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How the New York Times keeps tragedies ad-free

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Re: How the New York Times keeps tragedies ad-free

#21

Post by smoe »

universaltest wrote: post #4

> it’s almost an acknowledgement that ads are invasive and uncomfortable. They cross over into the intolerable range when we’re emotionally vulnerable from a tragic story. Is it really this, or is it that advertisers don't want their brand associated with negativity in general? How they're doing it is interesting, but I think the analysis is weird.

I worked for the biggest swiss news site, which also had an option to disable ads for a story in the CMS.

In this case, it wasn't an acknowledgement that ads are invasive and uncomfortable in general, the problematic ads were those shown based on keywords of the story. E.G. an advertisement about how safe car X is in a story about an fatal car accident.

Re: How the New York Times keeps tragedies ad-free

#23

Post by cantlin »

Typically there'll be a CMS flag available to powerful users (editors). That's how it works at the Guardian.

It sets a boolean (shouldHideAdverts) in our content API[0], which we use in templates[1] to suppress commercial logic.

There are obvious business reasons for this. It's common for it not to be in the advertiser or reader's interest to show commercial messages against some content.

[0] http://content.guardianapis.com/world/live/2015/mar/24/germa...

[1] https://github.com/guardian/frontend/blob/4cb7e07c15a03568c2...

Re: How the New York Times keeps tragedies ad-free

#24

Post by Shivetya »

smoe wrote: post #21
universaltest wrote: post #4

> it’s almost an acknowledgement that ads are invasive and uncomfortable. They cross over into the intolerable range when we’re emotionally vulnerable from a tragic story. Is it really this, or is it that advertisers don't want their brand associated with negativity in general? How they're doing it is interesting, but I think the analysis is weird.

I worked for the biggest swiss news site, which also had an option to disable ads for a story in the CMS. In this case, it wasn't an acknowledgement that ads are invasive and uncomfortable in general, the problematic ads were those shown based on keywords of the story. E.G. an advertisement about how safe car X is in a story about an fatal car accident.

so the issue is creating an ad delivery service that understands the context of the articles on the pages its serving. I would think there are a good many methods to pull that off but even then perhaps the risk to real?

Re: How the New York Times keeps tragedies ad-free

#25

Post by blowski »

smoe wrote: post #21
universaltest wrote: post #4

> it’s almost an acknowledgement that ads are invasive and uncomfortable. They cross over into the intolerable range when we’re emotionally vulnerable from a tragic story. Is it really this, or is it that advertisers don't want their brand associated with negativity in general? How they're doing it is interesting, but I think the analysis is weird.

I worked for the biggest swiss news site, which also had an option to disable ads for a story in the CMS. In this case, it wasn't an acknowledgement that ads are invasive and uncomfortable in general, the problematic ads were those shown based on keywords of the story. E.G. an advertisement about how safe car X is in a story about an fatal car accident.

I remember a Land Rover advert being shown right next to a story about a fatality caused by a fault in the very model being advertised. I've also seen problems with, say, holidays to Paris being advertised next to a story about the Charlie Hebdo killings.

The problem must be that the highest traffic stories are typically the most sensitive ones.

Re: How the New York Times keeps tragedies ad-free

#26

Post by ThomPete »

What if you created an advertising platform for NGOs and relief organizations, research etc. based on relevant tragic events.

Wouldn't that be an ok way of still having advertising but for organizations that are potentially trying to solve the very problem the tragedy represents?

Re: How the New York Times keeps tragedies ad-free

#27

Post by eli »

universaltest wrote: post #4

> it’s almost an acknowledgement that ads are invasive and uncomfortable. They cross over into the intolerable range when we’re emotionally vulnerable from a tragic story. Is it really this, or is it that advertisers don't want their brand associated with negativity in general? How they're doing it is interesting, but I think the analysis is weird.

Agreed. It would be highly inappropriate to introduce a TV news story about a fatal crash with "Happy Monday!" and that's not because wishing people a good day is invasive. It's just not appropriate for that story.

Re: How the New York Times keeps tragedies ad-free

#28

Post by mattlondon »

Shivetya wrote: post #24
smoe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for the biggest swiss news site, which also had an option to disable ads for a story in the CMS. In this case, it wasn't an acknowledgement that ads are invasive and uncomfortable in general, the problematic ads were those shown based on keywords of the story. E.G. an advertisement about how safe car X is in a story about an fatal car accident.

so the issue is creating an ad delivery service that understands the context of the articles on the pages its serving. I would think there are a good many methods to pull that off but even then perhaps the risk to real?

The trouble is, most ad serving systems already work out the context/theme of pages and target ads appropriately but even then its not perfect.

E.g. you are an airline and you want to advertise your flights. You might want to have your ad appear on pages that have contexts of "travel, flying, vacations" etc since you believe that those pages are likely good pages to reach people interested in your services. Sounds reasonable. An advertiser would obviously NOT want to appear advertising their cheap flights to Tenerife next to this sort of terrible, tragic news.

As others have mentioned its perceived as bad for the brand be be seen next to bad news, but more importantly (and more likely IMHO) people are human and understand the gravity of the situation so apply common sense and tact.

So it gets into a silly situation where you have advertisers targeting contexts "travel, flying, vacations AND NOT disaster, crash" - whilst you are there you may as well start excluding some other negative things too, like "thailand, children, ladyboy" etc etc until you have these huge lists of tens of thousands of exclusions getting into the ridiculous depths of human depravity, whilst you just want to show on "good" pages about just 3 simple contexts: travel, flights or vacations.

And even then ads sometimes still slip through and appear on "bad" pages because someone forgot to put "erotic trepanation" or whatever in the exclusion list.

Re: How the New York Times keeps tragedies ad-free

#29

Post by Kliment »

simi_ wrote: post #15
Kliment wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Germanwings' first accident ever. I also live in Köln and fly with them frequently, but I'm not particularly concerned. Also, on a totally offtopic note, want to meet up?

We're Lavaboom, we make secure/private email, and have an office in Solution Space (right across the cathedral), feel free to come meet the (tiny) team. :) http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Am+Hof+20-2...

I might do that. Does Friday work for you? Email me at kliment@0xfb.com (yes, that's a zero)

Re: How the New York Times keeps tragedies ad-free

#30

Post by simi_ »

Kliment wrote: post #29
simi_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're Lavaboom, we make secure/private email, and have an office in Solution Space (right across the cathedral), feel free to come meet the (tiny) team. :) http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Am+Hof+20-2...

I might do that. Does Friday work for you? Email me at kliment@0xfb.com (yes, that's a zero)

We're here every (week) day. :) I'm andrei@lavaboom.com
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