How clicking banner ads is good for journalism and isn't click fraud
This post buries the nut with too much backstory. The big takeaway is near the end, but for short attention span theater types:
1. You should click banner ads on sites you use to support the site, because that’s how publishers are able to provide consumers free content. Most users do not connect the dots here, distrusting online advertising but are still unwilling to pay for content.
2. This doesn’t mean you should arbitrarily click ads just for the hell of it, click the ones you think are good or relevant to you. This positively encourages a higher standard of advertising content, and is why I do it and don’t think of it as fraud.
I was reading the news online this Sunday, and as I usually do when I read a story or more on a site, I clicked a banner ad to support the site that I’m reading. I was also tweeting away at the time and I tweeted about it, encouraging others to do the same, because lately I’ve been on the horse about business models and online publishing – largely in context with news and journalism sites, but really all sites are facing an issue here.
Mark Glaser (@mediatwit) picked up on my tweet and didn’t like it, saying I was advocating click fraud. He may or may not have gotten my point: Mark is a smart guy, but also because it is hard to convey complicated or nuanced perspectives in short text, which @JamesGRobertson pointed out later in the extended convseration, which follows:
darthcheeta (me): if you’re reading sunday news online, click an ad fer crissake. costs you nothing and it gets a journalist paid. RT plz.
mediatwit: Weak model. RT @darthcheeta: if you’re reading sunday news online, click an ad fer crissake. costs you nothing and gets a journalist paid.
mediatwit: @darthcheeta Click fraud is not going to help journalists get paid. It will just piss off the advertisers. #pubcamp
darthcheeta: @mediatwit not advocating click fraud, mark. but higher advertising standards will help journalism. weak or not, it is the model.
mediatwit: @darthcheeta Telling people to click on ads is advocating click fraud. Do advertisers want clicks from people who don’t want product?
mediatwit: @darthcheeta in fact, Google says it will kick out publishers from AdSense who tell readers to click on ads just so they can make $.
darthcheeta: @mediatwit longtime onliners have been supporting each other for years by clicking banners, clicking good ones encourages higher standards
JamesGRobertson: @mediatwit I don’t think he’s advocating fraud. He’s asked ppl to click if they’re interested. See: http://bit.ly/gOkii
mediatwit: @JamesGRobertson Check his original tweet: http://bit.ly/3X03Sz Basically saying to click on ads to get journos paid. That would backfire.
JamesGRobertson: @mediatwit I agree with you, but I think the tweet falls victim to the lack of context/explanation that comes with Twitter. Perhaps wrong.
mediatwit: @JamesGRobertson The context should be: Click on an ad if you’re interested in it. Clicking to make someone money is fraud.
JamesGRobertson: @mediatwit I don’t disagree. Trying to discuss something complex is hard over Twitter. Not sure I made my point, but thanks for listening.
Whew. Ok, now that we’re up to speed. Let’s flesh this out and see if we can clear some things up.
Us grassroots webmasters have been supporting each other for years by clicking on each other’s banners, plain and simple. It has been considered good ethics among the hacker community for a very long time. Those of us who used to have “homepages” before there were blogs could tell n00bs by their aol.com e-mail addresses, but now there are many more passive consumers in cyberspace who may not know that we old-timers have some standards here. (And sorry, even if you are social networking and posting content in facebook and youtube or a blog someone built for you, if you aren’t grokking code, you’re a passive consumer. Nothing wrong with that, it just is.)
Mark reached the right point, click it if you are interested, but I believe he defines that interest in only purchasing interest. I gauge interest in advertising and brands on many levels. I watch commercials for some products because they are entertaining or well done, but I may not buy those products immediately. Hardcore conversion standards aren’t the only standard in the persuasion equation, and some sales take time.
The article that James linked to Mark was an opinion piece that I wrote recently for Poynter that poses the question: Maybe journalism isn’t broken, but advertising is. And we need to encourage a higher standard for online advertising instead of just letting google have its way. Because that’s a good way for google, but it isn’t so good for the rest of us most of the time. In fact, check out this great piece on Moot, who runs 4chan, and can’t move out of his mom’s basement because he can’t monetize his massive traffic with penny advertising on the impression level. You need clicks to make bucks in google adsense or anywhere else.
While it can happen on an individual basis in theory, Click fraud is really using hacker powers for evil to over inflate pageviews and click throughs by using bots and programs. If we pass along the message virally that people can help elevate the standard of advertising online by encouraging good ads with clicks and discouraging bad ads by ignoring them, we might be able to fix the model instead of re-inventing the wheel.
