I get frustrated when people try to speak for me, my family or my business, when they try to over-protect us when we haven’t specifically asked for this extra protection. And when people who are being paid to advertise, forget to respect those who are paying for advertising: grrrr, not hmm. I’m not saying that Webmasters or site owners or bloggers have to bend over for advertisers, but hey, if these advertisers are paying for exposure and conversions than dammit, we have a job, a duty, a mission to provide the advertiser with that service to the best of our abilities.

Yesterday I linked to a post by Jason Calacanis who is the co-founder of weblogsinc.com which Mark Cuban invests in. Mark is a spicy guy who arguably authors the most compelling CEO blog on the web. I wonder if The Benefactor will dial up Mr. Calacanis and remind him not to forget about who pays for the lights? Mr. Calacanis seems to be on some sort of extreme crusade to discourage bloggers from what he deems to be deceptive advertising inside blog entries. He is really, really opposed to a gentleman by the name of Mark Canter who is proposing a program to increase the blog ads inside blog entries. I don’t know Mr. Canter or Mr. Calacanis personally so my views aren’t compromised in this discussion. When I pointed out to Mr. Calacanis how weblogsinc.com formatting Google Ads boxes to look like the site was also a form of advertising deception he responded with:

TDavid… OK, now you’re just being silly.

Banner ads and Google Adsense that are outside of the content box are fine if clearly labeled. They don’t need to be on a different background and font. Those extra steps are for when you put *text* ads in the middle of the *text* content.

If you look at the Google ads–with the nice background color–they are very clearly ads. in fact you can’t run them from Google if they don’t have the “Ads by Google” notice.

No one is ever going to confuse those the way they would the two examples I cited in my arguments above about ADVERTISING IN BLOG POSTS!

Well, it’s a new day so my self-imposed comment moritorium has been lifted.

Jason - it’s not silly, it’s relevant. It’s still a subtle form of advertising DECEPTION which you are employing here with Google ads.

Despite how it might come across, actually I’m not knocking you for doing this because you surely aren’t the only one who does this. In fact, we do this on one of our sites that runs Google ads (not a blog) and I think it’s smart marketing. But let’s be across the board fair here: advertising deception is advertising deception. You’re drawing black and white lines between editorial and advertising? Ok, then let’s go there specifically.

Blog posts contain affiliate TEXT links. User profiles and signatures contain affiliate TEXT links. Links to books people are reading containg (Amazon) affiliate TEXT links. The major premise behind sites like Waypath is inserting relevant (Amazon) affiliate TEXT links into blog entries. Some songs bloggers listen to and reference inside blog posts contain (iTunes and other) affiliate TEXT links. Your post recently about X1 was still an advertising link and promotion no matter how much bold text you wrap around it saying you weren’t paid. You bet you were paid! You are saying you didn’t get any free software to promote this blog? Schwag for pimping the site is advertising as well! That was an advertising campaign (and a clever one at that, BTW) for weblogsinc.com. Loosen up the spincter at least a smidgeon on this whole anti-advertising in blog entries thing because your house isn’t immaculate. Nobody that isn’t a completely hobbyist venture can claim they are free from at least some form of advertising deception.

You do sell advertising here [weblogsinc.com], right? I sure as heck wouldn’t buy advertising for any of my online companies from a place that doesn’t seem to respect the advertiser’s right to be placed in relevant places — up to and including linked to inside relevant blog entries. I’m not saying I expect bloggers to shill our sites, products and/or services where it’s not appropriate or relevant but I am saying if you are talking about something we do than it’s not a crime to link us and you know what, if you get paid via an affiliate link during the process, that’s NOT deception for your readers. It’s not a sellout.

It’s almost like you are anti-advertising or something, but I know that’s not accurate; it can’t be. I can’t believe a guy as progressive as Mark Cuban would associate himself with a place that doesn’t seem to think outside the box when it comes to relevant placement of advertisements. Rather, I think this crusade, though very well-intentioned, is flawed from a business standpiont.

Am I saying to crash your surfer’s browser with popups, java or intrusive flash ads? No. Am I saying to redirect surfers away from content to full page ads? No. Am I saying that it’s NOT a sign the Death Star is home if you place an affiliate links to something you have bought and/or use inside the text of a regular blog entry? YES, YES, YES.

I think I may try ressurecting that awful, deprecated blink tag for exclaiming advertising, advertising, advertising around every affiliate link inside blog entries … not.  Ever been to the zoo? Ever seen some of the more passive animals walking around on the public paths almost mingling with the zoo patrons? It is possible for advertisers and content to work TOGETHER.

The bottom line is what is all this saying to existing and/or potential advertisers, Mr. Calacanis, not only what this is saying to your readers.

Your readers will tell you if the signal to noise ratio is out of hand and the two publications you cited in your examples of using deceptive advertising practices don’t seem to have any recent public complaints from readers about their advertising practices, do they? The next question is what do the advertisers think? Are they happy with the conversions they are receiving from these blogs?

Recently I was asked to work with a well known blog that has traffic in excess of 15,000 uniques a day. By page views they are well over 500,000 views a month. You’d say this is a prime blog to advertise on but you know what’s really happening? They are having difficulty getting advertisers to pay for advertising!

I put up some ads that were performing well on one of our blogs doing significantly less traffic in a prominent spot on every page of this busy blog. You know what the result was? Less conversions (sales) than what we were making on the blog with much lower traffic!

You want to know where that blog currently makes the most advertising money? From their relevant text and graphic Amazon ads inserted within the content of each blog entry!

The reality is advertisers that are sandboxed on many busy site are getting shafted. Now there is a topic of advertiser DECEPTION that is worth talking about and carrying a torch for. Shafted because somebody has all this traffic and traffic is king. That’s BS. Conversions and relevance are king. That’s what put Google on top of the search engine game. Google was far and away more relevant than the other search engines. They’ve lost some of that edge, but that’s a story for another day.

Advertisers don’t need just more eyeballs, they need the most bang for their buck with the eyeballs that are seeing their ads. The webmasters who look out for advertisers and provide them that are doing their job.

Absolutely, YES, the readers are important and maintaining journalistic integrity is important, but if you take money for advertising you shouldn’t treat the advertisers with such disrespect that they are quarantined everywhere on your website.

I fully agree that bloggers should be upfront with their readers about their advertising activity, but I don’t think they have to go to the extremes that you suggest, Mr. Calacanis.

I hope this discussion has at least made you pause and think about the advertiser — or potential advertiser — point of view because you just never know how many of your readers are also prospective and/or existing advertisers.

In my last post, maybe I should have said Yoda instead of Coda.

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