November 28, 2006 - by Ross Fadner, OnlineMediaDaily, MediaPost In-text advertising has quietly found its way into the publishing mainstream without generating much controversy. This would have never happened a few years ago, when the backlash over spyware/adware, spam and pop-up ads was coming to a boil.
But now, its pretty standard to read an article at a site like FoxNews.com and see several words underlined which display text ads for other Web sites when you scroll over them. The appearance of in-text in publications belonging to the likes of News Corp., Cox Enterprises and Hearst Corp. represents a significant departure from the long-observed print tradition of keeping editorial content separate from advertising.
FoxNews.com says it doesn´t consider in-text ads to be advertising, because they help provide information about the topic. That´s right, it´s helpful to go to Ask.com to find out where to buy a "house" when the "House" mentioned in the article is the House of Representatives. Fox admits it has no way of knowing which keywords have been purchased in a given article.
Old-school journalism professors and ethics groups say the trend is "corrosive of journalistic quality and credibility," but Web publishers understand that this Web 2.0--you make money where you can. That said, the technology could use improvement, given the prior example. - Read the whole story...
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