How the New York Times keeps tragedies ad-free • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by maxerickson » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:10 PM UTC

cantlin wrote: post #23

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.guardiana…

I wonder if the NYT meta header is just a similar flag leaking out, or if it is something that can be abused client side to never have ads.

It's totally unsurprising that it would be a CMS feature, I'm a little taken aback each time I see a crass juxtaposition on smaller sites (more out of surprise at them not doing it than any particular personal sensitivity to it).

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

#32

Post by rvschuilenburg » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:19 PM UTC

VMG wrote: post #7

A new avenue for ethical cross-site scripting. I did not know about this particular keyword sensitivity google mail: http://boingboing.net/2009/07/31/how-to-avoid-ads-in.html Maybe everybody should add "I'm sorry for your loss of ads" to their email signature?

That's a very old article though. I'm quite sure this is no longer relevant. A friend of mine lost both his parents in Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 back in 2010 and I remember him telling me shortly afterwards he got very uncomfortable ads in Gmail about insurances and funeral services. In Dutch though, so it could be those keywords are not localized.

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

#33

Post by smoe » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:19 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #25

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.

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.

I see the problem more in the fact, that a lot of publishers try to squeeze out some ad money from every single blank space still left on the page and fill it with third party services where they have no control over the actual booking. It is simply impossible to foresee what inappropriate ads might be shown if you don't now the pool.

In contrast to the directly sold banners, where the marketing team might just postpone a whole scheduled campaign for an airline when half the front page is filled with stories about a plane crash.

Still I think it's impossible to avoid some inappropriate ads at time and one has to live with it.

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

#34

Post by albertsun » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:33 PM UTC

This is indeed a manual switch in the CMS that human editors decide to turn on for certain stories.

(Source: I work at the Times)

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

#35

Post by aet » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:42 PM UTC

albertsun wrote: post #34

This is indeed a manual switch in the CMS that human editors decide to turn on for certain stories. (Source: I work at the Times)

It seems that this logic applied well before online. I imagine newspapers would not place ads next to stories of this type on print either.

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

#36

Post by soneil » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:45 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #31

cantlin wrote: post #23

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.guardiana…

I wonder if the NYT meta header is just a similar flag leaking out, or if it is something that can be abused client side to never have ads. It's totally unsurprising that it would be a CMS feature, I'm a little taken aback each time I see a crass juxtaposition on smaller sites (more out of surprise at them not doing it than any particular personal sensitivity to it).

I took a look at the first result that popped up (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/world/europe/germanwings-a...) and interestingly, this ad_sensitivity tag is set to "tragedy". I'm curious to know what other options there are now - whether this is boolean, or a sliding scale.

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

#37

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:57 PM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #9

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.

How may articles are actually positive in a newspaper? IMO advertisers understand that contents making people angry (like politics, mostly) or sad will drive most of the page views, and are OK with some level of negativity. Tragedies directly affecting their potential customers is just a bridge too far. For comparison, discussion on afghanistan and air strikes is OK: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/world/asia/ashra…

I don't think the issue is sensitivity, but association of advertisers with tragedy or creating a vulture-like appearance. You don't want to advertise Southwest in an article about a JetBlue crash.

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

#38

Post by smoe » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 1:57 PM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #28

Shivetya wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

I agree and think it's impossible to foresee every possible "bad" correlation. Furthermore the problem is not limited to advertisement but every type of automated content. E.G. a widget with a generated list of "related stories" or an autocomplete search box.

With more and more of this style of content being used, it is in my opinion important to better inform the not so tech savvy public, that computer generated relations can be really useful but will yield some results that are wrong or might seem distasteful for the human mind.

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

#39

Post by notjustanymike » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 2:10 PM UTC

We had this at Newsweek too, and it's not as people friendly as you think. Disabling ads is about brand-safety. Most brands don't want to be associated with tragedies, so you disable ads in order to protect your contracts.

Given money or user experience, most publishers will choose money every time.

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

#40

Post by nsxwolf » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 2:25 PM UTC

With a manually set flag. This needed an article? I was expecting some deep learning article about an AI that automatically detects when stories are too tragic for ads. No. Someone shoots an email to someone else and says "Hey, make sure you set the no ads flag on this one". Ok.