Jeff–I did follow much of the discussion and the voices beyond Denton who contributed to it. Most of the thoughtful critics (the ones I saw) raised two issues.

One, it’s wrong for journalists to endorse a companies products by saying nice things about them as part of an ad relationship. I agree with that (and in the People Ready case, nobody was endorsing Microsoft’s products or services), but at the same time I don’t think that journalists and bloggers are corrupted by letting their words or names be associated with a marketer. I don’t think this program is in the “advertorial” family of concepts; I think it’s much closer to ads in which marketers pull quotes from credible reviewers and re-use their words in an ad. Only in this case, nobody said anything nice about Microsoft.

Two, the terms of the sponsorship relationship weren’t clear to all readers. I think most people understood that the banners were ad units from Microsoft, and that Microsoft presumably paid the websites for advertising on them. What some people didn’t understand was whether or not that meant that the editorial coverage on those sites was now guided by Microsoft. This criticism surprised me. When the financial details of an advertising transaction are murkier — at traditional media entities — it’s assumed that journalists don’t know where the money comes from, and therefore the writers are unbiased by business considerations. Since the journalists at WSJ (by this logic) don’t know that Microsoft advertises with them, their editorial content is unbiased. But since many blog publications are authored by the same person who manages the business operations, he or she is held to a different standard — since blog authors know which advertisers are supporting the site…..

Clyde–The authors are tacitly endorsing all the advertisers that run on their sites, in the sense that they have the right to say no to advertisers they feel don’t belong on their sites. But the quotes themselves (I wish more folks read through them!) aren’t endorsements of Microsoft’s products or services.

Rick–To point A, yes the words were paid for by Microsoft, and the authors profited directly from Microsoft’s advertising on their sites. This is how the journalists at the NY Times and Wall Street Journal are paid, too, only in those cases the authors get a smaller piece of the advertising fees. No apologies for that! To point B, Microsoft did pay the authors to write up an anecdote of when they first felt “people ready.” These were not spontaneous write-ups, certainly. But beyond posing the question — which did include Microsoft’s words, People Ready — Microsoft didn’t tell them what to say. When you review the quotes themselves, it becomes more obvious. Did Microsoft tell Battelle to give a happy, Microsoft-friendly anecdote about having to fire a bunch of people from a previous job?! Trust me, Microsoft didn’t get involved in writing the copy!

Dan–You bring up an enormously important part of all this: Forget about the specific details for a second, do the readers of GigaOM or TechCrunch or VentureBeat ascribe less credibility to the authors of those sites? In other words, it’s the perception that’s as important as the facts. I don’t agree with you that it’s a disservice to readers to bring advertisers into the conversation, but I agree wholeheartedly that these kinds of programs need to think carefully about perception alone.

Thank you, all, for the feedback. We’re treading on some new ground, learning from past models that have worked in certain contexts (advertorials in print, DJ reads on radio, pull-quotes in print ads, etc), and looking for even better models enabled by digital publishing platforms. And the key to us (FM and our partners) is models that “work” for all parties — the marketers, the authors / publishers, AND the readers. Sometimes this means pushing the envelope, and it certainly means screwing up and trying hard the next time. Some of the criticism is tough to hear — that’s for sure!! — but I’m doing my best to hear it and grow from it. Thanks again.

found your blog via charles cooper at cnet. I think you’re missing the point. it’s not about how relevant advertising is to readers, or even how important. as an editor at pc world in the 90s I knew exactly how important the ads were to readers. but if an advertiser (let’s say microsoft, for fun) asked pcw staffers or columnists to ‘participate in a conversation’ about a marketing slogan it wanted to promote, then use those comments in ads, pcw would have told them to go “pound sand,” as mike arrington likes to say. that would have been a clear breach of editorial independence, not to mention integrity.

yes, the internet is different. but not that much.

in the end, the writer’s (and the publication’s) job is to serve the readers. you don’t serve readers by helping an advertiser inject a lame catch phrase into popular usage.

that’s the real issue. and it’s a lot bigger than nick denton and valleywag. it speaks to the core of what you’re allegedly trying to do — give people useful information to improve their lives. if the source of that information is tainted, even if only in the readers’ minds…. game over.

cheers,

dt

“So, working with FM, Microsoft invited 8 FM authors to talk about the concept of “people ready” in their own words, in language that might resonate better with their readers. What those authors wrote was featured in the campaign that ensued.”

Sorry, but apparently that’s not true. As Arrington wrote:

“generally FM suggests some language and we approve or tweak it to make it less lame”

So you guys wrote the ad copy for him.

And then later:

“In the case of the Microsoft ad, we were quoted how we had become “people ready,” whatever that means”

So basically Arrington et al get paid for allowing their name to be used on a quote they didn’t write, and go on record as supporting an ad campaign that he doesn’t even believe in.

You can call it “conversational marketing” if you like. But “shilling” and “pimping” sound more accurate to me.

As Jeff Jarvis wrote:

“In each of these cases, the advertiser’s effort is to get more closely associated with us, our content, our reputations, our brands . . . They want us to speak their names. Nicely. Or at least be near them, associated with them. This happens at every editorial product I know and it becomes incumbent upon their editors to resist and to protect their integrity from integration.”

Check out the Ad-Supported Music Central blog:
http://ad-supported-music.blogspot.com/

FM should make sure that its publishing network maintains high standards and that there is no opportunity to question the integrity of those publishers.

All these explanations attract attention to the fact that there is something not quite kosher in all of this. I bet you don’t do it again…

That snippet alone contains the two fundamental contradictions with which this campaign is being defended.

A) Those words were to be used, and were used, in the campaign that followed. The authors profited directly from that campaign because the ads ran on their sites. In other words: those words were bought and paid for in a way which can hardly be called indirect or accidental. “Invited” is a pretty lame euphemism for promising to deposit $$$ in someones bank account in exchange for services rendered.

B) It weren’t their own words. None of them would ever have used the term “People Ready”, let alone spontaneously written anything about it. Not only their words, but their voice was bought. Microsoft didn’t influence what they wrote? For f*** sake, MS told them what to write about and which exact words to use! If you don’t call that influencing, what would you call putting a gun to someones head? Mild encouragement? A minor incentive? I little nudge in the right direction?

Besides that, their voices were bought to shout out a marketing slogan. “Think different. Just Do It. Where Do You Want To Go Today. People Ready.”. Plain and simple old school advertising slogans. No conversation, and very little relevance. Which makes all this stuff about new ways of advertising and conversational marketing very hard to believe.