Bloggers Paid to Write Positive Stories, Model Questioned
Underscore Marketing President Tom Hespos, at the recent New York ad:tech conference, interviewed PayPerPost representative Britt Gustafson. PayPerPost has sparked a bit of a controversy since its launch four months ago because it pays bloggers to write positive stories about marketers without requiring bloggers to disclose which stories on their blog are PayPerPost stories and that they have received money to write them. Personally, we think it's a terribly shameful business model and one that will cause much harm to the already struggling trust level of bloggers. Give the interview a read and we'd love to hear your thoughts.
Comments
Once money or compensation is involved, how can you trust that the blogger is not biased in some way, no matter how you look at it. The PPP booth rep at ad:tech told me they also pay people to carry a disclosure statement on their blogs. That's even worse. (A policy that comes from their newly created disclosurepolicy.org site.)
No ethical concerns there.
Even if you were to suspend ethics for a minute and forget the compensation model, there's now going to be 50 million blogs full of reviews? Because in effect, that's what this encourages.
I'm going to create a new company that pays people to insert branding into everyday conversations. Imagine- you're at Starbucks and you overhear a conversation about how safe Ford cars are. Or you're at a movie theater and you hear someone raving about the deal he got at Best Buy. Or a funeral and you hear someone telling everyone a great bit he saw on NBC's fantastic THursday night lineup.
This is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure that (buy Crisco® brand shortening today!) it would work. I mean, won't people find (don't forget your coffee, go to starbucks now!) this type of thing annoying? I'm not (always Coca-Cola) sure.
Argh. I love advertising, but isn't this a bit too far? We may as well start getting paid to put ads in our text, too.