| ||||||||||||
PRINT
COMMENT
SUBSCRIBE
RSSThe bottom-liner views the proliferation of in-text advertising, or in-textification, as a natural progression of the ad-supported Internet universe. In this world, Web sites exist to generate revenue, or at least that's what their job description says. These people are generally responsible for squeezing every last penny out of any available pixel they can confiscate from their editors and/or Web site designers.
Content purists, alternately, see the growing threat of in-text advertising as an unwanted infestation that crosses the line between their sacred words and the necessary evil that is advertising. While they subconsciously acknowledge that advertising pays their bills, they long for an Internet utopia void of banners, interstitials, rollovers, adwords, pop-ups and the like. (If only Al Gore could have foreseen the dark side of his creation, would he have done it differently, knowing what he knows now?)
The common ground for both of these groups is that they understand and embrace the reality that one cannot exist without the other -- or let's at least pretend they do, just for the sake of argument. Without the bottom-line focus of marketing and ad sales people, the Internet would most likely be an overgrown college message board. By the same token, ads without compelling content wouldn't draw eyeballs to visit a Web site (although that hasn't stopped a large number of video-sharing sites from adopting that model).
The lure of in-text advertising for bottom-liners is that it essentially creates prime real estate that didn't exist before. It offers a wonderful solution for Web sites that don't have any more ad inventory to sell. This newfound treasure trove can be turned into additional ad inventory that doesn't require any modifications to the layout of a page.
For the content purist, however, embedding ads into individual words in their articles can create an unwanted intrusion and a poor user experience for the reader.
This leads us to the issue at hand. Can in-text advertising provide additional ad revenue while not detracting from the user experience, or possibly even enhancing the user experience?
There are a number of companies like Yahoo, Snap, JargonFish and LingoSpot that have created a next generation of hybrid in-text applications that may offer an acceptable alternative that benefits the bottom-liner, the content purist and the Web site visitor.
This hybrid model displays related content from a variety of online resources (i.e. YouTube, flickr, IMDb, Wikipedia, Technorati...) along with a display or text ad. With this type of application, the ad unit is secondary to the content in the window. The added value of the related content provides the visitor with a compelling reason to click on the highlighted link and view the contents of the in-text window, including the ad.
The result is an in-text solution that could appease both the bottom-liners and the content purists. The ad unit generates revenue and the related content adds value to the overall user experience, or at least that is the intended goal.
While this solution may not completely bridge the gap between salespeople and journalists, maybe the two sides could view it as a small plot of common ground in the battle for Web page real estate. Sort of like the Switzerland of the Internet.
1 person recommends this article.
RSS FEEDS
Indeed a very insightful article that clarifies the distinction between in-text advertising and ad-supported in-text content services.
At Lingospot our focus has always been on using our natural language search technology to increase online readers’ discovery of the web. Two years and over 3 billion keyword links later, we are proud to say that reader interactivity rates with Lingospot continue to steadily increase, a testament to the value that readers find in the Lingospot service.
To echo Daniel’s comment, the only legitimate use for web links is to provide readers with additional information and resources. This is why related articles from your own site are the first thing readers see when hovering over a Lingospot link. We further enhance this experience by bringing to your reader videos, photos and a multitude of publisher-selected content services, all without leaving the comfort of your page.
Finally, I would urge the in-text haters out there to explore the solutions offered by the companies mentioned in this article (as well as others not mentioned) and try to get a feeling for what each is offering. In-text services fall along a wide spectrum ranging between pure-advertising and reader-utility. You may find that you don’t hate all in-text services after all. At Lingospot, we see in-text links as a new opportunity to genuinely enhance the reading experience.
The only legitimate reason to provide a link within online content is to give the author (or publisher) an opportunity to intentionally provide additional information for the reader while maintaining focus upon the given subject. This is what separates the Web medium from the others that came before it. It allows for an article to reference images, definitions, stories, sounds, video, research data, and other background information that a reader may not be aware of or may wish to refresh their memory on, in other words to aid the author in making his or her point. Each time a web user encounters a link hocking a product rather than providing supportive information, they lose confidence in links overall, especially at that site.
