Praneet Kandula points out that it’s a party: nearly every college newspaper out there is in the business of buying and selling search results. The culprit behind all of these faux college advertising networks appears to be the New Digital Group.
I’m currently in an e-mail discussion with staff members from two of the offending newspapers about their advertising practices. They’ve asked that I not post our conversation, and I will respect that provided they fix their sites. I will say that I’m seriously dismayed by the defense being mounted, which is a combination of:
- This is the essence of advertising—that people with more money can make their services more prominent through media.
Yes. But these advertisers only care about your media to the extent that it lets them get more prominent placement in search results, and at reputable search engines, my search results are not for sale and therefore not a legitimate advertising medium.
- It may not be fair that large companies can buy superbowl ads while mom-and-pop shops can’t, but that’s the free market we have as defined our laws.
That’s a straw man. The superbowl is a legitimate place in which to advertise. Search results are not.
- It’s critical to keep independent student journalism alive in this day and age.
Agreed. The ends don’t justify the means.
- It’s difficult to keep independent student journalism alive in this day and age.
Agreed. The ends don’t justify the means.
- Google and other search engines seek to make money and don’t necessarily act in the public good. They could be selling search results, too.
What search engines may or may not be doing is not an ethical defense of your demonstrably unethical behavior. The burden is on you to prove wrongdoing, not cast vague shadows. In any case, the booty seized when you win the search war is far more valuable than the money you rake in from companies trying to buy their way to the top, as Google has proven. And the war is won on relevancy.
- Even if “online MBA program” search results are hijacked by scam companies, people can search for “online MBA program scams” to find the scam information.
So people should change their searching habits to accomodate scam artists? What if I’m not even aware of the potential for scams and don’t think to search for that? And what do I do once the scam artists hijack “online MBA program scams”? It’s already happening with diet pills dangerous. What do I do now, search for “Be honest: are diet pills dangerous?”
Meanwhile, kids, if you’re in the market for a timeshare, The Daily Princetonian would like to sell you one. See, it’s right at the bottom: “Rentals, Timeshare Resales, Sell Timeshare, Rent Timeshare, Timeshare For Sale, Timeshare”. (None of the bottom links are even delineated as advertisements.)
May 28th, 2005 at 4:55 pm
I was glad to see that at least, as of yet, my alma mater hasn’t set up a link farm yet. Some advertising is there, which is expected, but it’s also nice to know they have a policy to not to promote alcohol, so hopefully they would not promote things like diet pills and gambling as well. I haven’t seen any, but I can’t swear that they don’t.
May 28th, 2005 at 5:34 pm
That pleasant image of a dock in black and white really belies what those guys do…
But seriously, keep up the good work. You should get a Letter to the Editor into The Stanford Daily (although I’m sure you’ve already done that).
May 29th, 2005 at 12:56 pm
I used to be the online editor of a major college newspaper’s web site. Like most college newspapers, ours was free — about 10% of our revenues came from student fees, and the rest from print advertising. Money was a sore subject for many of the paper’s student employees: most of us made a pittance for a whole lot of work, while our revenues helped subsidize other media ventures (like the radio and TV stations) who couldn’t support themselves.
My point is this: I had to run the online operations of a newspaper that had practically no money to allocate toward its web site. I imagine that this is why so many college papers make deals with networks like New Digital Group and College Publisher: we got free hosting and a content management system (plus a guaranteed sizable ad buy in our print edition). In return we gave them the right to place a certain number of advertisements on each page.
Now, here’s the secret that isn’t too hard to figure out: these networks aren’t making much money. In my time working at the newspaper I saw many different types of ads on our site, ranging from standard banner ads to invasive flash ads with sound… and, of course, Google AdSense.
I’ve taken far too long to get to my point, but here it is. First of all, these link farms seem to me to be a sign that New Digital Group is flailing wildly to keep from drowning. Secondly: it’s quite possible that the link farms are the work of New Digital Group, not its individual partner newspapers. Depending on the contract these sites have, New Digital Group might have the right to place ads like that on these pages without requiring the consent of the newspapers.
Based on your post, it would seem that the newspapers you talked to did, in fact, have some say in this decision. Still: based on my experience, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if some newspapers didn’t have the authority to dictate what sort of ad content appears on their own web sites.
May 30th, 2005 at 10:28 am
I really wish Google would enact a policy that any and all sites caught gaming the system in this way would be *permanently* banned from Google. Their current policy of only pulling the offending sites until they “fix” the situation doesn’t have any bite.
May 31st, 2005 at 3:09 am
“Google and other search engines seek to make money and don’t necessarily act in the public good. They could be selling search results, too.”
These guys are so pathetic! So what if Google ‘Could be selling search results, too’? It’s Google’s own damn service! If they want to sell their OWN search results, let them. (Though I’m pretty sure Google would never do such a thing, they’re making more then enough money out of their Google Ads anyway.)
These college newspapers are actually ABUSING a third party web service. Image that I started to hijack the ‘College Newspapers’ or ‘Daily College’ keywords, I’m sure they’d instantly complain on how evil these kind of activities are.
If you want to make money, use Google AdSense and ONLY Google AdSense. From personal experience I know that only 3000 visitors a day easily makes 300 to 500 dollars a month.
June 1st, 2005 at 7:57 pm
Selling text links is not limited to college newspapers.
The San Jose Mercury News and others have these kinds of ads.
See “Featured Advertisers” at the bottom of the homepage. http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/
June 7th, 2005 at 6:54 am
“Meanwhile, kids, if you’re in the market for a timeshare, The Daily Princetonian would like to sell you one.”
and if you need condoms, visit http://dailybruin.ucla.edu/
(http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/ads/condoms.jpg)