| Preserving Trust on the Web: Separating Ads From Content
Marketers are constantly seeking new ways to increase the reach and impact of their advertising messages. One consequence of this is a trend toward the blurring of advertising and content in many types of media. In television, for example, we are seeing:
 Product placement gambits, such as the presence of Coca-Cola cups on "American Idol."
The Pepsi "MacGruber" spots produced by Lorne Michaels, starring "Saturday Night Live" actors in situations parodying the old "MacGyver" series -- and airing on SNL.
The use of company-sponsored video news releases (VNRs) by TV stations in local newscasts -- which led to an FCC requirement that stations airing them "clearly disclose to members of their audiences the nature, source and sponsorship of the material they are viewing."1
As far as the Web is concerned, any time Tim Berners-Lee has a pronouncement, it behooves the industry to listen.
Berners-Lee, the acknowledged inventor of the World Wide Web, recently expressed concern that the spread of false or misleading information could damage the usefulness of the Internet. At a London conference in May 2008, he specifically cited "medical information provided by pharmaceutical companies which produce promotional sites masquerading as an impartial source of advice." He said this trend could mirror the rise of spam, which hurt e-mail’s usefulness.2
People are becoming increasingly aware that some of the information they get from the Web may be junk. One example is the rise of "flogs" (aka "fake blogs" or "flack blogs"), defined by Wikipedia as "an electronic communication form that appears to originate from a credible, non-biased source, but which in fact is created by a company or organization for the purpose of marketing a product, service or political viewpoint" -- the Web equivalent of unidentified VNRs. Additionally, there are Web sites that offer marketers easy tools for publishing "advertorials" on the Web as marketing tools.
Some misinformation may be unavoidable if the Web is to remain free and open to everyone to publish information as they see fit. However, an important way to ensure the Web’s usefulness, as both an information source and advertising medium, is to maintain a clear separation of advertising from content.
As Internet content syndication professionals, we (and our organizations) own a large part of the responsibility of maintaining the trustworthiness of content on the Web. Accordingly, we need to come up with a standard for distinguishing content from advertising. Here are the ICSC’s proposed standards:
Source: Is the content created by an advertiser or its agency? Or is it created by a third party whose editorial independence can be trusted?
Consumer perception: Are the Web site’s users going to perceive the content as valuable, unbiased information -- or will they detect a hidden agenda?
Disclosure: Is any advertiser involvement in content creation clearly disclosed, and are ads displayed separately from the content?
A policy of clear separation will benefit all the stakeholders in the syndication industry because it will preserve the most valuable element that Web publishers can offer: the trust of their readers.
1. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-05-84A1.pdf
2. http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-
 review/news/2217786/misinformation-tangles-web
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