How much do you, a publisher, value quality? How much are you willing to compromise quality to increase your ad revenue?

In places of learning–libraries, Wikipedia, etc.–we do not want ads at all, so we can spare our users from distraction. In a commercial publication, we cannot afford that level of purity–but we can still insist on a standard of quality.

Ads that are hard to distinguish from content are a sign of poor quality in a publication. Just like ads that pop up, move around, and flash.

Let’s not get all worked up, people. Poor-quality goods will always have a market. Don’t be on a high horse.

Try not to condemn people for choosing to compromise on quality. If you feel strongly about quality, then strive to put quality into everything you do. Then you lead by example.

Only Google can run ads similar to text and fill the page with ads.

There is a forum where startups and small ISVs can discuss the nuts and bolts of building a business: http://www.asp-software.org This is the ASP (Association of Software Professionals). ASP costs $100/year and that does a lot to confine the some 800 members to those serious about building a business. Supporting members pay $250/year (I am a supporting member).

You should also know that the ASP sponsors a yearly conference: http://www.isvcon.com and that Patrick is one of our featured speakers.

The first point: it does have minor differences from non-sponsored content, but the customer has to pay close attention to details to notice it. The ad mimics content closely, and I can imagine that many people clicking it didn’t notice that it is an ad (the “astronomic” click-through rate supports that – if a non-mimicking banner also leads customers to relevant content, why does it have such a lower click-through rate)? So, from the POV of a customer, your ad is a trap for the unwary. When a customer notices that, he is distrustful of both you and the publishing site, as Lindsay pointed out. So you mislead customers who don’t notice they are clicking on an ad and alienate the rest.

Your second point is that, whether a person is attentive enought to notice that this is an ad or not, they were searching for a teaching tool, and your ad took them to a site for a teaching tool, so they should be happy. But these customers didn’t visit the aggregator site to get anything parading under the name “teaching tool”. The reason customers visit aggregator sites is to get an overview of what is available on a market they don’t know well, and to see how people more knowledgeable about the market rate the different offers. The aggregator site is an intermediary who provides information about the market to the customer.

Placing an ad like yours seriously reduces the value of the aggregator’s service for the customer. The customer trusts that a fair aggregator will offer an unbiased view of the market. He would offer some kind of filter function – only placing tools worth buying on the list – and sorting function, by using a fair algorithm to place better tools in prominent positions. If some of the positions on the list are sponsored, the list is first not filtered – because the aggregator did not ensure that the tool has enough quality to be listed, or, if he did, there is no way to make that credible because he has a monetary incentive not to. Also, the list is no longer ordered by a fair, transparent algorithm, but some prominent slots are reserved for tools which did not compete with the others for a prominent placement but paid for the slot. They can no longer get the information needed to form an unbiased opinion on the tools offered on the market, because they are being fed biased information.

This is why customers dislike such ads a lot – probably even more than flashing, rotating banners. They are informationally overloaded, and visit an aggregator site to reduce the amount of cognitive work they need in order to perform a task. Stealthy ads increase the amount of cognitive work needed and render the aggregator next to useless. The customers feel cheated and unfairly treated – even though your ad would indeed lead them to a tool which might be exactly what they need. And they feel very strong about this – you can see this plainly from the tone of the commenters who called you evil scum, etc.

You pointed out that Google is doing something similar. But Google’s ads are not as deceptive as yours. First, the yellow background makes them easy to distinguish with a quick glance. Second, they all appear in their own area, above the other search results and not intermingled with them. So anybody who wants to ignore them can do so with minimal cognitive load. Yes, the first time somebody sees a Google SERP, they have to orient themselves and notice the small hint that the yellow results are ads, just as with your ad. But the big difference is that everybody on the Internet is familiar with the Google interface, while specialized aggregator sites like the ones in your example are a place the customer is likely to visit when doing his first research on a market new to him, so he doesn’t know their interface. And of course, it is much more difficult to spot your ad even after he is familiar with the interface.

Bottomline: Advertising is not evil in itself, but deceptive advertising is unethical. Your argument “it takes people who want a teaching tool to a site selling a teaching tool” is wrong, because the customers aren’t looking for a teaching tool at that stage, they are looking for an unbiased list of available teaching tools, and you, together with the aggregator, are offering them a biased list of available teaching tools. This makes your strategy deceptive, thus unethical.

In what way is this illegal? I think it’s great marketing.

Seriously, I can’t believe this isn’t too obvious to write about.