Few Sites Reject Unusual $10M Sony 'Advertorial' Campaign
Web Publishers Disagree on How to 'Clearly' Label Advertising
Sascha Segan
Special to Consumer Reports WebWatch
The next time you see what appears to be an article online recommending a Sony product, check the fine print.
Sony Electronics has launched an unusual ad campaign called "Feature by Sony," in which the electronics maker plans to place advertisements that look like in-depth feature articles on at least 75 Web sites — including various AOL Time Warner and Yahoo! properties — this month. Industry sources interviewed by Consumer Reports WebWatch called the Sony campaign groundbreaking and unusual in its pursuit to look like content.
"Instead of Sony telling the story, we're finding people who are using the products in very cool ways and letting them tell the stories," said T. Scott Edwards, consumer segment marketing officer for Sony Electronics.
Click here to see full advertorial.
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The $10 million campaign delivers the ultimate soft sell. Put together by freelance writers rather than public relations people, many of the stories often don't even mention Sony by name. Instead, the ads use seemingly everyday consumers to talk about their lives — and how technology contributes to that lifestyle. For example, one silver-haired retiree named Steve Deiwert shares his experience of traveling in his RV and documenting his journeys on his personal Web site. All the subjects of these stories are real consumers, not actors, according to Sony.
So where, exactly, is the ad? The punchline comes in sidebars, which detail the technology these people are using under a heading called "Related Links"; all the gadgets just happen to be from Sony. Deiwert's story, for example, is accompanied by a sidebar providing information on a Sony digital camera, camcorder and computer he uses to document his travels. Links with titles such as, "Learn more about digital cameras here," and "Learn more about NetMD players," bounce surfers to Sony's Web site.
But some industry observers wonder if the Sony campaign is yet another example of high-powered product placement. Ads that too closely resemble feature articles will jeopardize the credibility of the publication that runs them, said Aly Colon, a member of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based education center for journalists.
"It looks like an article, it reads like an article — if you tasted it, it might even taste like an article. But it's not an article," he said.
Going Deep
Sony says the feature-like look helps avoid the sense of "interruption" and annoyance many Web surfers get from online advertising, and delivers much more information than a banner ad. The pieces are so readable and informative, in fact, that readers might be excused if they mistake them for actual feature stories.
A total of 60 different articles will be distributed among 75 sites, according to Sony. The Japanese electronics conglomerate and owner of a major U.S. movie studio will place its ads on NationalGeographic.com, teen site ugo.com, women's content site iVillage.com, Discovery.com; various AOL Time Warner properties including moviefone.com, AOL Music, people.com, instyle.com, realsimple.com, ew.com, time.com and thisoldhouse.com; several Yahoo! channels and dozens of other sites, Sony and Time Inc. representatives confirmed.
Nytimes.com, the Web version of the New York Times, turned down the campaign earlier this summer because the ads looked too much like editorial content and therefore didn't meet the Times' advertising acceptability guidelines, according to a July 22 article in Advertising Age. The Times' Web site runs "sponsored sections" and "sponsored archives," according to New York Times Digital spokeswoman Christine Mohan. But the two pages on Nytimes.com closest in spirit to the Sony campaign — packages of old Times articles done in sync with film releases — have long disclaimers stretched across the top of the pages. Sony wasn't willing to bend their design to fit the Times' standards, Mohan said.
"We couldn't agree on an option that had a clear label that explained to our readers that this content was created by Sony," she said.
CBS Marketwatch.com also turned down the ads because they looked too much like editorial content, said Scot McLernon, executive vice president for sales and marketing at CBS Marketwatch.com.
"As opposed to an ad like a skyscraper or a banner that's designed as advertising, this is a journalistic effort that would look much like Marketwatch content," McLernon said. Sony's proposed labeling was "not what would have made our editors comfortable."
Marketwatch doesn't normally run advertorials — forms of advertising that incorporate editorial elements such as headlines and quotes and read like an article — McLernon said. Readers' expectations that all features would be written by Marketwatch staff played a role in turning down the campaign, he explained.
"When users come to our pages, they can count on subjective and objective content that is produced entirely upon our own direction…[Sony's] content is quite good, but it wouldn't be appropriate," said McLernon.
Eye of the Beholder
Sony says it's not trying to confuse consumers. But tags designed to explain that these "features" are in fact ads and not editorial content are often not entirely clear.
On NationalGeographic.com, a story on retirees traveling the country appears on a page with the heading "National Geographic News." The story has two small labels near the top: One says "Feature by Sony advertising series," and the other reads "Feature by Sony." On iVillage.com, the "Feature by Sony advertising series" tag is larger and more prominent. But teen-targeted site ugo.com doesn't use the word "advertising" at all — that site plants the words "Feature by Sony" in the middle of a graphic, leaving the user to wonder what, if anything, it means.
Publishers, editors and advertisers all seem to agree advertisements on the Web should be "clearly" labeled — but nobody seems to be able to explain what "clear" means.
Sony said it was guided by standards set by the American Society of Magazine Editors. ASME's online guidelines are considerably looser than their print guidelines. For print magazines, ASME standards require advertorials to be labeled "at or near the center of the top of the page in type at least equal in size and weight to the publication's normal editorial body type face." For Web sites, ASME merely states that "special advertising or 'advertorial' features should be labeled as such."