I understand that content monetization is my job. I also understand that the best way to achieve that end is to provide the best content possible, content that users want to read and interact with. Utilization of in-content sponsored links distracts from that goal and chips away at the very integrity of a site's content strategy.
Great example. I particularly am appalled by the fake link on "Depression" leading to a stock market tool for "Recession".
To respond to Joe’s post “When a link is found in editorial content, it is expected to lead to information and not advertising�, the point of the hybrid in-text product is that it leads to both information AND advertising. While this may not sufficiently address your concern, it is a step in the right direction.
Also, to address the intrusive nature of in-text tools, I would agree that the automatic launch of the in-text window from a mouse-over is annoying. With JargonFish, we require the user to click on the keyword before the window is launched; it is not activated by mouse-over.
To echo Paul’s post, the in-text products that offer contextually relevant content are not “inherently designed to fool the user into clicking on an ad disguised as a text reference�. The intent is to provide related information from other resources. If the user has a reason to click on the highlighted word because they know that they will receive useful and relevant information, the in-text product improves the user experience.
Whether you love it, hate it or are indifferent to the whole in-text ad or in-text content tool, it is most likely not going away. It iss, in fact, growing steadily as evidenced by the growing number of companies that are beginning to offer in-text solutions (my company included). The good news for the in-text haters out there is that with more competition, the product will evolve and improve and you may even find it helpful some day. If not, I can always hang this career up and start that refrigerator technician career I always dreamed of.
http://www.webupon.com/Social-Networks/Your-Myspace-or-Facebook-Online-Community-as-Depression-Support.64959
Thank you for your insightful article. You clearly delineated the difference between in-text advertising and in-text content that's supported by advertising.
At Snap.com, our mission is provide a more useful and engaging, editorially-relevant web experience, not to "bait and switch" with fake links like in-text advertisers.
Over the last year, we've created an enormous infrastructure of hardware and software that has automatically delivered the exact content the author intends for the user to see, formatted appropriately, quickly and up-to-date, over 5 billion times.
And it's paid off. On an average day, millions of users each trigger about seven Snap Shots and about 2500 of them download our browser add-on to take Snap Shots with them to sites like Google, MySpace, and Wikipedia. In total, our technology is on literally millions of sites and blogs, translated by volunteers into 43 languages.
The point of all this isn't to trick people into clicking an ad one time but to distribute the technology that will make the web far more intelligent, able to understand its own meaning (semantics) and able to anticipate consumer needs. This consumer and network driven model ultimately makes for a superior marketing environment, which is good for all of us.
Paul Angles Marketing Director Snap.com
If you ask the consumer, a group both marketers and publishers should be aware of, you'll find that in text ads are viewed as a bait and switch tactic. When a link is found in editorial content, it is expected to lead to information and not advertising. The reason that in text ads do so well is that the consumer is not yet savvy enough to differentiate between a true link and an in text ad.
In text ads are inherently designed to fool the user into clicking on an ad disguised as a text reference. Most people don't appreciate when that happens. Like the good old bait and switch technique, this is another instance of marketing gone mad. Drowning consumers in pop ups became less desirable only when advertisers realized that negative attitudes towards the ad format were bleeding onto their brand. Textification will meet with the same response.
Tricking a user into clicking on an ad has, historically, resulted in extremely low conversion rates. Driving non-converting traffic to your site is not the desired end result of any ad campaign. It may take a few years, but the textification of the web will eventually stop.
What it really means is that more and more, I'll turn to my friends (in the social context this means my network of domain experts) for information rather than ad-supported media. Looking at this morings eMarketer report and associated Pew Study, I suspect I'm not alone.
Geoff Caplan geoff-caplan.com