, no matter how much you want it to be. If ads are paying for the content, the business that uses them should be made aware of the risks of adblock and the portion of people who are not willing to accept ads (and at which level they won't accept them).
Advertising in its current form is broken by design. It's a wonder it works at all. And yeah maybe we would be better off without it. The businesses that depend on the kind of ads adblock blocks tend to be shitty, low-hanging fruits, "appeal to the masses" sort of sites. Yes exactly, Buzzfeed. That's a debate for another day, but the point still remains: broken by design. Don't blame the users who just fucking want to be left alone.
Nobody's claiming a right to anyone's brain. It's the fact that you're accessing content that was only offered with the advertisements.
Boiling things down to the technical level just avoids the actual discussion. Sure bittorrent is just a protocol and software, but downloading movies illegally is still piracy right? You can build whatever software you want, but if it's used to DDoS someone then there's a problem. It's not about the tool, it's what its used for.
By blocking ads, you are breaking the terms of use of all the sites that provide you content for free in exchange for ads. If you want to be left alone, then just dont go to these sites... Advertising isn't broken, it's the morality of users who want anything and everything for free.
No... you're not. You're just not. When I visit a website, I don't agree to any terms of use. I don't sign anything. And if there's some out there that make me tick some bullshit box, it's nothing legal.
You have a superbly warped view of the world and I really can only encourage you to get out of your advertising bubble and try to look at websites with a less-informed eye, a process which is not easy to do I'm well aware.
Users don't want "anything and everything for free". They just don't want you. I'm happy to pay sites, apps I use on a daily basis but I'm not happy to let them serve me ads. Especially when those ads suck - and they do suck. This is content I am not willing to subject my retinas to, and by extension my computer because it only serves to slow it down, and sometimes be an infectious carrier.
You're claiming a right to people's brains. You're claiming people who don't observe that right are breaking "terms of use" (they're not).
"Just don't go to these sites" doesn't work. The internet is not a place where I research the publisher of the content I am about to consume before I even consume it by clicking the link someone just sent me. You're not fooling anyone, and I really hope you're not fooling yourself in thinking that.
Terms of use dont require a signature and online/global environment makes it more difficult but they are real and do apply. Perhaps you've never actually created any content but you can talk to the millions of creators out there who would like to be paid for their work and get some more perspective.
Users do want to get stuff for free. The creators/publishers give away content in exchange for ads. If they choose to have paid access, then that's your option. It's up to the publishers to decide how they want to give access to their content and service. If it's through ads, then that's the deal.
If you don't want ads, then you should only stick to publishers that offer paid subscriptions without ads. You don't need to research the publisher, if they have a paywall then you'll see it when you click. Otherwise they're opting to show ads instead. Tampering with their response to only see what you want isn't ok just because you have the technical ability to do so. It's similar to pirating movies, just because you can doesn't mean you argue that its legal or right.
Maybe more people are willing to pay money to read articles without ads, that's something content publishers need to research and offer themselves but that's a completely different topic. Adblocking right now is somewhere in the gray area of legality and morality and while you can choose to do it, please don't assume that means it's right or fair or that we're all idiots trying to force it on you.
I work with content creators in the gaming community on a regular basis and I am well aware of the "content creator's perspective". Believe it or not, a lot of content creators fully understand why someone would use adblock. They also understand that their success isn't measured in how many ads they print, but how much reach they have; and if you start pissing on people who block ads (Who are going to be a huge part of your userbase), you will suffer for it. ESPECIALLY in the gaming community, which holds grudges like you wouldn't believe.
The only ones who believe blocking ads is in a "grey area of morality" are advertisers. You can't just claim something is unethical because it hurts your business. I boycott Paypal for example, and I'm sure Paypal would make the case that it's unethical to boycott them.
Entering the business of giving free shit in exchange for the good will of people to funnel them advertising revenue is, and should be, a calculated risk.
There is no such thing as an "exchange of content for ad impressions". The "exchange" between the user and the content producer is free, and the real exchange happens between the content producer and the advertiser. The interaction between the business and the user is limited to the content they offer, and anti-value added by the advertiser (which is then an exchange between the user and the advertiser).
As a user, I choose to make an exchange with the business (in most cases not involving money), and I choose not to make an exchange with the advertiser because I don't trust the advertiser. I don't want the advertiser anywhere near me or my children. Work on that image and we can talk.