ASME Executive Director Marlene Kahan explained via e-mail that ASME's online guidelines are intentionally less directive than those for print because the Internet is such a rapidly changing medium. While ASME is not explicit about the ways in which sites should label online ads, the desire to clearly delineate advertising and editorial is clear.
"As long as edit and advertising separation is clear either by words or disclaimer, we're less concerned with the precise labeling," Kahan wrote. "Labels don't seem to cover the ground for online the same way they do for print."
The Online News Association and the Interactive Advertising Bureau have very similar prescriptions. On ONA's Web site, the organization says "the distinction between news and other information must always be clear." Meanwhile, the IAB says "all advertising should be clearly identifiable as advertising," according to spokesman Stu Ginsberg.
None of the organizations offered a clear definition of "clear."
Policies at major news Web sites examined by Consumer Reports WebWatch fall along the same lines — most just say advertisements have to be "clearly" labeled, but their definitions of "clearly" vary. MSNBC.com, one of the few news sites to accept advertorials, buries them under a "Special Advertising Feature" banner, according to Uli Haller, vice president of business operations at MSNBC.
USATODAY.com runs a banner ad in the middle of its news front page that looks like a headline (it says "Click for Expanded Story"), but the banner ad links to an advertiser's site, not to advertorial content on USATODAY.com itself.
Both the New York Times, which rejected the Sony ads, and National Geographic, which accepted them, use the "clear" standard. But where the Times said Sony's labeling was unclear, National Geographic spokeswoman Carol Seitz said it was plenty clear enough.
"It's important that it's defined as an advertising series. We have it clearly indicated in two places to avoid confusion," she said.
On Time Inc. sites, viewers will have to click on an advertising banner to see the Sony ads. The feature pages will be marked with "Feature by Sony: an advertising series" in capital letters, according to Time Inc. spokesman Peter Costiglio.
"It will be very clearly defined and distinct as Sony content and not editorial content from Time Inc.," he said.
Old Battles, New Media
The battle over "clear" labeling has been fought for years in offline media, said Bruce Koon, president of the ONA. Koon said advertorials have a role to play online — in his mind, anything that gives straight information on the Web is helpful, no matter whether it's provided by an editor or an advertiser — but mimicking the visual background of an editorial feature just clouds where the information is coming from.
"Clearly the usage of [a publication's editorial] design, font or layout, or anything that brings it closer to the editorial product, [means] you're clearly trying to fool the consumer," he said.
In the future, online consumers are likely to see more excursions over the "Chinese wall" that once separated advertising and editorial departments at most publications, said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington-based nonprofit organization concerned about preserving an open and diverse Internet.
"The business model for the future of digital media is the seamless integration of advertising and editorial content … it's getting to be a very slippery and sloppy slope out there and consumers are going to have to place a very critical eye on much of the media that they access," he said.
Sites Confirmed to be running Sony advertorial:
NationalGeographic.com
Ugo.com
iVillage.com
Discovery.com
Moviefone.com
People.com
InStyle.com
Realsimple.com
ew.com
Time.com
thisoldhouse.com
AOL Music
Tips For Consumers: What's An Ad and What Isn't?
These days, it's getting harder to separate the ads from the information you seek on the Web, from paid placements in search engine results to product pitches that linger on your toolbar and then jump in front of you when you least expect it. Here are some tips to help tell the difference.
- Look for a label. The best and most reputable sites — those with offline brand names to protect — label their advertisements, though there is still some inconsistency in how they do it.
- Ignore anything that pops under — or over — your browser screen. Chances are 99 percent it's an ad. If not, it's bad site design.
- Look closely at advertisements that appear on the pages of the stories you read. Often sponsors will request "placement" near content they believe will connect readers to their products — for example, ads for personal computers in the technology section of a Web site or newspaper. There's nothing wrong with that — that's how the business works in newspapers, magazines, even television. But if the story you are reading mentions advertised products in a flattering light, chances are the content has been biased. Yes, this does happen.
- Be wary of "sponsored content." The majority of sites adhere to strict internal guidelines that prevent the sponsor from ever talking to the editor or the writer creating the stories. But some sites don't. If you're reading a story on a Web site labeled as being sponsored by a company, you should look elsewhere if you are seeking objective information on that company or its products.
- Sick of being bombarded by advertising? Seek out service providers and sites that know their customers dislike the intrusion. Internet service provider Earthlink in August announced it would begin including an ad blocker in its access software. Or find and download some of the more reputable software programs that block ads, though some charge a fee. Start your research at download.com or use a search engine like Google and type in the words "block pop-up ads" (and be aware that anything labeled "sponsored link" has been paid for by an advertiser).
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Sascha Segan is a freelance writer whose work appears regularly in Smart Computing, PC Magazine and Knowledge@Wharton. Previously, he wrote about technology for Expedia Travels Magazine and ABCNEWS.com. He recently wrote the book Frommer's Fly Safe, Fly Smart.
Disclosure: Earlier this year, Segan wrote six articles on general technology trends that were sponsored by Compaq and appeared on ABCNEWS.com.
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