
The Rest Is Advertising – Confessions of a Sponsored Content Writer - JackPoach
http://thebaffler.com/salvos/rest-advertising
======
JacobAldridge
I studied Journalism and trained as a Journalist a lifetime ago (1999-2002),
before the internet really (technical term looming) fucked everything up.
Thing is, even back then we were studying the impact of the 'Janus view of the
Press' \- this concept that any and every news publication was a two-headed
beast, seeking to find the balance between great, objective journalism ... and
money to keep the lights on.

Back then is was more philosophical than existential - we debated whether it
was morally acceptable for a writer to take into consideration the size of a
company's ad account when covering them in a story; now that the focused
channel of broadcast media has been fragmented, so advertisers no longer pay a
premium for access to readers and viewers of the nightly news, every
journalist has to be mindful of their commercial impact (though this still
needn't impact their writing choices) because they may be out of a job next
week.

 _Plus ça change_ and all that. I'd like to see more debates around how to
fund the new model (now that we've discovered it was the channel, not the
content, that people actually valued for a couple of hundred years), not all
this hand-wringing about the impact of money on objectivity because that's an
old, boring conversation. Ultimately, advertising has been funding journalism
for a long, long time. I wish it wasn't so, but I also wish it rained
doughnuts.

~~~
qznc
Is it necessary to debate about funding models for journalism? Money will find
its way. People will find their information and entertainment. New channels
will form. Capitalism works quite well for this.

You can debate about government intervention, if capitalism does not
incentivize as people want. Maybe the government should pay for some of the
journalism? Maybe we need more control and oversight for "high-quality"
journalism?

~~~
JacobAldridge
I think as the 'Fourth Estate' there's a definite need for Journalism to stay
well away from government funding, control and oversight - while I would
contend almost all journalists are capable of setting aside any biases such a
funding model might create, 'Journalism must be done fairly, and it must be
seen to be done fairly' and being dependent on the government makes it hard
for a populace to believe it's objectively investigating the government.

But you encounter the same issue if you suggest, say, the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation ought to fund "high-quality" journalism. (When was the last time
the WashPo ran a scathing attack on Amazon?) Even some kind of group model -
part government, part philanthropist, part donors will always create a
perception of bias.

I'm mixed on your point about Capitalism. Yes, 'the market' will deliver what
the people want, but not always what they need ('in the public interest' v 'of
interest to the public'). A government example might work here - would
taxpayers in one state willingly contribute money to a road project in
another? I suspect not - taxes aren't voluntary for just that reason. Longform
investigative journalism, I feel, would similarly not be funded by sufficient
people. And I think that would usher in a new era of corruption in most
capitalist nations.

~~~
Ntrails
> Longform investigative journalism, I feel, would similarly not be funded by
> sufficient people. And I think that would usher in a new era of corruption
> in most capitalist nations.

is that how you feel about the BBC?

~~~
JacobAldridge
That's a great point. I don't have much feeling about the BBC (I've spent most
of life in Australia), but my 'go to' thought when discussing the impact of
Media on revealing corruption is _The Moonlight State_ , which ultimately
brought down the State Government of my home state Queensland ... and was
created by the ABC.

Indeed, one could argue that a commercial provider wouldn't have invested in
longform (I really meant long-term as much as length) as much, but state-
sponsored broadcasters had the time and space. So I don't think it could be
the _only_ journalism, but you make an excellent point about it having a
special place (especially when protected by legislation from becoming the DPRK
Mouthpiece).

------
dunkelheit
I have recently found that I can't trust most of the things written on the
internet anymore. Every piece of writing is suspect and that's incredibly
tiring. It just seems that PR-media-marketing juggernaut is always on the look
for things that are perceived as trustworthy and trying its best to simulate
them. Hope that at least HN will remain unpopular enough so that we will still
be able to have real discussions here in the future ;)

~~~
tariqali34
I hope that wink is a realization that sponsored content (in the form of "Show
HN" and the linkbait submitted by heavily interested parties) has already
arrived.

