Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

advertorial juxtaposition

I was startled this morning to see a “big box” web advertisement for the John Kerry campaign nestled inside a story about the Kerry campaign. (“Kerry to Unveil Plan to Reduce Gas Prices” - 03/30/04)

It’s a strange kind of advertorial juxtaposition, and I’ve reloaded the page enough times to be, if not confident that the placement is intentional, at least confident that the ad is fixed to the story. (I saw a similar thing last fall, when all stories about wireless telephone number portability included advertisements for Sprint PCS. When the story was about AT&T customers having trouble with their provider, the Sprint PCS ad seemed to beckon AT&T customers to jump ship.)

I realize that targeted ad placement is a crucial strategy that ad salespeople use to sign on clients and guarantee them a certain degree of exposure. And certainly the Internet allows ad people the ability to target advertising to an incredibly specific degree, serving up ads in stories that match particular keywords, or to registered users who fit a certain demographic profile. However, the Kerry and Sprint PCS cases are uncomfortable marriages of hard-news editorial content and targeted advertising the produces the kind of “advertising the very thing we’re reporting on.”

In past uncomfortable news/ad match-ups I’ve seen, the juxtaposition was unintentional — for example, a news Web site that used story keywords to automatically serve up genre-related graphic or text ads displayed the classic “bad juxtaposition” example of an airline ad alongside a story about a plane crash. It troubles me that this kind of specific targeting may now be happening intentionally.

From an ethical standpoint, such a practice implies that the paper is monetarily benefiting from the companies and personalities it covers. Like what you’re reading about this Kerry guy? Donate some money to his campaign. The news judgement exercised in the reporting of this story was probably completely independent of the revenue priorities of the advertising department. But it just looks bad.

Edited 8:39 a.m. — After posting this entry, I returned to the washingtonpost.com story in question and reloaded the page again. Other ads now are rotating through the page, and the Kerry ad no longer appears.