The current furor in the social web world is over Facebook's advertising system. Apparently, several UK companies have withdrawn their advertising contracts from Facebook because their ads appears on the BNP's community page (requires Facebook login). For those who don't know anything about British politics, the BNP is a far-right political party with strong nationalist, racist, and anti-immigrant attitudes. They are quite marginalized in the UK and enjoy little popularity. Anyway, apparently Facebook's targeting advertising system only allows advertisers to target by geographic region, which means that any advertiser that targets "UK" is going to have some risk of their ads appearing on the BNP page. Of course, no sensible advertiser wishes to be seen as supporting the BNP, but that's how people are going to take a Vodaphone ad showing up on the BNP Facebook page, and so Vodaphone yanked their ads from Facebook until Facebook comes up with a solution.
This should be a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to propose advertising on Wikipedia. Advertising on Wikipedia faces not only this problem, but additional ones, that will make managing an advertising environment on Wikipedia even harder. Relatively few people are going to want to have their advertisement on the page for Hitler, and the ones that do are likely people that Wikipedia won't want advertising anyway. An advertisement for a neo-Nazi group on the Hitler article is not going to look good for Wikipedia. Meanwhile, The Xbox 360 article (the 18th most viewed in July) will be an obvious target both for Microsoft and for Microsoft's competitors, both of which will lead to perception-of-neutrality issues. And advertisers are likely to be unhappy to be seen in conjunction with especially puerile vandalism, which remains a problem despite the best efforts of Wikipedia's obsessive recent change patrollers.
Basically, Wikipedia will have to manage its targeting system both to protect advertisers from being exposed to juxtapositions that the advertisers don't want and to protect Wikipedia from juxtapositions that Wikipedia doesn't want. Managing this will be a lot of work, and in the latter case also cut into revenue, since the juxtapositions that will be eliminated are, in many cases, the ones that advertisers will want most. A sobering lesson to those who seek to monetize Wikipedia.
This should be a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to propose advertising on Wikipedia. Advertising on Wikipedia faces not only this problem, but additional ones, that will make managing an advertising environment on Wikipedia even harder. Relatively few people are going to want to have their advertisement on the page for Hitler, and the ones that do are likely people that Wikipedia won't want advertising anyway. An advertisement for a neo-Nazi group on the Hitler article is not going to look good for Wikipedia. Meanwhile, The Xbox 360 article (the 18th most viewed in July) will be an obvious target both for Microsoft and for Microsoft's competitors, both of which will lead to perception-of-neutrality issues. And advertisers are likely to be unhappy to be seen in conjunction with especially puerile vandalism, which remains a problem despite the best efforts of Wikipedia's obsessive recent change patrollers.
Basically, Wikipedia will have to manage its targeting system both to protect advertisers from being exposed to juxtapositions that the advertisers don't want and to protect Wikipedia from juxtapositions that Wikipedia doesn't want. Managing this will be a lot of work, and in the latter case also cut into revenue, since the juxtapositions that will be eliminated are, in many cases, the ones that advertisers will want most. A sobering lesson to those who seek to monetize Wikipedia.
Bo-RING!
ReplyDeleteJust kidding, Kelly.
I thought the latest Wales line on advertising was that he is "personally against it ... but the ultimate decision will be made by the community (stealthily eyeballs the audience to see its reaction)."
Probably, then, advertising will be presented as half of a false dilemma; maybe a last-ditch effort to keep from having to turn the project over to Microsoft ...
Who are "those who seek to monetize Wikipedia"?
ReplyDeleteWikia is gaining some experience in that area as I've learned with a new project of mine, the Westonka Wiki. Martin points out an example, but I'll use my own that's similar to hers. Wikipedia has an article on the American Nazi Party - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Nazi_Party . Who is going to want to advertise on that page? But there can be solutions. The article might be easily tagged for no ads, but that might say something. Something like, this article is controversial, and then someone might ask, who decides which articles are? A warning could be given about the all the ads, divorcing them from any particular article.
ReplyDeleteOne of her examples is the article on X-Box 360. So who gets that page? Microsoft or Nintendo? As I understand Google Ads, the one that pays the most gets it. A website owner wants the most money per click. I think the ads that run on their site, are the ones that pay the most for the keywords on that page. There is something like an auction among advertisers for certain keywords.
Wikipedia has a RuneScape article that drives traffic to a few selected for-profit sites. The owners of those sites praise Wikipedia, and worship it as the second coming of Christ as they spend their ad money on faster horses, younger women, and better whiskey.
What do these for-profit RuneScape websites do for Wikipedia I ask Jimmy Wales? Do they trade value for value as Ayn Rand wrote? Perhaps, but I can't see it. One model for ads on Wikipedia would to phase it in. Pick 100 articles similar to the RuneScape one, pull those links to the for-profit sites that anyone with 4th grade education can find anyway, and let them market themselves if they want. A phased approach would give Wikipedia feed back on how the admins are really going to react? Do the admins really care about the RuneScape article? Do they really want to keep it pure? It's a video game for crying out loud. OK, no ads on the Magna Carta article, we can agree to that.
They can spend the money on servers if they want to put it that way. I have noticed the Wikipedia and Wikia pages are some of the slowest loading pages.
May I just say that this is what makes the ads on Uncyclopedia a feature. I am most pleased each and every time I see the ads for the Ayn Rand Institute and lronhubbard.org on Fountainhead Earth.
ReplyDeleteElonka's cleavage denied adminship
ReplyDeleteJust an idea for a headline for one of your future posts. Frieda Brioschi has nothing on this lady.
Humbly yours,
A fan
Is it really our problem, when advertising is handled by Google-ads? I think it is for Google to come with a solution. The only thing we have to worry about is how this money can be spend to help the Wikipedias develop in the languages of the people who really need it. So we can truely move forward to accomplish our mission: everyone should have access to knowledge (and not only the richer part of this world).
ReplyDelete