Pete Wright of PayPerPost tries to defend the covert and deceptive marketing platform he is building at PayPerPost on his blog. I respond in his comments, but also wanted to post my thoughts here as well.
So folks ask me why I care and why I take such offense to people doing covert and deceptive marketing on blogs. There are a couple of reasons:
1. I love the blogosphere and everything it stands for. I love, love, love the transparency, authenticity, honesty, and passion found on blogs. It's unique in the media landscape, and as someone who's fallen in love with it and helped it grow, I feel the need to defend it from the forces of evil.
2. You have to stop cancer quickly or it spreads. Too many smart folks I know look at things like PayPerPost and say to me "oh, those losers are never going to get anywhere... why waste your time." A couple of folks I know are not going to blog about it because they are friendly with the VCs and don't want to ruin their relationships. Well, PayPerPost has raised millions of dollars from a very big name: Tim Draper. That validates them big time. They can walk into advertising agencies and brand managers offices based on Tim's name. Now, I think most marketers will laugh them right out of town, but if no one speaks up and Tim's voting for this service with his very large checkbook then these guys might get some traction. They get traction WITH THEIR CURRENT MODEL and they undermine the blogsophere. (NOTE: I'm hoping they take a stand against covert marketing and change their current "market forces" excuse).
I have to ask Tim Draper: how can you endorse deceptive marketing? This isn't the TD I know... I know you're "just and investor" and it's "the entrepreneur's company" (and all those other lame VC excuses), but you gotta step up to the plate and tell us if you condone deceptive marketing. Do you?!?!
Side Note: I'd really love to hear what smart folks like Seth Godin, Fred Wilson, Adam Curry, Mark Cuban, Esther Dyson, John Battelle, Cory Doctorow, Xeni Jardin, Rafat Ali, Joseph Jaffe, Brian Alvey, Kevin Rose, Tim O'Reilly, Doc Searls, Jeff Jarvis, Steve Rubel, Dan Gillmor, and Nick Denton think of covert marketing coming to the blogosphere. Heck, I'd even love to hear what Valleywag has to say! :)
----------------------------
Some quick corrections to your post.
You say: "If you go to Jason's site, you'll find, as I just did, that he 'recommends' no less than 10 products/companies on the side bar of his blog."
My response: I get paid NOTHING for those recommendations. I do them to share with my questions, comments, and concerns with my friends.
There is nothing COVERT about what I'm doing there. What PayPerPost does is enable folks to get paid for doing COVERT marketing.
No one likes to be tricked or deceived--do you?
You said: That's including the 'powered by' link, and not including the HUGE props to Netscape Video, which of course he has a financial interest in.
My response: The syndicated headlines from Netscape are voted up by users. That has nothing to do with the issue at hand. There is nothing DECEPTIVE about linking to the top 10 headlines on digg, NYTimes, Engadget, Boingboing, etc.
You said: Now, as for having 'nothing to gain' by going after PayPerPost, just wander over to Weblogs Inc and click on Marketers More Info. Now Weblogs Inc...
My response: I just looked at the sad, sad advertisers using PayPerPost. We don't sell ads to losers like this. We sell ads to the top 100 advertisers on the Internet. PayPerPosts link farm and covert marketing tools will NEVER put a dent into high-end display advertising. Advertisers like Apple, Microsoft, etc. are not so desperate that they have to pay for people to blog about them-far from it in fact. As far as I'm concerned PayPerPost can keep their loser advertising base. I don't want to-and would never--work with that level of covert marketer.
You said: WebLogs Inc markets products through blogs, so does PayPerPost. Difference? We're cheaper.
My response: No, the difference is that we don't allow deceptive advertising and you do.
All advertisement are clearly labeled as advertisements on our blogs. PayPerPost on the other hand creates the marketplace that allows people to get paid for DECEIVING their audience.
No one likes to be deceived--do you?
You said: We're a marketplace - we put advertisers in touch with bloggers. How is that deceptive?
My response: It is deceptive because you don't have any controls in your marketplace to fight deception. Google forces advertisers to carry the "Ads by Google" line for a reason. The NYTimes, Boingboing, Federated Media, Gawker, and WeblogsInc (and just about anyone with any level of integrity in this business) put systems in place to prevent COVERT and DECEPTIVE marketing. We ban advertisers who do bad things-not enable and profit from them like PayPerPost does.
You guys are making a choice to allow covert marketing. You could say on the site today that:
a) all paid posts must start with a note explaining that they are paid
and
b) be transparent on your site about the bloggers, blogs, blog posts, advertisers, and ad campaigns that are involved.
You are not doing this because we both know that you would have no advertisers left if you did.
The bottom line is that people chose their lot in life. You guys have taken the low road and you are falling back on the very lame excuse of "market forces" to determine your ethics.
You guys know in your hearts that deceptive marketing is, in fact, evil. I know there is some god in you--I can sense it. Take the high road. Sure, it's not as easy to be one of the good guys, but you will sleep better at night and you will get much further.
