Tagged: advertising

No One Must Know This Is A Sponsored Post

Media Discovery (New Web Ltd) is encouraging blogs to run paid for advertorials, without disclosing to their readership that the content is an advert. This appears to be in breach of the advertising industry's code of practice.

Anyone who has ever run a blog is probably familiar with these sorts of email - I get one or two a week.

Hi Terence,

I recently sent you an email about hosting an advertisement on your site. I hope you received it, if not it may have ended up in your junk folder.

I believe we offer a very attractive system of advertising. You would be paid a yearly-renewable fee for placing a text-based advertisement that is appropriate to the topic of your site.

Please get back to me if you are interested in placing an advertisement on Shkspr.mobi?

Kind Regards,

Jesse Morgan
[email protected]

I rarely reply to such spam, however, having heard of Media Discovery's shady practices in the past, I thought I'd respond and find out more.

This is what I got back:

After reviewing your website, we think that a new blog post would be the best and least intrusive option for you. We have two ways of doing this:

A) You are free to come up with the content of the article or blog post, but we do ask that it is in some way relevant to our client and is composed of roughly 300 words.

B) I can ask our copywriters to craft an article to fit your site.

To see an example, kindly visit: http://www.mycarreviews.co.uk/citroen-c4-review/. The advert can be found within the third paragraph - 'J.D. Power'.

We’ll pay you an annual upfront payment and we will endeavour to make sure that you are paid within two working days, using PayPal or Moneybookers. Working with a telecommunications, beauty, health, tourism or finance client would ensure you would get 130 EUR per year, while working with an online gaming client (poker, casino, bingo etc) would ensure you would get 140 EUR per year.

Please let me know if you're interested, so I can have your site assessed by our Technical Team. I can then send the advert details and client information.

Alternatively, if you have any more questions about this advert type, then please do let me know.

Thanks,
Jesse

This is what the "advert" looks like:
JD Power Advert-fs8
The eagle-eyed among you will notice that this doesn't look like an advert. The site carries no mention of the fact this is a sponsored article.
(I've no way of verifying whether JD Power paid for this advert, or even if the blog's author is working with Media Discovery.)

I queried this - surely it's not right that advertising should be displayed in such a manner. Their response?

Thank you for your message.

We prefer it if our adverts are not marked out as such. They tend to be more successful when they look as natural as possible.

Many thanks.

This is, as far as I can tell, an illegal practice.

There are various laws and regulations governing advertising in the UK. The Office of Fair Trading specifically calls out the following practice as illegal under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations, the following is an offence:

Being honest about advertorials

Using editorial content in the media to promote a product where a trader has paid for the promotion (advertorial) without making that clear in the content or by images or sounds clearly identifiable by the consumer.

Can A Blog Get In Trouble For This?

There are two potential risks for bloggers who don't acknowledge the providence of their sponsored content.
Firstly is the issue of legal liability. I am not a lawyer - but I would be very wary of publishing content like this. Regulation 18 states:

Innocent publication of advertisement defence

18.—(1) In any proceedings against a person for an offence under regulation 9, 10, 11 or 12 committed by the publication of an advertisement it shall be a defence for a person to prove that—
he is a person whose business it is to publish or to arrange for the publication of advertisements;
he received the advertisement for publication in the ordinary course of business; and
he did not know and had no reason to suspect that its publication would amount to an offence under the regulation to which the proceedings relate.

I spoke to the ASA who confirmed that it was unlikely an individual publication would get in to trouble - they'd much rather go after the advertiser.

Secondly, major search engines - Google in particular - can completely remove you from their results if it suspects you have been spamming.

In the above JD Power example, the link doesn't use the nofollow attribute which further contributes to its spammy nature.
JD Power Link

What Can Be Done

In the UK, the regulator is the Advertising Standards Authority. Unsurprisingly, they take a keen interest in the online space. After having a chat with their advisers, I have lodged a complaint with the ASA using their online form.

I don't fundamentally disagree with the notion of advertising on blogs - I use Amazon's affiliate scheme to earn a few coins, and I have occasionally run campaigns from ebuzzing. Crucially, I always explicitly say if a post is sponsored and who the sponsor is.

How can you trust a publication if they refuse to tell you where their interests lie?

If you're a blogger and have been approached by company trying to engage in deceptive practices, I strongly suggest you file a formal complaint against them with your local regulator.

Clear Channel's NFC Mistake

I've talked before about advertising hoardings with combined NFC & QR codes. It looks like Clear Channel - the advertising behemoth - is getting into the game.

Spotted all over London are these bus stops with built in advertising poster. Look on the right hand side, and you'll see the interactive element.
Bus Stop with QR NFC

Clear Channel NFC QR It's pretty well designed, although the disclaimer "standard network rates apply" seems a little redundant - and weirdly placed. The QR code is oddly rotated, but that's just my personal preference.

The QR code is large enough to scan easily in broad daylight. If the code was integrated with the poster, it would also been backlit which would have been helpful when it is dark. The NFC scanned easily - once I'd flipped my phone's settings on.

Using a call to action of "Tap" and "Scan" assumes that the users will know what to do - and how to get an app if they need it.

The QR and the NFC both go to unique URLs - helpful for Clear Channel to see from where the hits are coming.

But what happens when you scan the hybrid QR/NFC?

This abomination....

CCNFC

What The Juddering Fuck? Why on Earth would you deploy dozens of these interactive adverts and then not point them anywhere useful? Even if the campaigns aren't ready, couldn't Clear Channel point to their YouTube Channel, or their Twitter feed, or anything!