~~~
dunkelheit
At least there is a tradition of stating your affiliations and monetary
interests up front. But still, good point. Recent bitcoin debacle is a good
example - with both parties accusing each other of staging a FUD-spreading
campaign in social media and on discussion sites.

------
FussyZeus
I've said it before: There is no value in proper journalism because there's
too damn much of it in the market. I think the subscriber model will work much
better once 70% of these companies have died off and the remainder can get
back to real journalism. If the better ones have to survive the storm by
taking on sponsored content, that's what has to happen.

At one time we had tons of newspapers for every moderately large city, and now
all of those papers are now online and expect to make money covering all the
world's news like they did before. The problem with that is none of them are
geographically limited anymore, they distribute everywhere, which probably
sounded awesome to them until they realized all their old competitors and a
couple million more they had never heard of were all doing the same thing and
eating their lunch.

The problem with news online right now is there is just way too much of it,
there is demand, but when you can get more or less the same information on
5,000 different sites, who the hell cares what your particular site has to
offer? Add to it some blocking users of adblock or switching to a subscriber
only model, and you have a clear reason why these companies can't make money.

~~~
rthomas6
That makes a lot of sense. It follows, then, that the way forward is to
hyperlocalize, either geographically or in a particular subject matter. And
come to think of it, I _would_ find much greater value in a detailed news site
about my city, or even my particular _section_ of my city.

~~~
hobs
It has been tried (though you could argue not well.) I feel like it was either
Yahoo or AOL who tried hyperlocal news and it did not gain traction.

However, you could argue that this lack of traction was due to the climate of
the users and what they were interested in at the time, they also (if I
remember correctly) were actively paying local "reporters" who had a specific
local beat.

~~~
rthomas6
That's not authentic and not really what I want. There is zero chance that a
single reporter reporting to a mothership in another city could generate
better content than a local paper. After thinking about it, what I want
already exists in limited ways. Some examples for my city:

clatl.com

atlanta.eater.com

atlanta.curbed.com

In addition to these, I think a small monthly paper devoted solely to
investigative journalism in a particular city or town would generate enough
paying subscribers to be viable, but I could be wrong.

~~~
ghaff
They exist but they're largely labors of love that probably depend on certain
demographics. The chains with local stringers for smaller city papers are
terrible.

------
rm_-rf_slash
Bah. I hardly read sponsored content. It's often marked and I find myself
enjoying the piece less and instead hunting like an eagle for every clear
indication of propaganda and attempted influence.

The author's main point I believe is correct: money in journalism is wildly
misallocated, from overpaid mega-writers and editors, to inconsequential
coverage. Things that can't hold forever won't, and that will allow new and
necessary questions to be asked about journalism in this new era.

Every market goes through a rough patch and a transformation. If you think the
quality of journalism is _only_ going to get worse, and the path for
journalism is _only_ in sponsored content, you need to spend less time with
dystopian scifi and more time with history.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_If you think the quality of journalism is only going to get worse, and the
path for journalism is only in sponsored content, you need to spend less time
with dystopian scifi and more time with history._

Okay, but how can it change? Where will the money come from?

I'm on the side of the dystopians (is that a word?) until someone can answer
those questions for me. But I'm a techie, not a student of history, and I
honestly don't know.

~~~
fweespee_ch
> Okay, but how can it change?

I'm pretty sure this is a "yellow journalism period" on the internet but it
will get worse before it gets better since the common man needs to completely
lose faith in these rags like they did with tabloids.

Clickbait is alot like the tabloids and yellow journalism of print media,
honestly.

> Where will the money come from?

Subscriptions most likely. It'll be newspapers written to favor the
desires/biases of the upper middle class who would consider dropping $100/year
for such a thing.

~~~
marcosdumay
When in history did newspapers ever survive on subscriptions?

I've seen and read about papers that survived on ads, and papers financed by
causes. Never seen any successful paper on any other format.

