Progressive Blogs Sell Out To Big Oil

Question Miles (0.00 / 0)

Did you speak to anyone at any of these websites to get their response to your post?

The reason I ask this is because I'm wondering whether they actually sold advertising to this company or if the company bought the advertising through a third party service that brokers ads for them.

I use Google Ads on my site to generate a very modest stream of income (I'm embarrassed to say how modest).  I don't have direct control over which advertisers appear on my site.  I designate certain areas of my site for ads and then Google sells ads and splits (a tiny amount of) the revenue with me.

Now I do have a veto, in a sense.  If an ad or advertiser really bothers me I can block them by entering their url into an ad filter on my account.  But I can't watch all my sites all the time and new advertisers appear all the time.

I'd like to hear from these other sites how they sell space on their sites and what if any policies they have about advertisers that are and aren't allowed and how they filter them.

1) If they sold the space directly to TransCanada, then that really is a poor decision on their part and they deserve your censure.  

2) If a third party did it for them, then maybe they need to renegotiate the way they sell space on their site, but the blame would seem to lie more with TransCanada in that case for deliberately planting "spoiler" advertising on websites that normally would oppose TransCanada's (or BP's) goals.

It isn't clear to me from what you've written which one of these scenarios is in operation, so I have to ask again: did you contact any of these sites for a response to these ads before writing your post?

The Richmonder

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by: The Richmonder @ Thu Feb 24, 2011 at 20:04:01 PM UTC

Those aren't Google ads (0.00 / 0)

There's zero chance - nil, nada, etc. - that a site like Daily Kos would allow one of those "wrapper" ads to be placed on its site without its full knowledge. And there's no way that FDL or TPM would allow a major ad on their sites without knowing about it/approving it. Also, based on my experience, there's no way a Blogad or almost any other kind of ad - other than Google ads, which I dislike because you can't control what appears on your blog - can appear on your site without your participation or at least knowledge.  

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by: lowkell @ Thu Feb 24, 2011 at 20:09:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I may be wrong but... (0.00 / 0)

I think advertisements are targeted to whomever is surfing the page.  

In other words, not everyone sees the same advertisements.  If you have recently been reading up on information regarding a topic recently, advertisement scripts search through your cookies to see what topics or products you may be interested by seeing what is left in your cookies and browsing history.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

But yeah, web sites can block certain advertising companies that advertise for certain customers.  But, I assume those larger web sites that rely on revenue from ads go with the big ad companies that represent a plethora of companies.

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by: mikefromArlington @ Thu Feb 24, 2011 at 20:05:19 PM UTC

I don't believe that's correct in these cases (0.00 / 0)

The "wrapper" type ad on Daily Kos is visible to everyone, as far as I know (and I've heard from numerous people who are seeing it). As for FDL, here are the instructions for advertising on there.

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by: lowkell @ Thu Feb 24, 2011 at 20:12:11 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Fair game (0.00 / 0)

This is a worthy point to raise. Some of these folks spend a lot of time proclaiming who among the Democrats or progressives is good or evil, so it is fair game to raise this concern. (I'm thinking particularly of Fire Dog Lake's jihad against thise who didn't agree with Jane Hamscher's views on health care.)

I'd second the suggestion to ask these blogs what they were thinking (or if they were simply not minding the store).  Those fighting on our side  deserve at least that opportunity to explain themselves.  

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by: kindler @ Thu Feb 24, 2011 at 23:52:16 PM UTC