It may be weak, but it is THE model we’ve been using for centuries on many platforms as they’ve appeared. And I think it is broken when applied to the online space, but can be fixed. And I think we can fix it, maybe one click at a time or maybe if we all start working together to raise the standard for online advertising and make it more effective for publishers, advertisers and consumers.
There are 7 Comments to "How clicking banner ads is good for journalism and isn't click fraud"
Thanks for clearing this up, David. This is what I thought you meant, and was trying to relate to Mr. Glaser, albeit ineffectively over Twitter.
I think it makes sense for you to tell (or remind) people that clicking ads makes sites more money, because I’m not sure John Q. Public knows that.
And, I think that your opinion piece was important in determining the context of the tweet because you were saying that the average person trusting online ads is paramount in fixing the system. If more people trust ads, the more they will be willing to click on ads, even ones that advertise things that they may not want to buy.
If clicking on ads is fraud, then how is it supposed to work? As I understand it, impressions are one level of revenue, but clickthroughs are another. While it may be unethical for the news orgs to tell their readers that clicking ads makes them more money (which I concede to Mark), I think another party can do so without it becoming fraud.
For the record, I didn’t mean to step on any toes or make anyone angry, or ragequit the conversation. I realized I was probably putting words in David’s mouth without talking to him, and didn’t want to end up wrong. I’m sorry if I ever gave the wrong impression.
David,
Thanks for trying to clear things up. For me, they are still a bit muddled. You still believe that clicking on ads is good, even if you just like the ad (not because you are really interested). What’s missing from the equation is the advertiser. What does the advertiser really want from that ad? Let’s go through the possibilities:
> Brand awareness: This doesn’t require clicks at all.
> Sales/action: If you are just clicking on the ad to help bring in money for the publisher, it’s doubtful you will be buying something or signing up.
> Build traffic: The click might help temporarily, but very few advertisers just want someone to click an ad and then move on. They want *interested clickers* or why bother.
This idea that people should click on each other’s ads to help bring in money or somehow advance an advertiser’s goals doesn’t fit with what I believe advertisers really want. When you can bring in an actual advertiser to this conversation to get their take on this, then I will listen.
if clicking for brand exposure is unnecessary, why does the extra compensation incentive exist?
i think the goal is engagement. a click is a step to deeper engagement opportunity through the banner’s rabbit hole. an engaged viewer or reader is more likely to convert to customer or consumer. we’re seeking engagement as we build our own brands through social media platforms and word of mouth.
we’re all advertisers, but we may not like to view ourselves that way. (we’re also all journalists, and most have heard me rant that before, but anyhoo…)
i’ve been looking for the advertiser and ad sales discussion in the saving journalism conversation since the days when i was still blogging at lost remote and it is an elusive prey. reading the pertinent passages in WWGD gives you jarvis’ take on agencies and media buyers when it comes to online.
we have to remember what was the feature benefit of selling advertising against news originally: it was the credibility of the platform over the sheer audience reach. i argued at poynter that the industry eroded that credibility through brokered advertising in an immature marketplace.
for now, the pageview impression and click through economy is what we have to deal with, and it may not be the best model. instead of outsourcing advertising or cutting deals with warehousers for inventory, i’m making the radical pitch that the actual traditional model might be worth exploring. if news organizations spent as much time innovating advertising as they did storytelling, would they be in trouble now?
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It’s come up on AFP. I had to delete a post and talked to the person about it. As an advertiser as well as a publisher, blind clicks make no sense.
I’m busy, but I’ve bookmarked this exchange. I’m sure there’s a lot of lessons here.
Cheers,
kpaul
I may be a bit out of my element here, but I think advertisers cannot expect every click to bring a stream of revenue. What other platform offers consumers a direct link between product and revenue stream? With the exception of infomercials, nothing comes close to offering what the web can in connecting consumers to products. Traditional commercials and print advertising do not, it’s about building a rapport.
As an example to David’s earlier thought, I am a huge fan of Apple’s ads on NYTimes.com, and I will click them every time I visit. I may not necessarily but that click, but I will likely explore. I am a consistent Apple consumer and will continue to buy their products, those ads just reinforce that. And I’m rewarding the NYTimes for their innovation.
It seems to me illogical to assume that because print and broadcast ads cost more, they are necessarily more important or better at attracting consumers. Besides the ads that shipped with Sunday papers specific to a store, I cannot remember ever using a print ad. I have bought stuff from web ads more times than I can count, and I think people are starting to catch on.
Just a thought.
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