[arg_discuss] Deception and what it means to be Real

[Michael Monello]

On 6/19/09 5:13 PM, "Brooke Thompson" <brooke at giantmice.com> wrote:

Just because the cost of the ads is less than the cost of paying for
it, does not mean that there is no cost or that there is value.

The sponsorship of the content is a pretty clear value proposition, in my opinion. We make this content, you don't have to pay money for it, and we make our money by selling ads that we place to grab your attention, which is how you "pay" for the content. In the cases where things are intrusive or force you to do something you don't want, I agree - pre-rolls, page takeovers, etc.

Nothing is free, there is a clear transaction between the audience, content creators, and advertisers going on there, but you can't separate the "cost" of having ads in the stream from the "benefit" of not having to pay hard cash for that content.

If you are referring to the quality of the ads Gawker produced (they would not let us create the content while the blog was in the Gawker network), that's another discussion entirely, to be had over those beers in Portland!

But I still maintain the bloodcopy example can't be used as an example of advertising story content being pushed to an audience that doesn't want it because of the environment created by the Gawker editorial staff before the audiences were ever exposed to it. We can speculate that the reaction may have been the same, we can certainly make qualitative assessments of the stories, but none of that is useful in using it as an example.

If anything, it's a clear example of why an advertising department should communicate it's intent with their editorial counterparts!

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Mike Monello
Partner, Campfire
http://www.campfirenyc.com