We're not discussing the risks of advertising vs subscriptions. The long-tail of websites and niche content only exists because of advertising. There are way too many sources of content for even the best theoretical and fair payment solution to handle. Advertising is the primary viable business model for internet content.
And yes, publishers still allow content to be viewed even with adblockers because its hard to defend against, they can claim higher reach/users numbers and they might benefit from shares. It doesn't mean they want to and I'd bet every one of the creators you talk to understand why adblockers exist but would rather they not apply to the content they produce. Ask them that specifically if you haven't already. A small anecdote about the gaming community does not apply to the entire internet when for most publishers, their financial success is exactly tied to how many ads they serve and how much revenue they generate.
What I feel you're missing or just actively ignoring is that just because you can do something, does NOT make it right. Technology has made it very easy to find, download and filter exactly what you want but this enabling has lead to things like massive piracy.
Let me just ask you this: Do you think it's "right" to just download a movie without compensating all the work that went into it? Because consuming written content without paying and blocking the ads is exactly the same thing.
This is a strawman because you need to go out of your way to download a movie without paying for it, and in most countries, that is illegal.
You're completely missing this very important difference: It's legal to block ads and view free content. It's not legal to download things you're supposed to pay for.
As for whether it's "right" or "ethical" to block ads, that's a decision the industry you work for would love to get its hands on. Fact is, it's all take and no give with for-profit businesses. You mentioned HBO Go, well how about all those pay-for services which still show ads? How about the TV channels that still show ads? How about all the services on the web that you pay for and still don't have the decency to disable ads? They're common, and all the strawmen you're bringing into the discussion are carefully avoiding that little factoid.
> taking something from them without something in return, unless it was a gift, is stealing
Oh I've had enough with you already. The websites are gifting the content with the understanding that a part of their revenue will come from ads. With that understanding is also the understanding that there's also people who don't block ads. To those who do, they're eyeballs. Non-paying eyeballs, but still eyeballs, and there's a lot of content producers out there who would kill to have this huge segment of the population reading, viewing, listening to their stuff.
You go on a lot about how "people always want all their content for free". Ignoring the fact that it's a bullshit claim, with you specifically and the advertising industry in general, it's all take and no give. If the users are not seeing ads, they're STEALING!
Maybe they're not giving you, as the advertiser, business. But they're not stealing from the business they actually deal with. You want to claim they steal from you? Fine. That's debatable but it at least has some merit. But don't try to paint yourself as this white knight in shiny armor who would defend those poor mom&pop sites whose monies are being plundered.
PS: You wanna know why I'm so bitter? Just two weeks ago I was right in front of an ad network who asked one of the gaming fansites I deal with (a major French fansite), listening to them making demands on how the site should be redesigned to fit their worthless ads and how we should start blocking people who use adblock and telling them to turn it off. This is your fucking game. You want people to disable adblock, you don't care about our users.
No, you're not. Just as you're not stealing when you mute commercials on TV or go to the bathroom, or fast-forward past them, or use the 30-second skip button. If they want to try that business model, it's on them to make it work, not on users to make it work for them. They're saying, "Hey, we think our content is good enough that you'll put up with huge percentages of our pages being taken up by other irrelevant stuff." If it turns out the annoying stuff is too annoying, that's their problem to fix, and not putting up with it is in absolutely no way stealing.
Lots of media IS free (say, Wikipedia) and there's lots of free stuff to read out there on the Web. Similarly there is a lot of paid content going over HTTP, and my Kindle and iTunes apps are full of it.
Did someone have to create yet another dull top 10 list or quizzicle? Maybe, but the value of this writing, as determined by what a person would be willing to pay for it, is pretty low, aka essentially nil. Putting this up for free on the Web with advertising is one monetization strategy, but the simple fact that it's up for free doesn't create a reader obligation to look at the ads.
Listeners don't have an obligation to contribute to NPR, either: they do so because they value the institution and its media.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_awareness
This absolutely does work on a non-trivial amount of people. Even when said people are aware they are being influenced. Anecdotal; I grew up with McDonald's fast food. Even though today I've taken up a much healthier diet for years, I'm still a bit sad McD's cannot be a part of my family's life. I'm aware it's because of those golden arches and that Ronald person that was always in commercials during my Saturday morning cartoons. My superMarioBros.3 toys came from McD's happymeals. To this day I still buy many Nintendo-brand t-shirts for myself, and even Nintendo stuff for my kids, and I know it's because Nintendo has etched into my head their marketing from before I was even 10 years old.... but I can't shake it off. McD's mixing Nintendo characters into their marketing image makes it even harder for me to ignore them... but I do because I see the real effects of eating unhealthy. Otherwise anything that doesn't have a very clear negative effect, the Ads do work on me. If I see something advertised often enough without running into any negative commentary about it, the next time I need whatever that company was advertising I will look to them first.