Yes, the Internet makes new things possible, but how can you be that sure?

~~~
qznc
Yes, ads and causes seem to be the two big sources of money. I cannot think of
a third one.

We agree that ads are dead. That logically leaves us with causes.

The problem with causes are that they are inherently biased. However, there
are usually sources for each side. Maybe we should embrace the bias? Instead
of looking for objectivity and an ideal of journalism, we could try to balance
biases.

Google started with Page Rank, which tries to calculate authority (and thus
implicitly objectivity) into a single number. Maybe AI technology can identify
all relevant causes for each topic, balance bias, and present a wealth of
opinions and the facts they agree on? Sure, the "balance bias" step is the
problematic one, because here a gatekeepers occurs.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
In the 30s, business opposition to FDR and the New Deal programs ushered forth
a wave of propaganda inciting distrust in government control of the economy
while promoting the ability of American industry to raise living standards.

As a result, the Roosevelt Administration countered with a series of public
service films informing the public of subversive private propaganda and
demonstrating ways to detect hidden or covert biases.

At first I laughed when I heard about this. I couldn't imagine anyone putting
that much effort into analyzing news. But using AI? You might be on to
something...

------
hayksaakian
This is the future. At this point it's impossible to un-do disruptiveness of
banner ads. One reason that People block banners is due to how disruptive and
gaudy they are.

Native ads camouflage among real content for a few reasons.

1) people like the how articles are presented on the rest of the website, so
these ads are not disruptive

2) Many people don't notice the 'advertorial' or 'sponsored content'
disclaimers. This reduced the 'bounce rate' of people that view this
advertising there fore higher engagement

------
api
This is the future if everything has to be free. Since you can't make money by
creating content for readers, you have to instead create content for
advertisers and propagandists.

~~~
jacquesm
There is plenty of content that will always be free and free of advertising.
That's content made by people who either care about a subject or that are
otherwise given the feeling that they contribute to something larger than
themselves (wikipedia for instance, plenty of blogs, courses and so on).

The problem is that newspapers evolved in lock-step with the advertising
industry and that they had carved out an - in retrospect - extremely fragile
position based on a balance that they thought was stable. Unfortunately for
many quality news publications it turned out that wasn't the only stable
state, the other one is the state in which they are simply gone, maybe a few
with hopefully benevolent wealthy sponsors would endure. This was an
unforeseen consequence of reducing the value of printing presses to near zero.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_Digital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_Digital)

Pretty much predicted this, the only thing it got wrong was the timetable, it
took a little bit longer.

So now the question is do enough people actually put enough value on real news
to employ journalists to do their work. Right now it looks bleak.

~~~
scholia
The problem is that the content that's "free and free of advertising" probably
won't be very good, or very well researched, or independent.

High quality content often depends on access (which can be hard or impossible
to get even if you're a real journalist), a lot of time, and quite a lot of
input from support staff (editors, subeditors, researchers, picture editors
etc).

 _> So now the question is do enough people actually put enough value on real
news to employ journalists to do their work. Right now it looks bleak._

Agreed.

~~~
Godel_unicode
If by content you mean specifically news and product reviews, that's certainly
possible. If by content you mean "long-form writing on a specific subject",
then you're quite wrong and the parent is right.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson)
[http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/](http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/)

High quality content comes from two sources, similar to high quality software.
It either comes from an organization which makes and sells high quality
content to make money (the new York times::Microsoft) or it comes from
individual contributors who create it out of passion for the subject
(wikipedia::FSF)

~~~
scholia
People will produce "long-form writing on a specific subject" but usually only
if they have an axe to grind. They are not necessarily independent and their
work is not necessarily subject to the editorial checks and balances that you
get from a properly set up news organisation like, for example, the New York
Times.

You're moving from a situation where stuff is _mostly_ trustworthy to mostly
untrustworthy.

Free software is not a good analogy. It works _regardless_ of the social and
political opinions of the people who write it. I don't think it would have as
many users if this were not the case ;-)

~~~
pjc50
_Free software is not a good analogy. It works regardless of the social and
political opinions of the people who write it._

