When people look at blogs they do not expect the content to be ads. Simple Ted.
If it is an advert, the article should clearly show that it is an advertorial. For longer content that means the top and the bottom of the article should clearly display a disclaimer. Simple Ted.
Ted Murphy, CEO of the controversial PayPerPost is the guest of the most recent CalacanisCast. Jason Calacanis does a smart, well researched interview taking Ted to task on PayPerPost. It is awesome of Ted to have done such a challenging (hostile) interview.
Deceptive, covert marketing, lowering trust in blogs, corrosive.
Those are terms Jason uses to describe PayPerPost.
Ted, it is your company’s responsibility to guide your customers in using your service with integrity.
Dan Rua, Michael Barach, Josh Stein help him out here, it is your responsibility too as participants of the board of directors of PayPerPost.
2007-03-28 Update: Dan Rua in an interview with ValueWiki Blog failed to address this issue. My comment was:
Dan Rua, it is PayPerPost responsibility to guide your customers in using your service with integrity.
There are numerous people that would love to participate in addressing the demand for such a service, but without addressing the fundamental issue of having an ethical approach there is no good will. Unfortunately, I think the opportunity has been exhausted and people are looking to other innovators in this space.
2007-05-25 Listened to TalkCrunch Episode 13: PayPerPost Raises $3 million and Josh Stein also seems uninterested in PPP taking responsibility for how their product is used. He is happy for the “inherent market forces” to decide. “It will trend towards disclosure”, but they are not interested in helping their customers be successful and do the right thing.
Michael Arrington does a fantastic interviewing and Rob Hof1 insights are appreciated . Michael suggests PPP advertisers buy posts for search linking (search engine rankings) and that PPP does not have clear disclosure because that would ruin the advertisers linking since search engines could invalidate the links. Michael calls PPP unethical, and quite entertaining.
My bosses Toni Schneider and Matt Mullenweg have some interesting related posts. Tony wrote So I signed up for PayPerPost and Matt followed up with On PayPerPost. It is easy for me to support their positions as it matches my personal views.
Even with clear disclosure I don’t think PayPerPost is currently a good fit for WordPress.com, as we generally do not allow commercial content.
Matt recently wrote a post Selling Links which raises interesting questions about the links included in these advertisements.
In the interview, Jason mentioned that Google has said they will ban sites — something I was not aware of and which I do not know the details of — but Ted did not take the opportunity to respond.
- Silicon Valley Bureau Chief at Business Week [↩]
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The Google position is that these services are ok if you no-follow the links. Someone can buy your time to evangelize/review their product but they can’t buy links.
I’m of two minds about this. I think the low end PPP stuff is stupid ($5 reviews?) but at the higher end stuff it is conceivable to look at it as hiring someone to consult on your product and publicly publish the results.
I’d be interested in what Google says about Text Link Ads and Direct Link Ads since those are essential server side scripts that make ads look like blog content (if I’m not mistaken).
Of course, if that is what is really happening then there would be no condition of publicizing the review. There goes that argument.
Has everyone forgotten about Hot Nacho?
http://www.waxy.org/archive/2005/03/30/wordpres.shtml
Ian, I am not sure I understand the context of your comment. Matt was thoroughly tarred and feathered for that, probably including by many that did not take the time to ask Matt what was up and consider all of the good that Matt has already done — Matt being sneaky, sneaky would be very out of his character. Matt apologized for his mistake.
Never forget, but it does seem like time to put that one to rest.
To win a debate, a good rhetorical device is “deliberate obfuscation.” Using acronyms, long-winded speeches, and arcane technical language to baffle an opponent. It’s hard to disagree with someone when they appear brilliant to the point of being completely unintelligible!
In my interview with Dan Rua, my goal was to be impartial, and to allow Dan a fair opportunity to respond to criticisms of PayPerPost. I believe Dan is genuinely excited about the company and was not deliberately resorting to technical language. But I can see why you raised this point.
Watching the Calacanis interview, my own personal opinion is that Ted Murphy did not offer simple, direct answers to simple, direct questions. This undermines credibility.
Glad to see fellow bloggers covering this topic,
Jon
Jon, I completely agree. I also don’t suspend the language was used as a device. It is a reminder of the disconnect with their audience though.
I left the following answer to your terminology questions at the interview. It’s also relevant to some of the comments above.
