That's good. It reminds me of a recent blog post by Yoni Freedhoff about nutritionists posting sponsored tweets. Often the disclosure is not at all obvious.
This is cool, but a lot of PR is even more devious! At my first job ever, I was sometimes paid to simultaneously ghost-write stories by executives, then pitch the stories to magazines. So, it was still crap advertorials masquerading as content, but even harder to detect.
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.
I remember that a respected West Coast newspaper contacted my tiny retail store about doing some advertising with them in the mid 90s. The sales person actually said it that if I placed a certain amount of advertising with them, I would have a reporter come out and do a human interest story for the local section of the paper.
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.
Can it perhaps have an option to strip native advertising from my web experience completely?
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 work in media (for Mashable, specifically, though not in an editorial capacity), and I'm puzzled as to how people are getting native advertising so wrong. I'm aware that my paycheck is linked to this sort of thing, so full biases disclosed, but I really do think that there's a misunderstanding of what it actually is. There's this tendency to conflate "someone paid money to have their name attached to this article" with "someone paid to have a good article written about them", and they're wildly different.
(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.
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.
As a reader the key thing for me is transparency. If Dell purchases a traditional banner ad on Mashable I can reasonably assume that they had no input on the article, even minimal input about the article subject.
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.
I absolutely agree. Transparency is critical. IIRC, that was the primary focus of the FTC proceedings, as well - to make sure that where content was sponsored, it was responsibly disclosed to the reader. It's a matter of concern to publishers, advertisers, and regulators alike.
> 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.
> 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.
> I think part of the point is that we already think that as consumers.
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.
> 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 think that's perfectly fair. As a reader, I've read print magazines like Wired and am constantly looking for the "This is an advertisement" text, because yeah, I have felt tricked by it in the past. I think it's is completely reasonable to want to be able to know when you're reading something that was written by an advertising agency versus something written by a journalist. What I take issue with is the misconception that "native advertising" is "advertiser paid to publish their PR copy disguised as an article". To that end, I quite agree - the culprit are the bad apples who have tried to pull a fast one on the reader, but I've seen this growing sentiment that "native advertising = companies trying to trick you!!1", and don't feel that it's at all accurate.
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.
> but I've seen this growing sentiment that "native advertising = companies trying to trick you!!1"
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).
> "the misconception that "native advertising" is "advertiser paid to publish their PR copy disguised as an article""
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.
In the bit of the business world I've seen, you try and maintain the relationships with people who pay you.
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.
If native advertising is nothing more than brands attaching their names to articles, why don't these publications simply implement a way to buy ads on specific articles, or on articles with certain very specific subjects? As in something like, "Whenever you run an article whose main subject is adult ADHD, we will pay a premium to occupy all of the available ad placements on that article."
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?).
Not traditional ad space, therefore escapes "banner blindness" and works on mobile. Also what's happening here is also brands are paying to associate with the publishers' brand directly (and slowly eroding it if not done well). Chevron paid the New York Times to produce a post about an important topic like energy and gets to enjoy New York Times' authority and trustworthiness. It's not dissimilar to a Simpsons episode on Hulu "presented by Dove." It can be done really well, with clear separation, and the positive association happens when a reader associates quality content with a sponsor. Publishers know what's at stake and I think they are learning this balance.
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.
That's a really good point. Entertainment does do the "presented by" thing quite well. I will say though that for me at least, part of why it works so well is most shows have trained me to see that "presented by ..." segment as basically a slightly different commercial.
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.
I don't think you get the conflict of interest issue, like, at all. Your example is sort of okay. However, its really easy to find examples that aren't okay from your own site.
I do get it; it's something that we're acutely aware of, and there's a lot of effort being put into improving the integrity and transparency of the whole affair. The first article is syndicated from ClickZ - they're one of our syndication partners, but I'm not sure what the criteria for syndication are. It's not actually clear that there was any sponsorship by BIA/Kelsey on it (I think that's who you're talking about?)
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.
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.
Look at Mashable's own copy wrt sponsored advertising,
> 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.
I appreciate your intentions, and you make a good point about bad native advertising not being a "new" thing. However, I think as rational, reasonable people, we have a hard time accepting that this idealistic intention you express is what will actually happen in practice:
> "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.
It's a tricky balance, make no mistake. I'm not involved in sales, but my understanding is that "run our PR fluff" pays really well, and it doesn't require any man-hours on the media company's end of things. Financially, it's massively tempting. But there's an awareness that that sort of thing comes at the cost of reputation, trustworthiness, and engagement; several years ago we'd run that sort of thing as clearly-marked "sponsored posts" (another commenter had a few examples from 2010-2011 linked below). Those never converted well, never engaged well, and generally left readers feeling a little ripped off. Nobody liked them.
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 that brands paying for their name to be associated with articles does not influence the content and quality of the journalism?