This is completely false: every act of writing or releasing Free software is a
political act. That's the point of doing it, of giving your labour away. Free
software only exists because of the social and political opinions of its
authors.

~~~
slackstation
"Everything is political" is fine in theory but, the reality is that Rails or
Node.js or Bash or Linux works equally well for dictatorship filtering the
internet and the dissident speaking out despite it.

Software is a tool. The idea that hammer is imbued with the political views of
the person who crafted it is a bit of romantic mysticism. The political actor
is the person using the software.

To put it another way, if my software cared what my political opinions were,
it wouldn't be used. One of the greatest freedoms afforded me by Free Software
is freedom from others' political opinions on how to use said software.

------
jcr
Since the spamvertorials mentioned were published in The Atlantic, it reminded
me of something in one of PG's essays earlier this year:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html)

" _The Refragmentation_ " January 2016

>" _But when I went looking for alternatives to fill this void, I found
practically nothing. There was no Internet then. The only place to look was in
the chain bookstore in our local shopping mall. [9] There I found a copy of
The Atlantic. I wish I could say it became a gateway into a wider world, but
in fact I found it boring and incomprehensible. Like a kid tasting whisky for
the first time and pretending to like it, I preserved that magazine as
carefully as if it had been a book. I 'm sure I still have it somewhere. But
though it was evidence that there was, somewhere, a world that wasn't red
delicious, I didn't find it till college._"

------
melvinmt
Can't wait 'til adblockers start blocking sponsored content.

~~~
Terr_
New plan: Block any article that mentions a company or trademark. :p

~~~
scholia
So that eliminates almost all the financial stories, all the hardware and
software reviews, and all the sports coverage, just for starters ;-)

~~~
DavidHm
If you think about it, this is not a gigantic loss, if you are interested in
insights and not news.

~~~
scholia
Where do you think insights come from? Are they generated spontaneously out of
thin air in the absence of facts?

~~~
DavidHm
Of course insights are generated by facts.

But what I am interested in is the insights, not necessary the facts that led
to them being created (as long as I trust the author who converted facts into
insights).

So I am happy to read an article about the evolution of (random example)
people's savings and investing behaviour. I don't necessarily need name
dropping of the fintech unicorns who are involved with making it happen.

~~~
scholia
This is like wanting a history of movies that doesn't mention any movies.

You're welcome to try it (1). That's a good way to prove yourself wrong ;-)

(1) I've done quite a bit of it myself.

------
slackstation
This is just another of the long list of things that you can only trust if you
pay for it. You are the product not the client of most media you consume.

If you want news, you have to not only pay for it but, pay for independent 3rd
parties to vet it so that over time you have media that you can trust.

Nothing it trust-worthy any more. Newspapers are selling their reputations in
a fire sale. Buzzfeed actually makes money by ignoring any idea of
objectiveness or the separation between editorial and advertising.

~~~
smcnally
> If you want news, you have to not only pay for it but, pay for independent
> 3rd parties to vet it so that over time you have media that you can trust.

General skepticism, independent vetting, and referencing multiple sources are
good ideas.

Among the problems with sponsored content/native ads/advertorial is that
people rail against it as if all the other editorial is completely devoid of
any bias, point of view or financial consideration. It's sleight of hand and
misdirection, in part.

------
hagbardgroup
Ad blockers block most native ads because they get loaded dynamically and have
trackers associated with them to provide accurate billing and accountability
to advertisers. So that part of the article is at least wrong. Every native ad
that I'm aware of loads almost exactly like a banner ad.

Most people don't particularly want or need objective news. If they want it
straight, they can pay premium prices for it through outlets like Consumer
Reports or from specialty newsletters. When they don't want it, they pay by
renting part of their attention to advertisers, marketers, and salespeople.

------
amelius
I wonder what will happen to journalism when AI becomes so strong that it can
recognize ads and remove or mask them, even when the advertisements are placed
inline in the running text.

~~~
cableshaft
Why stop there? What'll happen to journalism when AI is so strong it can write
articles entirely, eliminating the need for any writers at all?

------
rthomas6
I went to the Atlantic to read some sponsored content, only to discover that
uBlock Origin filters it out for me.

