Where sponsors should not go
We often say that you can sell a sponsorship to just about anything, from lanyards to seatbacks in the session rooms. But, when it comes to your event Web site, think carefully before wading into the muck that some magazines have been foundering in lately: Selling links within editorial content on a Web site. (For more reading on how this is playing out in the publication world, see these posts.) Here’s what the hoo-ha is about, according to Folio magazine:
- [Journalism guru Paul] Conleyâs wrath is directed at Ziffâs decision to use an advertising feature called IntelliTXT developed by Vibrant Media that hyperlinks keywords within an article to a pop-up text ad. When the cursor is moved over the hyperlinked word or phrase in an article, such as âsoftwareâ or âserver technology,â a pop-up text ad appears that links to a sponsorâs Web site. To Conley, and others, the practice skirts the issue of advertising transparency, even though the pop-up window is labeled as an advertisement and the hyperlinks are uniquely formatted, in this case, in green with a double underline. The service can also be used as pop-ups to alert readers to related articles.
(I take issue with the transparency of these links, which to me easily could be confused with editorial links, but I digress.) While your event Web site most likely doesn’t operate under journalistic ethical guidelines, the whole concept is just wrong. Can you imagine if a potential attendee, clicking around your session descriptions, saw a link in the technology track that they think will provide more information about the topic, but instead links to a sponsor? That trust, which is so hard to build, shatters in an instant.
I’ve always maintained that our businesses—meetings and business-to-business media—are very similar. I’d just hate to see you make the mistake that some of my journalistic brethren are making in chasing the almighty dollar. Both meetings organizers and media publishers can use all the new sources of revenue they can find, but, in my opinion, this is one best left on the table.
May 7th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Sue, I couldn’t agree with you more. I can see almost no instance that where an event producer would benefit from IntelliTXT and similar embedded text link advertising.
In fact, Vibrant Media themselves say that IntelliTXT should not be placed on any navigational, customer service, transactional, promotional, or general information page.
I do still maintain that there are places and ways to implement embedded text link ads on *content* pages where they can truly add value and not be confusing to the reader, but those places and markets must be chosen carefully and the implementation must be very well thought through.
Thanks for addressing this in the event mgmt space … an area I hadn’t yet considered!
May 8th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
i think it’s a very interesting way of approaching an event website. i’m not sure i would recommend it to a client but it is a very interesting adaptation of the technology. it might even help recover a bit of the cost associated with hosting an even–if enough click through occurs. i mean, if an event is large enough to attract thousands of views…
that being said, most events are all vendor-driven anyway. why not embed the links? i’m not sure i see that as a violation of trust. in fact, if i’m clicking around on an event website, i would almost expect to get more vendor links than normal. check out this event website: http://www.astd.org/astd
besides, i don’t see the ethical line as clearly on the event websites as on editorial content. they seem miles apart to me. perhaps i’m missing the boat here. could you elaborate a bit more?
May 14th, 2007 at 10:47 am
I’m thinking in the content sections, not the exhibition areas, where you would expect live links to exhibitors and sponsors. As an attendee, it would annoy me to no end to think I was clicking through from a session description to more information about the topic, and instead be shuttled over to a sponsor’s product site.
Maybe it’s just me—I’d be curious if anyone else finds this bothersome?
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