But it does, lots of smart people spend lots of money on it and recoup their investment. People spend a lot of time and money figuring out exactly how impressions drive sales. Do you think no one measures ROI on ads?
I'm really trying to understand why you think this is all fake. We can and do measure ads pretty accurately. Attribution is far from perfect but aggregated against a large audience who's exposed to ads vs a control group, and with tracking all the way down to conversions, we can see there is a difference.
My company works with Nielsen to certify and double-check our results as well as numerous other partners that only do attribution which is why our clients trust us.
It's not impossible. It's done everyday and it's backed by science, technology, data and results.
I think that modern advertising is based on faulty, outdated psychological theory and that all the statistics you can come up with to demonstrate otherwise are tainted because the studies are all funded by ad company dollars.
What theory is that?
Still, I'm in charge of my device; I'll browse/block/ignore whatever I damn well please thank you.
Otherwise this is like getting a box full of dog poop mailed to you then complaining to Fedex that you got dog poop. Ad networks are just a delivery system and while they do their best to match sender/receiver as the right fit, the contents aren't always safe. Trying to infect you with malware doesnt make the networks any money and is not good for business... instead, why not be upset at the actual authors of malware who are constantly attacking everyone? They're the real problem.
Ad networks saying "well, the contents aren't always safe, we're just a delivery system, not our problem" results in Ad Networks being Considered Harmful.
My point is that content is offered for free in exchange for ads and the ad networks are enabling this trade of value, they are not actively trying to spread malware but a few bad actors do get through. Like they do anywhere.
Blame is a slippery slope. The fault is with the malware creators and them alone. They are committing the criminal/unwanted behaviour.
Top tier ad companies work very hard on this problem and if you check how many ads are run compared to just 1 being bad, it's a tiny fraction of a percent. Does it happen? Yes. Everyone on this site should already know there's no such thing as perfect security or a service that cannot be compromised given enough time/money. That's reality.
Please reconsider exactly who is at fault here for issues like this and hopefully you'll realize it's not just so black and white and this isn't quite a good enough reason to block ads. You can always use antivirus or malware protection software that's actually designed for this stuff if that's your primary concern.
But, for exposition: It mainly comes down to your intentions.
1) NoScript is tampering with how a website is presented. If that includes tampering with their ads, then possibly. Definitely so if you're using it for that purpose, like adblockers.
2) If you're using a client that cannot support javascript because that is all that's available to you or all that you are able to use, that might be considered fair but actively doing so to skirt advertisements would be stealing.
3) Not everything will work in every browser, and sure you can take advantage of that. This isn't stealing, it's just how compatibility works. Tying back to the other points, there are sites that use text-only messages as advertisements to still show up for people without javascript/using text-only. Some publishers don't feel this is worth it. That's for them to decide.
Yes it might sound subjective but this is no different than going to a store and taking stuff... only there they can stop you before you take it. The internet by its nature is open and accessible, meaning there are very little controls to selectively stop people. For example: there's no easy way for a website to block NoScript users so they have no control. But just because they can stop you doesn't make it right.
Not to anyone who's watched it become axiomatic that musicians who expect to make money from their work are talentless hacks who should be pleased to work for free, that HBO Go is "too expensive", that gamers who plow $500+ into a video card "can't afford" $20 games, or indeed that people in creative industries in general should make money from something other than their main endeavour and that nicking their stuff and passing it on is "exposure" more valuable than mere money.
No matter what writers, musicians, et al produce, their is a constant insistance that any price above $0 is brigandry.
Just because at one point the gates existed to extort customers into paying such high prices doesn't mean such prices should exist indefinitely. Change the pricing models and get rich, people do it all the time.
For some people, HBO Go IS too expensive. For a lot of gamers, 20 dollar games ARE too expensive. Those gamers aren't the same ones spending 500 bucks in video cards - those guys buy 60 dollar games every time they want.