Ten years from now do you want to be remembered as the place were covert marketers got their claws into the blogosphere and undermined the integrity of good bloggers everywhere? Well, in the .0001% chance you succeed at what you're doing that will be the result-people will lose their faith in blogs. We spent years creating the blogosphere and educating the market of the value blogs-I'm not going to let you walk in here and destroy years of work.
You guys need to take a company retreat and think about what you want to be in life: evil, covert marketers or innovative participants in the blogosphere.
Right now you're a cancer.
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Reader Comments
(Page 2 of 2)22. If you think PayPerPost is the only thing that might cause biased blog posts, you are obviously not seeing the whole picture. No offense, but if you knew what all was going on "behind the scenes" you would be forced to delete the majority of the feeds from your reader ;)
Posted at 6:41PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Lynn Terry
23. I just have to say that your jealousy sticks out like a sore thumb.
If you were running a non-profit, you would have a point. But it is so obvious that you are jealous of this genius idea.
I believe that PayPerPost will fail (http://realestate20.wordpress.com/2006/10/10/great-idea-not-much-of-a-chance/) - but just because this model is going to be implemented by technorati, feedburner, blogger, & wordpress...some companies with the userbase that can really move the model forward and drown PPP out...but it will not fail for the weak reasons you have presented.
Keep it real - you blog for bucks...period. You are not holy. Don't cry when someone else comes along with a better idea.
24. Thank you.
I love that you've spent so much effort griping about PPP. Why? Because, the more something gets talked about the more likely it is to succeed!
After earning not even $10/month with Google AdSense (decent views, just little click-throughs) and a few pennies with AdBrite, PPP offers me the chance to make some REAL money. Money that'll help support me through college (OH YEAH!).
I've made $400 in 20 days. I haven't found anywhere else that will pay me that kind of money and still leave me free to do other things.
So go ahead, talk bad. More advertisers are likely to go check out PPP out of curiosity and when they sign up, I'll get more money.
Thanks!
25. I think PPP marketing model is fine as long as the poster discloses they are being paid to write at the start of the article. Its your choice to blog for dollars, and its my choice to ignore your blog, call you a shill, and move on with my life.
Annelions above suggests that he has made 400 bux in 20 days. Reading through the garbage spin he has posted on his website its clear that he will never build any kind of trust with readers as people realize he is a marketing puppet. How does a blog with zero readers make money for advertisers? Annelions is clearly the worst case scenario for PPP.
Anyways, we know advertisers pay good looking men and women to go to bars and other public places and talk about the latest cell phones / drinks / watches / consumer items. PPP is the same thing only we don't get to listen in and look at the pretty people, just stumble across the ugly blogs regurgitating.
Posted at 3:23PM on Oct 28th 2006 by The Teacher
26. Jason, I think you should differentiate between covert marketing and deceptive marketing. What PayPerPost did is deceptive marketing, not covert.
Posted at 8:56AM on Oct 31st 2006 by Oskar Syahbana
27. Jason's vehemence and ad hominem attacks reek of someone
who is being completely self-serving, and sees payperpost as a threat to his continued efforts to profit off of the blogosphere through weblogsinc. I don't fault him for attacking a competitive, perhaps superior idea, but I think he's exposing his own hypocrisy.
Word to Jason: The blogging elite are NOT the blogosphere. We are not your servants to be commanded, anymore than we are ppp's underlings to be told how to blog. We know you gain favor, access, traffic and intel from relationships with products and companies, whether there is a direct pay-trail or not. The more you attack, the more your own motives and advertiser relationships are suspect.
Posted at 10:24PM on Oct 31st 2006 by uly
28. I absolutely hate PayPerPost and all paid enthusiast buzz agenting.
Look at it this way: Your wife starts telling you, more than usual, that she is deeply in love with you. You are pleased. You feel more confident in her devotion.
Then you find out that, will genuine and sincere expressions, she was also paid a $100 each time she said it, as some university social experiment, let's say.
Suddenly, her expressions of fondness fall flat.
It's not the sincerity that matters, it's the motivation.
The web of trust and credibility is shattered by such crap.
If I wish to know the real truth about how a product solves a problem, I don't want to hear from a paid enthusiast. I want to hear from a person who just used it, and has a spontaneous, unrehearsed, uncoached commentary, a real report from an unbiased user without any hidden or upfront agenda.
Blogospheric conversations are based on the 9 core values of blogging, and not marketing or buzz agenting. If you have to pay people to say nice things about you, not in advertising, but in "user" comments at blogs and forums, your product must SUCK.
Posted at 12:23AM on Nov 10th 2006 by steven e streight aka vaspers the grate
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21. The issue here is that Weblogs gathers their own ads, and the bloggers have nothing to do with it. The ads show up, and the bloggers see them at exactly the same time as the readers do. PPP sucks because the bloggers are biased and bent toward certain products and services, which isn't fair to readers or the bloggers, but only to the advertiser and to PPP. Objectivity is huge in the blogosphere, and PPP throws it right out the window. I refuse to read any of their blogs since I will not be sure that it is purely the bloggers opinions, but most likely tainted by advertising lucre.
Posted at 6:01PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Ryan Carter