PressEthic

Ever read an online article and hover over a link only to have an ad pop up that directs you to a different site or activates a flash application? David Kesmodel and Julia Angwin of the Wall Street Journal ask: is it news...or is it advertising?

Links to other sites are usually indicated by a different font color and a single line under a phrase or word. In a recent FoxNews.com article, there were double lines under the words "house," "speaker" and "leadership," according to the WSJ article linked from Romenesko's blog.

The underlines weren't for emphasis -- they were clues that those words were doubling as advertisements. When readers moved their cursors over the underlined words, a pop-up advertisement would appear, obscuring some of the text of the article. The ad above the word "speaker," for instance, was for the search engine Ask.com. "Search Ask.com for Speakers," it said, and linked readers to the site.

According to their article, FoxNews.com, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Popular Mechanics magazine all use this advertising tactic. Ethicists like Poynter's Bob Steele were quoted in the article, saying in-text ads are problematic. How can a reader truly tell the difference? Is a link to Ask.com truly giving a reader a better understanding of a word or the article? What if the article was criticizing an advertiser that is linked in the story? And what if the advertisement is completely out of context?

It also seems to me like this is a complete breakdown of the wall between editorial content and advertising. It's one thing if text is wrapped around an ad that is labeled in a block square I can ignore. It's certainly another, more dangerous thing if the ad is right in the text of the article, impossible to ignore.

Advertisers told the WSJ that the "ads aren't intrusive because users see them only if they move their cursors directly over the highlighted words." But I know I put my cursor over most links, whether they're double-lined or not, to see if it's linking to other material that will help me understand the article or lead me to more pertinent information.

But these links could be leading to subjects completely out of context with teh article.

For instance, a recent Popular Mechanics story titled "Worst Case Scenarios: How to Survive a Riot" advised readers to "stay away from the windows." Last month, the story contained an ad for Microsoft Windows linked to the word "windows."

Microsoft Corp. referred a request for comment to Universal McCann, a media-buying company that buys in-text ads for the software maker. Jason Tsai, group interactive media director at Universal McCann, which is owned by Interpublic Group of Companies Inc., says the ad clearly wasn't relevant to the content. But he says marketers accept that there will be some awkward matches in in-text advertising because certain words can have more than one meaning. "If we stopped buying the word 'windows,' we'd give up a lot of good placements of the word," he says. "We're also protected against stuff like this" because Microsoft pays only if users click on the ad, he says.

A spokeswoman for Popular Mechanics says the site has received no negative feedback from users and is constantly monitoring its site to make sure in-text ads aren't off-base.

Hmm, seems like their readers don't care. And according to the article, iVillage.com and Forbes.com readers didn't seem to care about in-text advertisers either. And it certainly boosts the bottom line, with advertisers plunking down $5 to $20 per click for video ads and less than $5 for text ads.

But not everyone is comfortable with in-text advertising. Forbes.com removed the technique after reporters complained. "'While the general feedback from [users and advertisers] was more positive than negative, our editorial staff was very uncomfortable with the concept,' a Forbes.com spokeswoman said in a statement."

Glad I'm not the only one.