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.
The intent is that it does not influence the content and quality of the journalism. How well that is actually maintained is up to the sales and editorial teams striking the deal, of course.
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.
I think you should be suspicious with any content, sponsored or not. Always check multiple sources before forming and opinion.
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.
BP wouldn't say "we want a solar energy series but you can't say anything bad about us".
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.
BP doesn't talk to the writers; they talk to sales. The hand that feeds the writers is very specifically not the advertiser. I can't speak for other companies, but our sales team is good enough to recognize that an alternative energy series sponsored by BP is ripe with potential for conflict, and would likely steer them in a different direction.
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.
This is standard business development - mutually-beneficial partnerships which result in business gains for both parties involved. The series you linked is, IMO, a pretty decent example of native advertising. Original content was produced, the partnership with Home Depot was very clearly and loudly disclosed, at no point were there "Here are the links to the Home Depot(R) items you need to build these things, go buy them" links stuffed into the content, and the content is related to Home Depot's business (and may in fact incentivize people to go to Home Depot to buy things, the horror!) and yet is not "Home Depot is the best, Lowes sux, go buy all your stuff at Home Depot".
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.
FWIW, my experience is the opposite. Reporters are so worried about the appearance of bias that they sometimes avoid writing good stories about companies who happen to be advertisers.
I think your biased opinion and dependency on advertising is clouding your judgement wrt the decline of investigative journalism and rise of advertorial/promotional "journalism". Editorial independence and integrity have been shown again and again to not be maintained.
On the contrary, I am acutely aware of that shift. The deeply-researched, high-investment style of journalism is a high-risk low-reward game these days. Stupid bite-size pieces of low-effort content more reliably convert into advertising dollars, and everyone knows it. Readers have attention spans that require that you grab them within the first half second of a page load, or they're gone. A 12-page expose that took a journalist 8 months of intense investigative work to produce isn't likely to return even that journalist's salary on "dumb" advertising, let alone make any money. As a result, outlets have had to stretch and bend to try to find ways to pay the bills.
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. :)
> A 12-page expose that took a journalist 8 months of intense investigative work to produce (...)
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.
Yes, media corporations have intense structural pressures. The real customers are wealthy corporations who buy eyeballs; you build articles to appeal to enough of their interests. Otherwise you get replaced by someone who will.
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.)
I think the problem is most brands don't pay for sponsored content to "have a good article written about them". They pay to push an agenda. They are completely different things, but at the end of the day the paying party is expecting a positive result on their investment.
This is bending the public perceptions on a subject in a subtler, but still pernicious, way.
Absolutely. I've seen this first hand, my experience being very similar to PGs: I had no idea how pervasive PR networks can be, until I realized that marketing teams could regularly push 'coverage' of a product release in 50+ blogs on launch day, no biggie. Self-respecting blogs, say Engadget, will only take a few takeaways from the press release and publish them as quoted text. Most blogs won't even bother, just publishing the press release verbatim.
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!
What you just described isn't native advertising, it's an ad placement.
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.
In my experience working with large media content sites, the advertiser does not have any sort of "sign off" but they do want to make sure the content is in-line with what they paid to sponsor. The leverage comes from the fact that if the advertiser doesn't like the final output, the dollars move elsewhere next quarter.
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'm not sure that I like this. I know it's not really like Adblock or whatever it's called.
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.
Thank you heaps for your comment! I'm not quite sure why I am being down-voted though. To clarify my browsing habits are at the point where if I do see an intrusive advertisement or something that is just words rather than a coherent bit of content I'm looking for.
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?
How would you even know? I can say that mine have not. Ars Technica started cross-posting articles from Wired, which I would rather avoid. But for weeks, I would only realize that I had clicked one when I got to the bottom of the article. It's just exhausting to check all the bylines all the time.
Thanks, didn't mean to request another. You can bypass Privoxy's filters with a click, but it's nice to know I have a huge warning page when I reach an ad article like that.
Would you mind clarifying what the problem with Ad Detector is? It's not meant to increase privacy or to turn people away from advertisements, but rather call attention to the fact that a given piece of content is actually an ad.
My apologies mate, I sort of went off on a tangent. My main point was really that advertisements are (as evolved from my Internet usage) that most are completely invisible to me.
It looks like it's just a set of rules for major sites rather than some heuristic applied to all sites. But since it's open source, contributing rules for more obscure sites should be easy. Source here: https://github.com/typpo/ad-detector/blob/master/src/rules.j...
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...
I don't think I need a browser extension to tell me that the bulk of content on the example sites they show (especially Forbes and Buzzfeed) is sponsored.
I'm more interested to see how it performs on less obvious sites that at least maintain an air of journalistic integrity.
The examples were done on the most trafficked sources first since a lot of people visit these sites frequently. Anyone can contribute new rules for matching and detecting advertorials.
