Free Press Explores Hyperlink Ads

Online readers of the Burlington Free Press may have noticed an interesting new development: The paper is now including hyperlinks in its stories. But when you mouse over the links, an ad pops up.

Other area news sources — like a certain alternative weekly — use hyperlinks to provide bonus editorial content. For example: If I were writing a blog post for Seven Days about newspaper websites that blur the boundaries between editorial and advertising content by linking directly from the former to the latter, I might include a hyperlink to a related story by the Columbia Journalism Review.

Now let's look at the way the Free Press is hyperlinking its stories:

In an April 8 story by Freeps reporter Sally Pollock about enviro guru Bill McKibben and his inspired climate crew, Pollock writes, "The 47-year-old Ripton resident, a writer and activist with an expertise in climate change, is on the road again."

The climate change link has since disappeared, but when I moused over it yesterday, a pop-up window opened with — wait for it — an Earth Day ad from General Electric, which recently came under fire for its efforts to combat global warming.

Hmmm.

Still more interesting is that the Freeps link to advertisements directly from quotes. Note this paragraph in Pollack's piece, in which she quotes Jeremy Osborn, a Burlington activist, explaining the motivations behind his activism:

"We really see our goal as trying connect all these people working in the grassroots movement to policy makers and leaders," Osborn said. "So people in charge of making decisions feel the pressure, feel the heat."

Rather than linking to the sort of heat Osborn was referring to — that is, pressure from climate-savvy activists — the Freeps directs our attention to the website of Oilheat America, an oil-industry-sponsored research group.

Late yesterday afternoon, I called the Free Press' advertising department and asked to speak to a salesperson about hyperlinks, but all my calls fell into a voicemail abyss. After that, I tried to find hyperlink advertising rates on the website, to no avail. Then I Googled the terms hyperlink, business and advertising online and  came up with a smattering of confusing — to me — results.

This morning, I called back, and a Free Press advertising spokesperson told me that hyperlink advertising was a "brand new" form of advertising for the Ganett-owned paper. "You can buy certain key words, and as people kick on certain key words, your advertising will come up," noted the spokesperson, who assured me that Tina, the paper's online specialist, would call back later to explain the matter in more detail. Stay tuned.

Comments

[usrbingeek]

The Free Press appears to be using the intellitxt.com to serve these contextual ad links.

Typically contextual ad links are added to the page after the page has loaded through the use of JavaScript and this appears to be the behavior on Free Press' web site. These ads can (and do) change with every page load.

The web page publisher (in this case the Free Press) typically has little to no control over which words will become text ads or who the ads will be for. Some contextual ad link providers give publishers more control or less control; it depends on the deal struck. Based on intellitxt's reputation it's my guess that the Free Press has little to no control. It's almost always an entirely automated process that search for keywords that match the keywords that there is ad inventory for.

Even when there is some control given to the publisher it's typically only for blocking specific advertisers or specific types of advertisers like gambling sites, adult sites, etc.

I don't believe there is any danger to the firewall between the reporters and advertising because of this. There is no way the reporters will have access to select which ads are displayed and where. That's never done with this technology.

As far as the advertisers go, they pay per view and/or click and once their inventory is used no more ads will be displayed for those keywords provided there are no other advertisers for them. In the end the publisher (the Free Press) gets a percentage of the revenue from the ads and possibly a commission or referral fee for advertisers they might refer to the contextual ad link service.

This type of advertising is becoming common on web sites as web site publishers are seeking more ways to monetize their web sites and contextual text link ads work and work well.

[Cathy Resmer]

Frankly, I think the hyperlink ads are crass.

I think I might feel differently if the Free Press actually used hyperlinks to provide editorial content (and you could easily distinguish which links were which ads and which were editorial).

And if the ads weren't pop up ads. If I just saw them and had to click on them to see them, I might not mind. But they just pop up, and that's annoying. Although probably not as annoying to the BFP as the fact that I canceled my subscription because I can read the news online for free...

Thanks for the detailed explanation, Steve.

[joe]

I find it interesting how you slant your message comparing how you link to something prestigious like Columbia Journalism Review and the Freep is pointing to ads. Is there some sort of rule that the hyper links have to direct you to content only?

Consumers are smart. They can decide what they want to view. The web provides many models and ultimately it is up to the consumer to decide what they do and don't want to look at.

Also, to correct the post by Cathy the ads are not pop ups. Only if you mouse over them do they appear.

I would expect this technology is going to evolve to provide ads and content very soon.

[Cathy Resmer]

Also, to correct the post by Cathy the ads are not pop ups. Only if you mouse over them do they appear.

Right, but when they do appear, they pop up — you don't have to click on them. And they don't take you somewhere else. So they're not links.

What do you call them?

Is there some sort of rule that the hyper links have to direct you to content only?

Like I said before, I don't think I'd mind ad links if I could identify them by sight. And I would prefer that they didn't "pop up" at me unbidden.

What I'm offended by is the fact that the BFP makes no effort to use editorial hyperlinks. As a reader, when I'm reading about, say, a local company that has a cool website, I want the article I'm reading to link to that cool website, not just to some unrelated ad.

If you're going to give us ads, at least respect us enough to give us some useful content, too.

I think the reason this matters so much to me is that I spend so much time manually coding links into our stories. It's not making us a ton of money — or any money, as far as I can tell — but it's a service to our readers, and to our community. It encourages readers to drill down into our content. It encourages them to visit the websites of the local businesses that we write about. It drives web traffic to other people and institutions in our community, which encourages others to link back to us.

Linking connects our content to a larger network of information. It doesn't make any sense not to link out, unless you're only in this business for short-term profit.

But maybe it's a technological problem for them. I don't know. I suspect (and hope) that the BFP will change its link policy somewhat in the near future.

[Nate Orshan]

I spend so much time manually coding links into our stories... it's a service to our readers, and to our community. It encourages readers to drill down into our content. It encourages them to visit the websites of the local businesses that we write about. It drives web traffic to other people and institutions in our community, which encourages others to link back to us.

(Stands and applauds) I'm convinced it will end up paying Blurt back, as Seven Days' reputation grows stronger and more people rely on it as an authoritative source about Burlington, Chittenden County, Vermont, New England, etc.

Re the Freeps' use of embedded ad links, Web useability ubermensch Jakob Nielsen wrote about 'em in 2004, and, hint hint, he didn't exactly come out and say, "Dude, these R teh awesome". He was explaining three distinct methods of approaching web design, which he called mastery, mystery, and...misery:

One of misery design's most insidious recent examples is the idea of embedding links to advertising on the actual words of an article using a service like IntelliTxt. By sullying the very concept of navigation, such ads not only damage the user experience on the host site, they poison the well for all websites. Such links make users even less likely to navigate sites, and more likely to turn to trusted search engines to guide them to the next page.

Like much Web advertising, embedded ad links rely on interruption marketing, intruding as much as possible on users and preventing them from doing what they want to do. As such, many of these ads have been failures.