—–
Lloyd,
Thanks for highlighting any confusing terms. When your head is in a business every day, it’s easy to use terms that are common to your teammates, but new to casual observers. Jon knows his audience better than I and I would have gladly clarified any terms he felt would confuse. I will address the ones you mentioned below:
- CGM = Consumer Generated Media
- open-tone (my preference) or neutral-tone = posts of any tone
- specific-tone = posts of a specific tone (pos or neg)
- opps = opportunities to create sponsored content
- posties = shorthand for sponsored bloggers, sometimes used specifically for PPP sponsored bloggers
- leveraging the creative talent of the masses = just that. I view crowdsourcing a bit differently in that it often derives an answer from the collective input of a crowd (e.g. Digg voting) — whereas PPP is about unique, sponsored content across diverse authors/blogs. The reference to masses is also to distinguish this reward-the-masses approach from a reward-the-elite/gatekeepers approach to sharing information.
I hope this added detail makes the interview easier to follow. Thanks for taking the time to read and understand PPP a bit better.
Hi Dan Rua, thank you for the comment, though I am disheartened that you did not try to answer my fundamental concerns with PayPerPost.
Lloyd,
You said many things in your post, some observations, some opinions, some suggestions. I’ll gladly take a shot at answering your question if you ask it directly.
It would also help to know where you are on the spectrum of individualism ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism ) vs. collectivism ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivism ). It could help me answer in terms you will best internalize. Many of people’s views on this business stem directly from where they are on that spectrum and no matter how thorough answers are, it’s almost impossible to change views on whether people should enjoy freedom and carry responsibility for their own actions.
Thanks!
Hi Dan,
Thank you for taking the time to reply. I am reluctant to generalize, and want to stay focused to the current specific topic.
What is stopping you from requiring your customers to display in a consistent manner that an article is paid for “creative” content?
Thank you,
Lloyd
Lloyd,
That’s pretty easy. PPP’s marketplace participants see their blogs as their property, not PPP’s, and want the right to disclose in a form they deem best for their site and content. They accept PPP’s requirement of full disclosure of potential conflicts, but don’t support a one-size-fits-all approach for doing it.
Therefore, PPP provides tools (e.g. in-post disclosure badges, disclosure policies) to both content creators and sponsors to maximize the transparency of their transactions in the marketplace. PPP also provides guidance to both sides on the importance of transparency, such as here: http://blog.payperpost.com/2007/03/disclose-disclose-disclose.html
For comparison, I would note that free hosts such as WordPress.com have a different relationship with their customers — WP.com actually owns the servers and bandwidth in question. Therefore, WP.com may carry more responsibility for what is on their servers and WP.com customers may more readily accept WP.com telling them what to do on their blogs. I’m not saying it’s better or worse, just different.
The good news is that there is overlap between the two whereby WP.com can tell their bloggers exactly how to disclose sponsored content without dictating behavior to the rest of the blogosphere. That is why I asked my question above about individualism vs. collectivism. The collectivists typically want everyone to follow their rules; whereas the individualists recognize everyone’s right to make their own choices with their own property.
Differing perspectives can play a big role in misunderstandings and I hope this detail helps match the opportunity we’re each seeing…
Thank you Dan. I am glad the question is pretty easy for you to answer. I have never found any questions that involve money easy
So I am sympathetic to PayPerPost’s challenges.
Full disclosure? I don’t see full on any of the pages at PayPerPost except in the press release titled “PayPerPost Requires Disclosure by Marketplace Participants”.
Consistent disclosure in a post in no way seems one-size-fits-all, which you seem to be implying. You can offer a number of sizes. How many ways are there really to clearly disclose that a post is paid for?
Why do you think other media has specific consistency requirements? Like the magazine example that Jason Calacanis presented so thoroughly? Content that is commercial needs to be obvious without examining the content in detail. I am certain your advertisers and content creators support this, and likely most already do this. Here is an example of clear disclosure.
With no small amount of irony, your Advertiser FAQ’s link “Please see more details here.” does not work. The HTML code should be ‘href’ not ‘hef’. I am very surprised that had could go unnoticed since… December?!
(Blogger FAQ: does not mention disclosure once, it would be wise to explicitly mention it and link to the “Please refer to the Terms of Service”)
(Blogger FAQ: “Currently, bloggers have been banned for the following reasons:” is blank, that is not useful)
Lloyd,
Thanks for the feedback on the FAQs. I have forwarded your comments to PPP support. I’m a strong believer in communicating well with your customers — both by informing them and by listening to their preferences.
I like the example you provided of in-post disclosure by a Postie. If WP.com wanted to make that exact sentence/badge mandatory for all sponsored posts on WP.com, you would get the disclosure you feel is appropriate while also allowing WP.com bloggers to get compensated for their time/efforts/talents.
I’m sure PPP could even help educate bloggers and sponsors of that requirement for WP.com blogs. Sounds like a pretty clear win-win to me without WP.com dictating disclosure/TOS-choices for the rest of the blogosphere. Can we work towards some common ground like that?
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