Some people are going to interact with this poster and come to the conclusion that there's nothing worthwhile to be gained by attempting to scan again.

Clear Channel are really shooting themselves in the foot by deploying this before their technology is ready.

Pottermore Reaches Out To Harry Potter Fan Sites

I've recently learned of the "Pottermore Affiliate" scheme. You may have already started seeing banners around the web directing you to visit Pottermore - the official Harry Potter shop - where you can buy eBooks and audiobooks. Click on one of the banners and the site owner will get a 4% commission on anything you buy. That works out to be £1.55 if you buy the complete collection of ebooks for £39.

What's interesting is the way they are reaching out to Harry Potter fan sites. For years there has been an uneasy relationship between The Official Harry Potter Rights Holders ™©® and the unofficial sites set up by fans.

On the one hand, there's no doubt the majority of these sites drive people to official HP sources where they can buy books and replica wands. On the other, there's no quality control, a concern that the sites may have a commercial motive, and that untrustworthy sites could damage the brand.

After a few tactical lawsuits, it now appears that unofficial sites will be able to sell official merchandise and books through an affiliate scheme.

According to the guide for affiliates (which has an excellent section for fan sites)

Harry Potter fan content and/or websites must be non-commercial and not-for-profit. Fan sites may, however, link through to the Pottermore Shop and receive a modest percentage revenue for any sales where the revenue is used for the sole purpose of supporting the Harry Potter fan site.
No profit should be made overall for any such sales.

So, if you're a hobbyist running a "OMG! I LUV RON WEASLEY!!" site, you may get a few quid in to cover your hosting. At 4% commission, you'd have to sell a lot of Chocolate Frogs in order to trip into the profit making side of things.

If you're one of the larger sites, your hosting costs are likely to be considerably higher - and the affiliate scheme may help bring those costs down.

It's an excellent move from the Pottermore team. It helps fan sites to get a little touch of the official magic as well as reducing their costs. Visitors are gently directed to the official pages where - theoretically - they can be assured of quality.

It's a far cry for Warner Brothers heavy handed attempt to shut down fan sites in 2000.

Is this the future of online fandom? Companies tolerating amateur players - and partially funding their operations - in order to promote themselves.

A smart move from the Harry Potter team; bring fans back in from the cold. I worry, however, on a meta-level what fans of fan sites will think? Does it cheapen the fan site experience to have it plastered with official adverts? Do readers think that a site can't be objective if they now have a vested interest in selling merchandise?

If I tell you that musician Steve Lawson is incredible and you should buy his music - do you trust me if you know I get a couple of quid every time someone buys one of his excellent CDs?

It's undoubtedly a good tactic for creative types to get their fans to be advertisers. But are recommendations, and fandom in general, cheapened when there's money involved?

QR and NFC Living In Harmony?

Can you spot anything interesting on this poster?

Yes, there in the corner - living in blissful harmony are a QR code and an NFC tag.

There's an excellent call-to-action which even works for people without either a QR reader or NFC scanner.

The destination is this mobile friendly landing page. Of course, you should still boycott Nestle due to their contributing to the unnecessary death and suffering of infants around the world by aggressively marketing baby foods in breach of international marketing standards..

The NFC and QR have different URLs - which should allow the marketing team to see which performed better.

I've been harshly critical of NFC in the past - but this does show a future for both of them.

...And Now...

A few months later, and we can see a flaw in the plan. NFC requires close contact with the phone, so can't be placed on the poster behind the perspex. So it has been stuck on the poster frame.

Which, when the poster campaign moves on, leaves us with this unfortunate situation.

NFC, as I've said before, needs a call-to-action symbol. This project shows that a QR code could be the perfect way to do that. But, remember, whereas a QR code just needs black ink and white paper - and NFC tag requires a little more planning.

Facebook's Mobile Adverts - Real Stats

Facebook has been getting a lot of criticism for its lack of mobile revenue. A fact it tried to hide from its IPO. Much ink has been spilled, but is it really necessary for Facebook to worry? Here's a quick case study.

Facebook has, in its infinite wisdom, decided that I would be interested in adverts for cancer. Or, perhaps, AXA have decided that 30 something males are a prime market.

The creator of the advert was Equator's Fiona Dow who, judging from her bitly profile just loves posting about cancer.

As I have mentioned several times before, bitly links are a great way to (unintentionally) share your stats. If we look at the clickthrough stats for this advert, we can find some interesting nuggets.

Here's the biggie - referrers shows where people where when they clicked on the link:

In total, nearly half of all clicks came from the mobile site.

Perhaps this is why Facebook hasn't jumped into bed with any dedicated mobile advertiser? It would seem that users are equally willing to click on Facebook's "Sponsored Stories" on mobile as well as web.

(This assumes that AXA targetted both platforms equally).

The only fly in the ointment is, you guessed it, AXA don't have a mobile friendly site.
AXA non-mobile site

I've been banging on about mobile-friendly advertising for years - and still advertisers don't get it! Not everyone has an iPhone. Not everyone who has an iPhone is on WiFi or 3G. Not every one want to have to pinch and zoom. If the first impression you're giving your customers is that you don't care about their needs - don't expect them to stick around too long.

So based on this datum, Facebook users are willing to click on mobile ads - all it now requires is Facebook to show them at appropriate times and advertisers to create mobile-dedicated campaigns.