When Ads Undercut the Credibility of Content

The other day while reading a story on MSNBC.com, I stumbled across ads from not one, but two people in my home town who were providing valuable information to MSNBC readers like me. The ads were delivered via the Pulse 360 ad network, which had entered into a big partnership with Microsoft some time ago.

The first link took me to “Alyssa’s Rachel Ray Diet Blog”. Alyssa, the mom in question, has found health bliss in the form of a wonder food that has apparently been praised by everyone’s favorite celebrity chef. Ah, but something is fishy here! Rachael Ray fans will quickly note the misspelling.

It turns out (you saw this coming, didn’t you) Alyssa’s blog has nothing to do with Rachael Ray. As for her origins, perhaps she lives in Santa Cruz, but Alyssa also seems to live in many other places simultaneously. The ad for her blog had gathered my IP address and inserted “Santa Cruz” into the text. Apparently that’s what Pulse 360 means by “highly targeted.”

To my profound dismay, the same was true of the Matthew Jales ad. Matthew was willing to help me make thousands of dollars by simply submitting links to Google, which seemed like a great idea. Then I got a bit suspicious that perhaps he wasn’t on the up and up. After all, why would ol’ Matt go out of his way to tell me he lived in Santa Cruz when he probably lives somewhere else?

I ran a WHOIS search and was shocked, shocked, shocked to find that the WHOIS info was protected by an outfit called WhoisGuard. So there is no easy way of finding out where the Mattster actually lives, or at the very least where he gets his mail delivered.

My sarcasm stems from the fact that these sorts of shenanegans have been part of the Web for many years, so it was no suprise to find that the Alyssa and Matthew ads were so dodgy. But this is a major news site. It was mildly surprising to find that a “real” news organization would be so careless with the truth.

MSNBC doesn’t seem care enough about its readers to vouch for the ads that appear on its pages. I’m talking about basics here. MSNBC doesn’t need to determine whether Alyssa’s wonder berries have any medicinal benefits. But the geo-targeted text is simply not truthful. It’s street-corner hucksterism.

While readers keep hearing about how important it is to have a thriving Fourth Estate, the people who run media businesses continue to treat ads and content as wholly separate affairs, even though the two are presented in an increasingly intertwined way.

Traditional journalists hold some real advantages over amateurs. They know how to check facts and obtain information from multiple sources. They understand the importance of subtle shadings of meaning. They work hard at their craft. But their work is undercut every time an ad for Alyssa’s Rachel Ray Diet Blog appears below a story.

When the next era in journalism finally gathers a head of steam, the winners will be those that deliver meticulous, credible reporting instead of infotainment. And they’ll make money at it, because they won’t be fostering mistrust between themselves and their readers.