You won't get anywhere near the same userbase if you offer your stuff for free, and if you offer it for 1 dollar. However, remember that advertising is at WELL BELOW $1/user. Advertising treats your userbase as if each individual is worth pennies - because they are.
Don't expect your userbase to completely transit to a pay-for-content model without huge losses. But it doesn't mean you won't profit more in the end, it all depends on what you set the price to and what your userbase is (some markets are obviously better suited for pay-for-content models).
Musicians today have a much lower barrier to entry in making sure they earn money from their works, as they no longer need to sign in to contracts with record labels, but can sell and earn higher percentages as independents without the distribution costs and various IP terms that old school labels would have required from them - modulo the fees of payment processing and/or using a storefront service, of course.
It has always been the case that the bulk of a musician's profits come from live performances. But where back in the day one had to make the choice to be entrenched in the exclusiveness of labels, today you are free from that burden and the higher market saturation naturally leads to lower individual chances of huge successes.
But you can still make some money from recordings. Whereas before, the only thing you could hope for was earning a cult following off of tape trading or whatnot. Obviously without any financial compensation - the dime's entirely on you.
On the other hand, I personally probably wouldn't post those on Facebook or Twitter so you would need some new way to spread them.
I encourage Buzzfeed to put up a paywall. They will find out quickly how little people value their low quality content.
Has it occured to you that people reading Buzzfeed probably don't have the money to subscribe to any media in general and are probably more interested in Buzzfeed than the NYT or The Economist? Some people enjoy Buzzfeed and the fact that it's free, nothing wrong with that.
The Economist has taken the view that advertising is nice, and we’ll certainly
take money where we can get it, but we’re pretty much expecting it to go away.
So a majority of our revenue comes from subscriptions, and always has. The
proportion of revenue that’s coming from subscriptions is going up, and
will probably continue to go up. So I’m very very happy that that’s our
business model, because I think that’s sustainable. People do seem willing
to pay for our journalism, and our digital subscriber numbers are going up
very nicely.http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a14030/how-the-ne...
Buzzfeed is trying to present itself as a legitimate journalistic endeavor, lately. That is indeed the only thing that can make this a scandal of any sort. If they are not living up to how they present themselves, then, like any other journalistic outlet, they should be exposed.
For better or for worse (and I suspect we agree it's probably worse), a lot of people are getting their 'news' from buzzfeed and similar outlets these days. The audience should be educated as to what they are getting.
Have a specialised tax, ring fenced solely for journalism, and let it fund a small number of statutory independant organisations.
It's probably my most socialist leaning.
On the assumption that that's a sincere question, no, no it doesn't. Fox News and MSNBC being particularly egregious examples of "news" that push right and left wing views respectively.
Do they really consider BuzzFeed "news" ?
If it is the case, then their own standards are dramatically low.
Next in the nytimes, "outrage as TMZ deletes posts" ?
That article says more about the state of "legit online news" than it says about the state of BuzzFeed. Nytimes shouldn't even talk about BuzzFeed, it makes them look stupid and click baity.
There are several way to "unpublish" an article:
- Retract it
- Delete it
- Completely erase it from the web
What BuzzFeed did in at least two cases was delete the articles and include them in their robots.txt, which, at least to me, is completely bonkers.
It is one thing for a publication to retract an article, but it is an entirely different thing to make an effort of making it seem as if they never existed to begin with.
It's that kind of mentality that leads you to think that even BuzzFeed don't think highly of their own articles, where you can always make it up in volume.
Advertiser pressure vs editorial freedom has existed since the beginning of press when the first publisher sold ads. The content marketing/native format of BuzzFeed makes it a little more susceptible to this but I am surprised a publisher with revenues over 100M were so worried about a few critical posts. Then again this is BuzzFeed which, while it's trying to move upmarket with some really amazing news pieces, is still massively in the mainstream world of producing viral social content lacking in substance and doesn't have the reputation of higher end publications yet.
Combine that with the highly political and sensitive world of digital advertising where young media buyers who control millions of ad spend and the lack of other solid revenue opportunities for publishers and this conflict will only increase in the coming years.
> An internal review by BuzzFeed last week found three instances when editors deleted posts after advertisers or employees from the company’s business side complained about their content
> Mr. Smith later reinstated the two posts, saying he had overreacted when asking editors to delete them. He told staff members in a note that the posts had been erased after he took issue with their opinionated tone and not because of complaints from advertisers.
They won't need to delete such posts again, they are making it clear to their writers that they should not write them in the first place.